two women renew Bill Cosby sexual abuse allegations in Newsweek interviews

http://www.newsweek.com/taking-bill-cosby-228495#.UvmIS0yi5eI.twitter

http://www.newsweek.com/another-woman-accuses-bill-cosby-sexual-abuse-228837

good news for Woody Allen at least

Apparently not. Victims must not be on Twitter.

coincidentally, there was a Bill-Cosby-as-ideal-Dad joke on this week's Girls

Hope you're as vigilant in getting both sides of the story with this one as you are with Dylan/Woody.

Every time Bill Cosby comes up, someone shouts "hip-hop scold" and someone else shouts "abuser of women" so I don't know that there's any real groundswell of support or protection around him that isn't better explained by mostly being out of the spotlight for a decade

I haven't heard either one, at least not in awhile, but where I am, his biggest legacy is his sweaters.

Yeah I mean, no one* actually takes Bill Cosby seriously enough for him to have a fall like Woody Allen, which is a conversation in and of itself

* where by "no one" I mean "white people"

he's got a new show coming out

and the last stand-up special was v good

The average American has seen a lot more of The Cosby Show than (s)he has WA movies.

harder for me to lose Bill Cosby than Woody Allen really, this sucks.

^^

yeah, as much as I like Bill Cosby's work I have always found this shit unforgivable (and it's a big portion of why I was still on the fence about checking out his new show when to teen DJP it would have been a no-brainer)

WaPo piece from this week

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/13/bill-cosby-raped-me-why-did-it-take-30-years-for-people-to-believe-my-story/

http://gawker.com/bill-cosby-responds-to-rape-questions-with-silence-hea-1659144804

This is the fucking worst. People are going to start scrutinizing "To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With" and like "why didn't anybody say anything back then?"

that's not what has happened at all in the last year or so that this story has ramped up again (in fact people seem pretty eager to separate the art from the man in this situation). and that is definitely not the "fucking worst" compared to someone committing rape with no consequences for decades.

Was trying to make a joke.

this is an epic piece on all this. the best i've read so far:

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/dr-huxtable-mr-hyde/

holy fuck

. As I told the Daily Mail, when I was a teenager, his assistants transported me to hotels and events to meet him. When I blacked out at Cosby’s home, there were several staffers with us. My agent, who introduced me to Cosby, had me take a pregnancy test when I returned from my last trip with him. Talent agents, hotel staff, personal assistants and others who knowingly made arrangements for Cosby’s criminal acts or overlooked them should be held equally accountable.

I read that phillymag article back during the Woody Allen thing. It made me feel shocked and sick and confused! Everyone has good memories of the Cos, or at least some 'sweaters jello pudding' bit from the Simpsons memory of him. He did Picture Pages! He did that bit about his daughter eating cake for breakfast! He has a phd in education! And he's NOT like R Kelly or Woody Allen, continually making it clear through their art that they have a pervert streak.

I was glad when that Hannibal Buress clip went viral because it was like 'thank god someone else thinks about this shit when they think about Cosby.' So it's bittersweet truth bomb in that Barbara Bowman piece: "While I am grateful for the new attention to Cosby’s crimes, I must ask my own questions: Why wasn’t I believed? Why didn’t I get the same reaction of shock and revulsion when I originally reported it? Why was I, a victim of sexual assault, further wronged by victim blaming when I came forward? The women victimized by Bill Cosby have been talking about his crimes for more than a decade. Why didn’t our stories go viral?"

The epigraph on the phillymag article:

“He did a lot of good works behind which he could stash his crimes of excess.” — Tamara Green

Between - Cosby - and - Jimmy Savile - and - Jerry Sandusky -
all of these fronts of charitable largesse and doing so much good for your community that your dirty secret crimes against vulnerable people are never questioned
I think about it all the time lately
how the fuck can you tell who is a good person and who is a wolf in sheep's clothing

Yeah me too. It's just base-level confusing when a number of apparently decent ppl want to dramatically/violently exploit other ppl. Like it's a disease or sthg.

how the fuck can you tell who is a good person and who is a wolf in sheep's clothing

I mean...you can't? Can you? You can only react to what you know, change accordingly when you learn new info.

goddamn humans

Truth.

with savile it feels like a lot of that is to do with access? maybe not entirely that - there was a lot of establishment connivance at putting him in these places, through a mixture of stupidity and mendacity.

and although these people occupy a different sphere, there is a well-known history of sexual abuse by people in protective positions of authority (priests, teachers, doctors).

I'm a teacher; it's my legal responsibility to my kids be in loco parentis for the hour a day I have them. I feel very protective of them, and it is rage-enducing that someone in my role would not share those same protective feelings, let alone abuse them.

I know you were not accusing me of anything, but that's a fact, that it has happened, hurts my lil heart.

I'm definitely not trying to say that I have magic powers to discern wolves from sheep -- however, in 7th gr I met Bill Cosby and I found his behavior strange. I asked him to sign a piece of paper two times so I could give one of them to my bff Andy, and he said NO, emphatically. I was like, but…you just have to sign the paper 2x, it's for my friend, I'm just a kid why are you being so rude to me and it was a weird moment that I never forgot. I have told this story so many times because it was really surprising to me that Bill Cosby would be rude to a kid. And that kid was me!

That's funny, I was going to say above that maybe if we met some of these ppl personally we might discern a false note, just like you keep away from some people you meet because they're off-putting. But then I thought it might seem dismissive of the skills that manipulators have to hide their evil acts by confusing ppl or just being "upright" enough to deflect suspicion.

I dunno--do you think people around them DO notice something is wrong and just keep quiet? Obvly the staffers who assisted Cosby etc etc are 100% complicit but...he must have known A LOT of people! Power, I guess?

I've heard and read stories that Cosby is "a jerk" for 30 years (and one could discern such a possibility in, say, his Tonight Show appearances of the '80s, I thought). This doesn't connect inevitably to all of the above, obviously.

two sets of rules for two different types of people: those who have power and those who don't. I mean I think people who witness or know abt this kind of thing don't report things out of a combination of fear, self preservation, a wish to not derail their own career, and denial about what's occurring. Or simply not caring out of their own amorality idk.

those who have power ime: men
those who don't ime: women, children

I didn't watch TV really so I knew who he was but it's possible I've never seen an episode of The Cosby Show in my life. So I feel kind of disconnected from this "How could a beloved figure be a terrible person" convo that happens, and hopefully is happening for the last time before something gets done about it.

I just learned that my youngest brother was getting molested by his manager at pizza hut when he worked there in high school.
Cops refused to do anything about it even though there were years of incidents, with multiple witnesses.
It breaks my heart!
What can I do about it? Listen to him; not eat pizza hut pizza.
Doesn't solve the problem though.

People just do not gaf about sexual assault victims. Not one fuck!

it's just insane...cops seems so quick to be like "hey you stole that bike" or "hey you murdered that dude" but when it come to this there's this whole "whoa let's not be hasty" bs

Oh god I'm sorry, Abbs.

When my sister was in jr high, she complained to my parents that the husband in a husband-and-wife youth leader team at our church made her uncomfortable, that he was inappropriate w the girls in the youth group. My parents dismissed her and in fact I think my dad told her that if she didn't dress so revealingly, she wouldn't have any reason to be uncomfortable. The man was later revealed to have been molesting his daughter/s.

I'm 100% sure neither of my parents ever went back and even apologized to my sis for NOT ONLY NOT KEEPING THEIR DAUGHTER SAFE, but also re-traumatizing her on top of whatever micro-aggressions the man was putting her, and all the other girls, through. And I'm sure the church never did any serious investigation of what in their structure allowed this to happen. It was just a shameful, embarrassing thing to have happen in your church so people tsk-tsked about it probably and then dropped it forever.

I've heard and read stories that Cosby is "a jerk" for 30 years

I've always thought it was a weird power trip for him that every child actor from The Cosby Show referred to him as "Mr. Cosby" then, but especially weird now that they're all adults (and Sabrina Le Beauf was an adult then). There are no slip-ups ever. No accidental "Bill" or anything. ALWAYS "Mr. Cosby".

Urgh, Abbs. We had a molester in our midst when I was growing up: everyone knew not to send their sons to work for him, because his fetish was a certain type of teenaged boy, and those who didn't know were soon told on the d-l. The main barrier to sending the law after him was the perception that breaking his popular wife's heart was much worse than a) grapevining the issue or b) punching the living shit out of him, as one of my aunt's boyfriends did, after the man made a pass at him.

I cant think of anyone I know who didnt have a molester in their midst growing up. It is super common.

I remember growing up that there were rumors abt some creepiness on "the other side of the lake" at a different elementary school. I forgot about it over the years but randomly became acquainted with someone who happened to be from my town and told me both the principal and assistant principal of that school were busted for molestation. I mean the top two people at an elementary school. Horrible. And it had been going on for awhile.

I dont know what you can do really besides take accusations seriously and be selective about adults yr kids are alone with

it's hard for me to understand how people make that leap from having horrible or violent thoughts or thoughts of hurting/abusing people to actually hurting/abusing people. it's a HUGE leap! i mean, i've had my share of anti-social thoughts and fantasies, but the idea of actually turning those thoughts into something real with real people involved...it's fantastical to me. what has to happen to you or what kind of person do you have to be to do that?

and with cosby, how do you do these things AND travel the country on lecture tours and tell people how to live and throw stones at all kinds of people. is that like a God psychosis?

If only Jerry Falwell had accused the stars of the 80s of being rapists and child molesters instead of homosexuals and satanists, he might've done some good.

The two are not unrelated. Ppl were so busy freaking out about nonexistent bogeymen, they ignored what was under their noses.

how the fuck can you tell who is a good person and who is a wolf in sheep's clothing

Not to derail but this doesn't really apply to savile, whose "sheep's clothing" was being a leering creepy molester looking molester 24/7/365 afaict. That he was allowed to do what he did is indicative of something far more horrifying than the horrifying thing you describe

Bye bye, fucker

nothing about the situation prompts me to feel like cheering. sad, yes. heartened, no.

this?

Incredible scenes as women run weeping from the courtroom immediately after Cosby is found GUITLY, and tearfully embrace one another. pic.twitter.com/5GWThXycx9

— David Mack (@davidmackau) April 26, 2018

guit.ly

i feel pretty heartened by this

Bill Cosby's publicist seems to be saying here that Cosby will die and then be resurrected and go on to become the basis for a worldwide religion pic.twitter.com/5kLAaszFMu

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) September 25, 2018

Well shit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/arts/television/bill-cosby-release-conviction.html

sounds like the prosecution really fucked up this one

Yeah this thread spells it out on that front:

This is the key finding of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania that explains its reversal of the Cosby decision: the prior DA promised non-prosecution to force Cosby to waive his Fifth Amendment privilege and testify in a civil case, he did, then they prosecuted him with it. pic.twitter.com/TUT17IMOAr

— SuspendedHat (@Popehat) June 30, 2021

The decision never says Cosby isn't guilty of what he did.

Yeah. And it's hard to know if they could have gotten a conviction without the incriminating statements in the depositions, which he only gave because of the prior prosecutor's assurances. It's a legal mess.

that seems like.... unfortunately....the correct ruling

Right ruling but fuck, the damage this is going to do to the poor victims.

Hopefully they still feel the validation of the conviction, even if the fucker's out of jail.

American institutions approaching soviet levels of incompetence

The original guilty verdict was correct. This decision doesn’t dispute that.

Well, yeah. But that doesn't mean this still isn't going to be spun as a "victory" for Cosby. I mean, see Phylicia Rashad's tweet already.

It doesn’t mean the courts are incompetent. There was an error made by the original prosecutor (castor) in granting immunity, and that opened the door to this successful appeal. In the soviet union, the legal system was not characterized by an excess of due process considerations. Quite the reverse.

I imagine Rashad’s tweet is self serving. Her legacy is tied to his.

Monique Judge had a few things to say about that tweet

So in this instance, kids, your favorite TV mom is loud and wrong. There was no miscarriage of justice, and Cosby is being released on a technicality. I will explain it all in this thread. https://t.co/K9HtjpLC1Y

— Titty Roux (@thejournalista) June 30, 2021

Could the court try him again, but not use any of Cosby's statements as evidence? This would be similar to what would have happened had they never given him the deal for the civil case, wouldn't it?

I think that would be double jeopardy

it can't, the issue wasn't the use of his statements as evidence but the original promise not to prosecute him which he relied on by testifying in the civil case

not a double jeopardy issue at all. treeship is now disbarred.

Can i still practice board lawyering?

no you are disbarred

disbarred = when you are 86'ed from an establishment

you can go to dis bar, but not dat bar

Double jeopardy is based on the legal principle that, if your husband fakes his death and you are framed for his murder and then begins a secret life with your son and ex-best friend, you have the legal right to get out of prison, conduct an investigation to find your husband and then actually kill him without going to prison a second time for his murder

Been there brother

lmao when that movie came out I saw so many hilarious internet arguments about their rong-interpretation of DJ

IIRC the internet was not especially active in 1955.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Jeopardy_%281999_film%29?wprov=sfla1

(1955 film doesn't follow that plot at all. Boo...yah.)

I only watch Ashley Judd movies so I wouldn't know

I did not know there was a 1999 Double Jeopardy and now feel betrayed by my countryman

Reading over and over how an actress I respect like Rashad reacts as if suffering from Stockholm syndrome is a downer.

harbl, thoughts on this? (the initial tweet and the response)? Tend to think the ex-prosecutor makes more sense here.

As a former prosecutor, have to disagree. It’s a question of detrimental reliance. If Cosby relied on a promise - even if. It an enforceable one- government can be held to it. Estoppel. It’s a fact question re reliance. But makes sense.

— peter zeidenberg (@przeidenberg) June 30, 2021

yeah i think the initial tweet is completely wrong and it's annoying how confident he is about it! it's not a question of whether the immunity was valid. it's saying it would be unfair to let the prosecutor make someone believe they are immune, have them act on it, then turn around and prosecute them. i read kind of fast but it sounded like the trial court said it wasn't valid immunity so he shouldn't have relied on the promise not to prosecute.

thanks harbl - that was my thought, that the person you're promising isn't a legal expert and is under the impression of immunity which will still lead them to act in a different way than they would have had they known they did not have this protection.

ok

pic.twitter.com/UqiGznSkiJ

— Howard University (@HowardU) July 1, 2021

Got halfway through We Need to Talk About Cosby at my sister's, but I'm back home tonight and won't be able to finish it until I can get some access somewhere. I was, simultaneously, watching The Ted Bundy Tapes on Netflix--also halfway through, but I will be able to finish that--and the similarities between the two of them in terms of how they presented themselves to the world are eerie.

I don't think we need to talk about Cosby ever again. Fuck him. I hope he dies a slow, painful death in well-deserved obscurity.

another travesty from what we laughingly call the justice system

The film is really good--anxious to finish it.

(In other words, if the suggestion is that the documentary should never have been made, couldn't disagree more. Three or four of Cosby's victims are interviewed in depth.)

the response to Jimmy Savile in the UK was very much to investigate and prosecute individuals, then sweep their entire work under the carpet and never mention them again, which was a complete abdication of responsibility from the establishment/system/culture which enabled them throughout and has still not even started to face up to its mistakes.

I think a conversation about how "the system" failed so spectacularly in the Cosby case, not only in the outcome of the criminal process but in the decades that his behavior was an open secret, is essential. However, as far as Cosby the man is concerned, he should rot.

of course nobody should advocate for Cosby or his like to be rehabilitated in any sense, but we need to hear from the victims and examine how we/they* let this happen. I remember when he was first charged, there was a great deal of pro-Cosby posting on many websites.

*obviously there are multiple wes and multiple theys here

I suppose I was being reactive. Like a lot of people, I revered Cosby in the 70s and 80s. His downfall was spectacular and took far too long. Asking why it took so long, and how he was able in the end to avoid the worst legal consequences for his actions, are of course questions that need to be asked.

something about how the system didn't fail this is just how it works

I thought this was great work btw, definitely the best thing Bell has ever done

"We want to be able to say we can identify these dangerous people. And the really scary thing is you can't identify them. People don't realize that there are potential killers among them. How could anyone
live in a society where people they liked, loved, lived with, worked with, and admired could the next day turn out to be the most demonic people imaginable?"

Not from the Cosby documentary, but the last lines of The Ted Bundy Tapes (spoken by Bundy himself).