The newest cover of New York magazine pictures 35 women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting them:
35 Bill Cosby accusers posed for one defiant, powerful magazine cover
The story and pictures, put together by Noreen Malone and Amanda Demme over six months, give an in-depth view of all the women’s accusations, spanning more than five decades. The stories are remarkably similar, typically involving the comedian offering a woman a cup of coffee or some sort of alcoholic beverage — which may be spiked with drugs — and allegedly sexually assaulting the victim as she’s impaired or unconscious.
Take, for instance, Barbara Bowman’s testimony to New York magazine:
At 17, my agent introduced me to Bill Cosby, who was going to mentor me and take me to the next level of my career. Over the course of the next year, I was drugged half the time when I was with him and would come out of a delusional experience going, ‘Whoa, what was that?’ He would say, ‘Well, I needed to undress you and wash your clothes because you got drunk and made a fool of yourself.’ Do you remember the Jaycee Dugard story? She pretty much could have climbed over the fence any time she wanted to but was just so broken down and couldn’t think straight. I felt like a prisoner; I felt I was kidnapped and hiding in plain sight. I could have walked down any street of Manhattan at any time and said, ‘I’m being raped and drugged by Bill Cosby,’ but who the hell would have believed me? Nobody, nobody.
The evidence against Cosby appears to be mounting. Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported on a 2005 deposition in which Cosby said he had purchased Quaaludes, a type of sedative, with the intent of giving them to women he planned to have sex with. Cosby didn’t admit that he gave the sedative to women without their permission, but it certainly seems damning for the comedian in light of all the evidence against him. The New York cover provides a clear visual of just how extensive all that evidence is, even leaving an empty chair for the next potential woman who speaks out.
