Bill Cosby Deposition Details How He Targeted Young Women
Bill Cosby admitted in a lengthy 2005 deposition to using his fame to lure young women and then strategically hiding those affairs from his wife. The latest revelations were found in Cosby’s four days of questioning from lawyers stemming from a 2004 sexual assault lawsuit, with the comedian detailing his extramarital affairs and pursuit of young women over a thousand-page testimony transcript obtained by the New York Times.
Earlier this month, a 62-page memorandum from the deposition was unsealed, with Cosby admitting that he gave women Quaaludes, and now the rest of the testimony from that court case has been disclosed. “I think I’m a pretty decent reader of people and their emotions in these romantic sexual things, whatever you want to call them,” Cosby said when asked specifically about nonverbal consent.
In the full deposition, Cosby reveals he obtained seven prescriptions for Quaaludes from a Los Angeles doctor, citing a bad back. However, Cosby then admitted he gave the sedatives to young women while partying – “The same as a person would say have a drink,” Cosby said – but he reiterated that he never gave drugs to anyone without their consent.
In the case of Andrea Constand, whose 2004 lawsuit against the comedian resulted in the deposition, she alleged that Cosby drugged her, but Cosby insisted in his testimony that he gave her “one and a half tablets of Benadryl.”
During the deposition, Cosby was asked about his relationship with Beth Ferrier, who later accused the comedian of drugging her in the mid Eighties. Cosby admitted that early on in their relationship, he used the subject of Ferrier’s father dying of cancer as an entry to engage in “sexual contact” with her. Cosby also shared the details of other extramarital affairs, including one instance where he asked his agent to provide $5,000 to a woman in an effort to hide the affair from his wife Camille.
Constand’s legal team found 13 women who alleged similar sexual misconduct on Cosby’s part to provide sworn and anonymous affidavits for the case, but before those women could testify against the comedian, Cosby settled the Constand lawsuit for undisclosed terms in 2006.
Following the revelations found in the 2005 deposition, a petition was launched in an effort to have Cosby’s Presidential Medal of Freedom revoked. While President Barack Obama said there is “no mechanism” to withdraw the honor, he alluded to his thoughts on the Cosby situation.
“I’ll say this: If you give a woman — or a man for that matter — without his or her knowledge, a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape,” Obama said. “And I think this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape.”