When Andrea Constand awoke in the early hours of 7 January 2004, she didn’t know where she was. Her surroundings seemed, she says, “a strange and foreign place”. Weak and fuzzy-headed, she looked around and slowly realised she was in Bill Cosby’s house, on his couch, her bra around her neck, her blouse twisted, her trousers undone. She straightened her clothing and got up, then Cosby appeared in his dressing gown, offering a breakfast of tea and a blueberry muffin. Constand sipped the tea and took the muffin to her car.
“By the time I got home and into the shower to start my working day, I was in tears,” she says. “Why? Why would he do this to me? The next year was a journey of piecing that night together.”
Constand couldn’t have known it then, but it now seems clear that Cosby’s behaviour that night was part of a pattern that stretched back decades and involved a vast number of women – more than 60 have since made allegations. Cosby, the beloved comic genius, known affectionately as “America’s Dad”, is now also seen as a predator whose signature crime was to rape or sexually assault women and girls he had first immobilised with a sedative. Although Constand’s experience was, as she now puts it, “just a small link in a vast chain of predation”, it was the link that put Cosby behind bars. By the time the accusations surfaced, most of the other cases fell outside the statute of limitations, the legal time limit following an incident for filing criminal charges. (In the UK, there isn’t one, but in most US states, it falls somewhere between three and 12 years for sexual assault.) Cosby continues to deny all allegations of criminal behaviour.
Constand was hailed in the press as “the true hero of #MeToo”, and by another Cosby survivor as the “Joan of Arc on the war on rape”, but her path to “justice” took 14 gruelling years. A documentary streaming next week on ITVX, The Case Against Cosby, shows the industrial levels of fortitude required.
The programme opens with images of Cosby’s secluded house in Philadelphia. “The Andrea that walked in that door that night was not the Andrea that walked out the door,” says Constand, now aged 50. The woman who had walked in was 30 years old, the director of operations for the women’s basketball team at Temple University, Philadelphia – Cosby’s alma mater. A strong, 6ft trained athlete, she was openly gay and had never before felt physically intimidated by anyone. “I was a confident, grounded free spirit,” she says.
Three years earlier, when she had joined Temple, Constand had been only vaguely aware of who Cosby was. Her childhood in Toronto was consumed by sport; a champion basketball player, she had gone on to play professionally in Italy – her mum is Italian, her dad is Greek. “I didn’t watch a lot of TV so his level of fame was really over my head,” she says, “but I soon learned that he was a very important man on campus. He was a trustee, he donated to the sports programmes. His calls had to be returned immediately.”
Cosby had plans for Constand from the moment they met. We know this because, years later, speaking during the civil trial for his assault on her – and speaking quite candidly since he believed he was exempt from a criminal prosecution – he admitted that he had a “romantic interest” in her from the first time he saw her. When asked what that meant, his reply was: “Romance in terms of steps that lead to some kind of permission or no permission, or how you go about getting to wherever you’re going to wind up.”
These “steps”, which could be described as a grooming process, took more than a year. Cosby would call to chat about the team, then gradually to ask about Constand. He made her laugh, bought her gifts, invited her and her parents to events. He seemed genuinely interested in her family (“How’s Mom doing?”) and her career progression.
Other Cosby survivors have described identical experiences – the career mentoring, the complimentary tickets, the friendship with their parents. (When your mother loves him, you trust him quicker, and when that trust is broken, who can you tell?) Tamara Green, who knew Cosby in the 1970s when she was a model, has described a chilling example. Cosby had knocked her out with pills, assaulted her, and left two $100 notes by her bedside. The next day, sickened and traumatised, Green went to visit her brother in hospital: he had cystic fibrosis and was dying. Cosby had beaten her to it, arriving on the ward and gifting her brother a portable radio. Her family thought he was wonderful.
On the night of her assault, Constand had visited “Mr Cosby” (that is the only name she had ever called him) for career advice. She had decided to return to Toronto to pursue a career in massage therapy and was worried about handing in her notice. Cosby listened, then opened his palm to reveal three blue pills. “These are your friends,” he said. “They’ll help take the edge off.” Constand thought they were homeopathic, something for her stress: before taking them, she asked whether she should put them under her tongue. She remembers slurring her words, losing control of her limbs for the first time in her life, and losing all her strength, which, she says, was “utterly terrifying”. Cosby helped her to the couch. She remembers waking later, aware of him lying behind her, assaulting her, then again losing consciousness.
Why didn’t she report him immediately? Cosby’s supporters, and his defence team, have asked this repeatedly. There are many reasons. Those pills – which are believed to have been Quaaludes, although Cosby denies this, despite admitting giving Quaaludes to other women – had left Constand with no coherent narrative. “There was that feeling of not being able to remember,” she says, “and I didn’t know what happened to me during the hours that I was unconscious.” She was also in shock, shattered, ashamed – in no state to take on one of America’s most powerful and popular public figures. Instead, she resigned from her job and told no one. Working her notice, Constand continued her professional relationship with Cosby, although the sound of his voice was, she says, “a knife to my gut”. Once she confronted him and asked what he had given her that night. (Cosby sidestepped the questions, but countered: “I thought you had an orgasm.”)
Constand returned to her family home in Toronto and trained in massage. She left the house only to go to classes, struggled to eat, barely slept, and when she did, she would wake up crying (“and I wasn’t a crier,” she says). “Ultimately, a year later, my soul was not going to let this go. Whatever happened to me, I didn’t want to happen to other people.”
In January 2005, Constand made a statement to the police. The story made the press, and one more woman came forward – Tamara Green. Within a month, it was announced that Cosby would not be charged, with Constand’s delay in reporting cited as a reason. Instead, Constand launched a civil suit that was settled in 2006. In his deposition, Cosby admitted giving women Quaaludes, then having sex with them. Constand was awarded a substantial payout, more than $3m. “It was a win for us, I’d done the right thing and it was everything I could possibly do,” she says. “It was some sort of justice.” But the world didn’t want to know. Most media coverage presented the case as “a classic shakedown”. “Sometimes you try to help people and it backfires on you, and then they try to take advantage,” Cosby lamented to the National Enquirer.
For 10 more years, Cosby’s career flourished, with speaking tours, interviews, comedy specials. “People were so fooled,” says Constand. “My lawyers and I had heard what he’d admitted to, yet he was out there getting awards. I thought it was laughable – I let the anger go a long time ago.” Back in Canada, living close to a forest, Constand focused on rebuilding her strength. She got two dogs, started therapy, threw herself into cycling and hiking, and built a thriving career in medical massage. Then, in October 2014, the comedian Hannibal Buress called Cosby a rapist in one of his shows and told his audience to go Google it. The clip went viral. Constand has no idea why, suddenly, a decade on, people sat up and listened. “I don’t know if it was because Buress was a male, or that he was another black comedian, but, for me, it was validating,” she says. Within a month, four more women had come forward. By July 2015, New York magazine was able to line up 35 alleged Cosby survivors for its cover.
How did that feel? “I was devastated,” says Constand. “Watching all these women paraded in front of the media, coming out with their stories, because it was all they could do to not stay silent any more. I cried. The level of damage – just one after another whose life had been completely upended because of him.” Constand’s civil settlement had involved a non-disclosure agreement and she was also aware that any future prosecution would be compromised if the defence was able to claim “collusion” between the women, so her contact with them was limited. Facebook groups sprang up, there were candlelit vigils, a few get-togethers. “I never asked for details or ‘What did he do to you?’ I just wanted to form friendships with women who knew. I wanted that. I needed that.”
As public outrage mounted, Constand was the one accuser whose case was recent enough to be charged – and only just. (One month longer and the statute of limitations would have run out on hers as well.) When the state prosecutor approached to ask if she would cooperate with another investigation, she knew she had a lot to lose. “This was ‘round two’ and I knew Cosby was going to try to totally ruin me and every bit of credibility I had,” she says. “I had to really stand up and be strong. I relied fully on my training as an elite athlete.” Her decision to proceed stemmed from what she had learned in matches – you play to the end, “always follow through”. She surrounded herself with the best possible team – prosecution lawyers, her family, other women who had made allegations. She prepared for her cross-examination in the way she had always trained, with constant repetition to master a skill, going over her account and practising her responses to the point of exhaustion. She even used the same visualisation that helped her before big matches – except instead of picturing herself scoring, she was in the stand, looking the defence attorney in the eye. “It wasn’t a ‘competition’,” says Constand, “but it was a legal marathon.”
It took two criminal trials. Constand was accused of racism by Cosby supporters, of conspiring to bring a black man down. (She glided gracefully past protesters into court, fixed smile, looking straight ahead.) Cosby’s defence claimed there had been a consensual relationship, and that Constand was a gold-digger. When the first jury could not reach a verdict, a retrial was scheduled for April 2018. While Constand was bracing herself for “round three” (“always follow through”), #MeToo happened. In October 2017, high-profile women began sharing the abuse they had encountered in Hollywood – Harvey Weinstein was the first to be held accountable. “The world shifted on its axis a little bit,” says Constand. “Men who’d been abusing their power for a really long time were falling like dominoes. There was a new awareness and the second trial felt very different.” This time, the jury took one day to reach a guilty verdict. Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years.
He was out in three – his conviction was overturned on a legal technicality. (His lawyers successfully argued that Cosby had been promised immunity from criminal prosecution when he gave his deposition in the civil trial.) “I was believed in court and that was the most important thing,” says Constand. “He did serve a minimal amount of time. I just think that with power, fame and money, you can eventually get yourself out of jail.” Many US states have begun to change statute of limitation laws – partly because of the Cosby case – and as a result, multiple women are fighting civil suits against Cosby now. “The story goes on. You might be able to escape jail, but you can’t escape your past. We’re in an era where people want to see accountability.”
Constand is living a life she loves now; a massage therapist who spends her free time in the woods with her dogs. (“I’m truly an outdoors woman.”) There are times now when she even feels lucky – not for what happened with Cosby, of course, but for being the one who was heard and believed and able to win some justice. “My fight wasn’t just for myself, it was for all those other women – so many other victims – and that made it bearable,” she says. “I was the one who could give them some kind of vindication. I’m grateful for that, so the fight was worth it. But don’t ask me if I’d do it again.”
The Case Against Cosby is on ITVX from 10 August
• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
