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In Tears, First Trial Witness Says Cosby Drugged and Assaulted Her In Tears, First Trial Witness Says Cosby Drugged and Assaulted Her
(about 1 hour later)
• Prosecutors, in opening remarks, said that Bill Cosby’s own words would help convict the once-popular comedian and actor of drugging and sexually assaulting a Temple University employee at his nearby home in 2004. Prosecutors, in opening remarks, said that Bill Cosby’s own words would help convict the once-popular comedian and actor of drugging and sexually assaulting a Temple University employee at his nearby home in 2004.
• A defense lawyer told jurors that the employee had made up the assault, citing 53 phone calls she made to Mr. Cosby after the incident, which he said showed she had not been attacked.• A defense lawyer told jurors that the employee had made up the assault, citing 53 phone calls she made to Mr. Cosby after the incident, which he said showed she had not been attacked.
• The trial in Norristown, Pa., near Philadelphia, is the only criminal case to arise from the many accusations made against Mr. Cosby by women, some of whom have come to watch. His wife did not attend.• The trial in Norristown, Pa., near Philadelphia, is the only criminal case to arise from the many accusations made against Mr. Cosby by women, some of whom have come to watch. His wife did not attend.
• The prosecution’s first witness was a second woman, Kelly Johnson, who said that Mr. Cosby attacked her in a Hotel Bel-Air bungalow in Los Angeles after having her swallow a large white pill.• The prosecution’s first witness was a second woman, Kelly Johnson, who said that Mr. Cosby attacked her in a Hotel Bel-Air bungalow in Los Angeles after having her swallow a large white pill.
• Mr. Cosby, 79, has said he will not testify, but the complainant, Andrea Constand, 44, is set to offer her account in what is expected to be the most dramatic moment in the trial.• Mr. Cosby, 79, has said he will not testify, but the complainant, Andrea Constand, 44, is set to offer her account in what is expected to be the most dramatic moment in the trial.
Kristen M. Feden, a Montgomery County assistant district attorney, said in her opening statement that Mr. Cosby’s own words, taken from police statements and deposition testimony, would be powerful evidence against him, including his acknowledgment that he used quaaludes to have sex with women. A woman testified tearfully that two decades ago, he befriended her, won her trust, plied her with gifts, and then drugged and sexually abused her.
She often strode across the room, pointing at Mr. Cosby, referring to him as “this man” and suggesting that jurors, drawn from the Pittsburgh area in western Pennsylvania because of pretrial publicity concerns, needed to look past his celebrity to confront the cold calculation of his actions. Then she graphically described Ms. Constand’s version of the night in question, when Mr. Cosby is accused of taking her hand and using it to masturbate, then inserting his fingers into her vagina, an attack set up, the prosecutor said, by his having drugged her to a point of immobility. Mr. Cosby is not being prosecuted for his alleged encounter with Ms. Johnson, but her testimony offered a stark rebuttal to his longstanding persona as an amiable comedian and beloved television dad. And her story closely parallels that of Andrea Constand, the woman Mr. Cosby is charged with assaulting.
“These three friends will help you relax,” she quoted him as saying to Ms. Constand, who had viewed him as a mentor. In 1996, in a bungalow at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, Ms. Johnson said, Mr. Cosby talked her into taking a pill that made her feel as if she was “underwater.” She awoke a while later, she said, lying on the bed, partly undressed, with Mr. Cosby behind her; she had lotion on her hand and “he made me touch his penis.”
“Trust, betrayal and the inability to consent. That is what this case is about,” she said. “My dress was pulled up from the bottom, and it was pulled down from the top,” she said. “My breasts were out. I felt naked.”
In his opening, Brian McMonagle, a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, attacked Ms. Constand’s credibility, noting that a former district attorney in the same county had decided against bringing charges in 2005. Mr. Cosby denies the assault allegations.
“They saw there was no evidence to bring a prosecution then,” he said. “So why are we here?” The trial in the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., marks a long-awaited test of the kind of accusations dozens of women have leveled in recent years against Mr. Cosby, now 79, severely undermining the image he built over more than half a century in show business. Rarely has a person so well known faced such a sharp reversal in reputation, or such serious criminal charges —– three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Mr. McMonagle cited what he characterized as inconsistencies in Ms. Constand’s statements to the police about the timing of events, about numerous meetings with him before the incident, and about her continued contact with him afterward, including a trip with her parents to see him perform at a resort outside Toronto. In particular, Mr. McMonagle cited telephone records, obtained by the prosecutors in 2005, that he said showed Ms. Constand called Mr. Cosby 53 times after the incident, yet told police initially, he said, that she had not tried to contact him. At times, the lawyer said, the conversations lasted a half-hour or more. “Her story unravels,” he said. But those charges are based on what prosecutors say happened to just one woman, Ms. Constand, and Judge Steven T. O’Neill allowed the prosecution to present only one of the other accusers, Ms. Johnson, as a witness who prosecutors contend show that the encounter with Ms. Constand fit a larger pattern. There are no criminal cases pending based on the other allegations, some dating to the 1960’s or 1970’s, often because too much time had passed.
Discrepancies in the accounts of sexual assault victims are not uncommon, according to experts. Ms. Feden addressed the phone contact by saying that Ms. Constand had continued to work at Temple, where Mr. Cosby was a powerful alumnus, and that in other instances, bottled up inside, she had repressed what had happened to her. He said the assault never happened, insisting that his client, while “a flawed husband,” was not an abuser. He described inconsistencies in her account, and conduct that did not suggest she was a victim, like taking her parents to see Mr. Cosby perform near Toronto after the alleged assault.
The prosecutor cited a phone call between Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand’s mother, Gianna, who is scheduled to testify, in which he apologized and offered to fly her to Florida and pay for some schooling. Mr. McMonagle told the jury that phone records, not previously disclosed publicly, show that Ms. Constand called Mr. Cosby 53 times, some calls lasting half an hour or more, in the months after the encounter in 2004 at his home in Cheltenham, a suburb of Philadelphia. Yet when she went to the police nearly a year later, Mr. McMonagle said, she told them that she had not tried to contact him.
Mr. McMonagle addressed Mr. Cosby’s acknowledging the quaaludes, but dismissed the point, saying his use of them had been decades ago and had been with consenting women. “Her story unravels,” he said.
Touching on Mr. Cosby’s affairs and the death of his son, he said: “You see a comedian who made us smile; somebody may see a flawed husband whose infidelities made him vulnerable to these accusations. Some of you will look over there and see a man and see someone who has seen greatness and someone who has suffered unendurable personal tragedy. I hope you will see just a citizen, just someone who is there.” He also noted that a previous district attorney had decided against charging Mr. Cosby in Ms. Constand’s case. “They saw there was no evidence to bring a prosecution then,” he said. “So why are we here?”
She told jurors that she, too, had been drugged and sexually assaulted by Mr. Cosby while working as a secretary to his agent at the William Morris Agency in Los Angeles. The decision to have her testify first, before Ms. Constand, was a surprise and came over objections from the defense. As he spoke, Mr. Cosby sat up and nodded repeatedly.
Ms. Johnson, in a dark suit, described how, in a manner not unlike Ms. Constand, she had become friendly with Mr. Cosby at the office, spent time with him on the telephone and ultimately went with family members — her mother, stepfather and two younger sisters — to one of his shows in Las Vegas. Discrepancies in the accounts of sexual assault victims are not uncommon, according to experts, but Mr. McMonagle’s statement presages a raw cross-examination when Ms. Constand testifies, expected to be the most dramatic part of the trial. Mr. Cosby has said he will not take the witness stand in his own defense.
She described one incident at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., in the mid-1990s when he asked her to act out a scene from a script that was supposed to end with an embrace and a kiss, but she had refused to kiss. Later in 1996 he invited her, she said, to his bungalow at the Hotel Bel-Air, where he greeted her wearing a bathrobe and slippers. They cited his admission in a lawsuit deposition that he used quaaludes to have sex with women. Ms. Constand, then a Temple University employee, met Mr. Cosby at a basketball game in 2002 and he became her mentor.
She said that Mr. Cosby said “that I looked like I needed to relax” and gave her a large white pill. When she declined to take it, she said he told her: “Would I do anything to hurt you? Trust me.” “Trust, betrayal and the inability to consent,” said Assistant District Attorney Kristen M. Feden said. “That is what this case is about.”
Soon, she testified that she felt as if she were “underwater” and later woke up on the bed to find him behind her. She had lotion on her hand and Mr. Cosby made her touch his penis, she said. “My dress was pulled up from the bottom,” she said, “and it was pulled down from the top.” Pointing at Mr. Cosby and referring to him repeatedly as “this man,” Ms. Feden told the jurors, drawn from the Pittsburgh area because of pretrial publicity concerns, that they must look past his celebrity to confront the cold calculation of his predatory actions. Then, she graphically described Ms. Constand’s version of the night in question —– an account strikingly similar to Ms. Johnson’s.
“My breasts were out,” she said. “I felt naked.” He gave Ms. Constand pills and said, “these three friends will help you relax,” and they rendered her immobile, Ms. Feden said. Even if jurors accept the defense’s contention that the pills were Benadryl, she said, it was a dose strong enough, by Mr. Cosby’s own admission, to make himself drowsy.
She overheard Mr. Cosby later complaining to her boss about her and Ms. Johnson was eventually fired. She did not tell anyone at the time about the incident because, she said, “I was frightened.” “This case is about whether Ms. Constand had the ability to consent,” she said. “The answer is no.,” she said.
She did file a workers’ compensation claim. But the defense said in its opening statement that notes from that complaint show she did not complain of Mr. Cosby attacking her. The defense said that she and Mr. Cosby had been friends, that Mr. Cosby had given her money at times, and that he had not persisted when she turned down his request to have sex. “At no time was she forced to have sex and when she said no, he said O.K.,” Mr. McMonagle said. Mr. Cosby took Ms. Constandt’s hand and used it to masturbate himself, Ms. Feden she said, and he inserted his fingers into Ms. Constand’sher vagina.
During cross-examination, Mr. McMonagle said that in her testimony in the workplace claim case, Ms. Johnson had said that the meeting at the bungalow happened in 1990, not 1996; he also said she had taken drugs during that period. The prosecutor dismissed as understandable Ms. Constand’s continued contacts with Mr. Cosby, noting that she had seen him as a mentor who was helping her career, and that he was a powerful alumnus of Temple, her employer. At times, Ms. Feden said, Ms. Constand repressed thoughts about what had happened to her, but she also tried to confront Mr. Cosby, at a restaurant and at his home, about what had happened.
“I would say no,” she replied. “I was not doing drugs in the 1990s.” Ms. Feden also cited a phone call between Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand’s mother, Gianna, who is scheduled to testify, in which she said that he apologized and offered to fly both women to Florida to discuss the episode, and to pay for some of Ms. Constand’s schooling.
Mr. McMonagle suggested that the complaint was based on her fear that her boss was going to fire her because the company had a rule against having a relationship with a client. The trial, expected to last two weeks, drew a large crowd to the neo-classical courthouse, built in the 1850’s and later expanded. In the courtroom, lined with dark wood paneling and deep red carpet, and lit by eight huge chandeliers, Judge O’Neill apologized to jurors for the cramped conditions.
Though dozens of other women have come forward in recent years to say that Mr. Cosby had assaulted them, many of them never came forward at the time and the statute of limitations on those accusations expired. Ms. Constand’s complaint is the only one that has resulted in criminal charges. Judge Steven T. O’Neill allowed Ms. Johnson to tell her story because prosecutors argued it demonstrated a pattern in Mr. Cosby’s behavior. “You are not to read, or listen or watch anything about the case,” he told them. “You can’t even discuss the case with members of your own family.”
The judge denied a prosecution effort to introduce testimony from 12 other women, asserting it would unduly prejudice the jury. The courtroom gallery was packed with about 130 people, including journalists and spectators, including some who had lined up for seats in the middle of the night. More people were lined up outside, hoping to get in, including two of Mr. Cosby’s accusers, Victoria Valentino and Therese Serignese.
The trial represents the end of a long saga, and follows months of courtroom struggles by Mr. Cosby to have the charges — three counts of aggravated indecent assault filed in December 2015 — thrown out. Mr. Cosby’s wife, Camille, did not appear at the courthouse.
Mr. Cosby met Ms. Constand in November 2002 when he attended a basketball game at Temple. Ms. Constand, who had been a high school basketball star in Canada, was the director of operations for the Temple women’s team. He was accompanied into the courtroom by Keshia Knight Pulliam, the actress who played one of his daughters on “The Cosby Show,” and two aides.
Aggravated indecent assault carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. “Truth happens here,” Ms. Pulliam said in an interview, while Mr. Cosby, in a dark suit, declined to answer questions shouted by reporters.
Mr. Cosby, in a dark suit, arrived at the courthouse at 8:38 a.m. on Monday. He appeared relaxed and jovial and was helped out of a black S.U.V. by two aides. Carrying a wooden cane in his right hand, he walked briskly into the courthouse, accompanied by Keshia Knight Pulliam, the actress who had played a daughter of Mr. Cosby on “The Cosby Show.” Ms. Johnson, the witness, got to know Mr. Cosby while she worked as an assistant to secretary for his agent at the William Morris Agency in Los Angeles. She described how he cultivated her, calling her at home, giving her a bird of paradise plant, even inviting her and her family to see him perform in Las Vegas, and giving her his private number.
“Truth happens here,” she told a reporter at the courthouse, not far from Philadelphia. Mr. Cosby did not respond to shouted questions from reporters. Like Ms. Constand, she said she had rebuffed a physical advance —– in Ms. Johnson’s case, she said that she refused a kiss that he said was called for in a scripted scene he asked her to rehearse with him.
Camille Cosby, Mr. Cosby’s wife of 53 years, was not in the courtroom for the morning session. Then came the invitation to meet him at the Hotel Bel-Air. Mr. Cosby told her “that I looked like I needed to relax,” she said, and offered her a large white pill. When she first declined to take it, she said that he told her: “Would I do anything to hurt you? Trust me.”
By 7 a.m., more than two hours before the trial was to start, about 15 people lined up for public seats in the courtroom. Third in line was David Fulmer, 57, from Fort Washington, Pa., who said he had been in line since 2:45 a.m. “There are all these allegations against him and it’s hard to reconcile seeing him in all these different roles,” Mr. Fulmer said. “He was called America’s Dad and now he is being accused by 50 or 60 women.” Later, she said, she overheard Mr. Cosby complaining about her to her boss.
During the morning, two of those accusers, Victoria Valentino and Therese Serignese, waited on the steps outside, hoping to get in. Anticipating her testimony, Mr. McMonagle told the jury that when Ms. Johnson complained to human resources and later when she filed a worker’s compensation claim, she never made any accusation that Mr. Cosby had assaulted her. “At no time was she forced to have sex and when she said no, he said O.K.,” Mr. McMonagle said.
“We are here to stand witness in support of Andrea Constand, in solidarity,” said Ms. Valentino, who had flown from Los Angeles. Ms. Johnson said that she did not tell anyone at the time what had happened because “I was frightened.”
Ms. Valentino said that they had booked hotel rooms for the week. Ms. Serignese did not comment because she is involved in a civil suit against Mr. Cosby. The lawyers Gloria Allred and Joseph Cammarata, who represent some of Mr. Cosby’s accusers, sat nearby in the packed courtroom. “I had a secret about the biggest celebrity in the world at that time, and it was just me,” she said.
Also present in the courtroom for many observers, of course, will be the memory of the man Mr. Cosby once was — the man behind Fat Albert and Dr. Cliff Huxtable in “The Cosby Show,” who also became something of a scold later in life with his criticism of single motherhood and low-slung pants.
Mr. Cosby’s celebrity and the high-profile nature of the case was apparent in Judge O’Neill’s instructions to the jurors. “You are not to read, or listen or watch anything about the case,” he said, and he warned them about having any contact with others about the case.
“You can’t even discuss the case with members of your own family,” he added.