Norristown (United States) (AFP) – Bill Cosby’s defense lawyer on Thursday ferociously attacked the credibility of a celebrity model who says the disgraced megastar raped her in 1982, sent her roses in rehab and made her want to punch him.
The now frail and isolated 80-year-old Cosby could spend the rest of his life behind bars if convicted of drugging and molesting Andrea Constand, 45, at his Philadelphia home in 2004.
The case has besmirched the legacy of the actor adored by millions as “America’s Dad” for his role as lovable father and obstetrician Cliff Huxtable on the hit 1984-92 television series “The Cosby Show.”
The admission of testimony from five other accusers presents the biggest challenge for the defense. Janice Dickinson on Thursday became the fourth of those accusers to testify at Cosby’s retrial.
Dickinson says that Cosby flew her first class from Bali, Indonesia where she was modeling, to a ritzy ski resort in the Sierra Nevada for what she thought would be talks about her career.
Over dinner he allegedly handed her a blue pill, which she thought would ease menstrual cramps, but left her dizzy and “out of it.”
She says Cosby then raped her, leaving her “very, very sore,” “in shock and humiliated.”
“I didn’t fly to Tahoe to have sex with Mr Cosby,” she testified.
“I remember the taste of his kiss, it smelt like cigars and espresso… Here’s ‘America’s Dad’ on top of me, a happily married man with five children… I remember thinking how very, very wrong it was.”
“I passed out after he entered me. It was gross,” she added.
Cosby’s lawyer Tom Mesereau, famous for getting Michael Jackson acquitted of child molestation, has dismissed the accusers as “prosecution by distraction” and claims they are money grabbing.
– ‘My true story’ –
On Thursday he brandished a memoir written by Dickinson in 2002 that was ghost-written by the same writer who worked for O.J. Simpson, that makes no mention of the rape. Instead it says each went to their separate rooms, where she drank, took sedatives and went to sleep.
“You lied to get a paycheck?” Mesereau hectored.
“I don’t lie, Sir, don’t call me a liar,” Dickinson said. “You take poetic license in what you do. Today I’m on a sworn Bible … to tell my true story.”
Mesereau then accused her of misleading Sylvester Stallone that she was pregnant with his child while the couple dated.
“I had sex with two men that month. He wasn’t the only contender,” Dickinson replied. “I told him I was pregnant.”
“He stayed me throughout the entire pregnancy and after the DNA test … (confirmed) he was not the father of my child, thank God, I told the father of the child he was the father of my daughter.”
Cosby’s first trial in Norristown, a Philadelphia suburb, ended in a hung jury in June last year, with a sequestered panel hopelessly deadlocked after six days of testimony and 52 hours of deliberations.
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