Bill Cosby, Once A Model Of Fatherhood, Is Sent To Prison For Sexual Assault
Bill Cosby, who for years dodged accusations that he had preyed on women while brightening America’s living rooms as a beloved father figure, left a courtroom in handcuffs on Tuesday after he was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in his home.
The sentence capped Mr. Cosby’s stunning fall from a towering figure in popular culture to an 81-year-old convicted sex offender.
“It is time for justice,” Judge Steven T. O’Neill said as he announced the term. “Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The day has come. The time has come.” Acknowledging the impact that the case has had on Mr. Cosby’s legacy, Judge O’Neill added: “Fallen angels suffer most.”
Mr. Cosby, who has said he will appeal the conviction, was denied bail and ordered to prison immediately.
As he listened to his sentence, Mr. Cosby leaned back in his seat, staring at the ceiling, and then gazed calmly forward. He declined to address the courtroom before hearing his fate, and did not react when the sentence was announced. Just before 3 p.m., Mr. Cosby was taken into custody wearing an undone white shirt and red suspenders, having removed his tie and jacket.
The actor and comedian was found guilty in April of drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee to whom he had been a mentor. The case marked the first high-profile conviction since the #MeToo movement put an international spotlight on women’s stories of abuse, especially in Hollywood, and represented a symbolic victory for the many others who said they were victimized by Mr. Cosby over the years.
Ms. Constand, who now works as a massage therapist in Canada, stared straight ahead as Mr. Cosby’s sentence was delivered. She was joined in the Montgomery County Courthouse on Tuesday by at least nine other women who had accused Mr. Cosby of sexual abuse.
In a victim impact statement filed with the court, Ms. Constand said of Mr. Cosby: “We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over.”
In a victim impact statement filed with the court, Ms. Constand said of Mr. Cosby: “We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over.”
Jacqueline Larma/Associated Press
She added: “Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it. He robbed me of my health and vitality, my open nature, and my trust in myself and others.”
A publicist for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, decried the verdict outside the courtroom, calling the proceedings “the most racist and sexist trial in the history of the United States.” He invoked an ongoing “sex war” in this country, and tied Mr. Cosby’s fate to that of the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the latest prominent man to face accusations of sexual misconduct on a grand stage. (Mr. Kavanaugh has denied sexually assaulting anyone.)
Mr. Cosby’s journey from the top of the world to prison was a long one. Ms. Constand first went to the police about a year after the January 2004 incident, when, Ms. Constand said, Mr. Cosby sexually assaulted her after giving her pills that made her drift in and out of consciousness.
Prosecutors declined to press charges at the time, citing insufficient evidence. Following a lawsuit that was settled out of court for $3.4 million, a decade passed before prosecutors in Montgomery County revisited the case, spurred by renewed public interest and previously unheard accounts from dozens of women about Mr. Cosby’s alleged pattern of abuse.
Mr. Cosby’s defense team argued that Mr. Cosby’s relationship with Ms. Constand was consensual, and that the drug he gave her, which he had previously described as Benadryl, was to relax her because she was tense. After his arrest in December 2015, Mr. Cosby’s first trial ended inconclusively in 2017 with a hung jury after six days of deliberations.
But at the retrial here in April, in the same courthouse and before the same judge, a jury convicted Mr. Cosby on the second day of their deliberations on three counts of aggravated indecent assault. One major difference in the second trial was the judge’s decision to allow five additional women to testify against Mr. Cosby. Their testimony, often graphic and affecting, bolstered Ms. Constand’s.
Mr. Cosby had faced a maximum 30-year prison term: 10 years for each of three counts of assault he was convicted of. But Judge O’Neill chose on Monday to merge the counts into one, as is allowed when they stem from the same event. Under the state sentencing guidelines, Mr. Cosby could be eligible for parole after serving three years, and may serve a maximum of 10 years in state prison.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyer, Joseph P. Green, had argued Monday that Mr. Cosby should be sentenced to house arrest. Mr. Cosby’s age and the fact he is legally blind meant he was no risk, Mr. Green said, especially since there have been no new allegations of sexual abuse leveled against him since 2004.
“How’s he going to meet these people?” the lawyer said, adding that the judge was required “to make sure that public advocacy doesn’t affect the application of the rule of law.”
As Judge O’Neill explained his sentence, he acknowledged Mr. Cosby’s age and his blindness, but said: “That’s not the factor I am putting most weight on. This was a serious crime.”
Other women who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting them were expecting a long sentence, one that offered a measure of comfort since their own claims were barred by statutes of limitations when they came forward in the past few years.
On the courthouse steps after the sentencing, Janice Dickinson, a former model who was one of the five women permitted to testify, said, “My heart is beating out of my chest at the moment.” Ms. Dickinson had told the court that Mr. Cosby raped her in 1982 after giving her a pill.
“This is fair and just,” she said. “I am victorious.”
The judge on Tuesday also upheld a Pennsylvania state board finding that officially categorized Mr. Cosby as a sexually violent predator, meaning he must undergo counseling for the rest of his life; report quarterly to authorities; and be registered as a sex offender. A psychologist who testified for the defense on Tuesday said he did not find Mr. Cosby to be a risk to the community, but said he had read none of the trial records or depositions in the case, and was not aware that five other women testified against Mr. Cosby.
“I’m so glad he has to register as a sexually violent predator, because he is,” Chelan Lasha, who testified that Mr. Cosby assaulted her in 1986 when she was a 17-year-old aspiring model, said in an interview. “I feel like I’m getting 32 years of closure.”
Ms. Lasha said that the ordeal had brought her and other alleged victims of Mr. Cosby together. On Monday night, she said, the women gathered around a hotel fireplace together and sang Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman.”
“We call each other sisters,” Ms. Lasha said, adding that they one day planned to take a cruise together.
An image of Mr. Cosby taken by law enforcement officials.Montgomery County Correctional Facility, via Associated Press
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have said they will pursue an appeal that challenges the judge’s rulings. Experts said one issue likely to be the basis for an appeal is Judge O’Neill’s decision to allow the five women to testify.
In Pennsylvania and many other states, testimony concerning prior alleged crimes is allowed if, among other conditions, it demonstrates a signature pattern of abuse. But its inclusion is rare. Judge O’Neill explained his rationale on Tuesday, saying that he had based that ruling on a legal “doctrine of implausibility.” He said that so many women had come forward to accuse Mr. Cosby of sexual abuse that it had become implausible to find that it wasn’t true.
Though he has denied assaulting anyone, Mr. Cosby had admitted in recent years to decades of philandering, and to giving quaaludes to women as part of his efforts to have sex.
His wife, Camille, who had stuck by him throughout the trial and criticized the presiding judge, was not present at the sentencing. Through a spokeswoman, Ebonee Benson, Ms. Cosby issued a statement accusing the district attorney of “egregious injustices.”
Mr. Cosby’s conviction, and his own admissions, have destroyed the image he had constructed as one of the country’s most successful comedians and as the upstanding paterfamilias in the popular 1980s and ’90s sitcom “The Cosby Show.”
Gloria Allred, an attorney who represents 33 women who say they were sexually assaulted by Mr. Cosby, said the sentence signals to any other sexual abusers of women that there are significant penalties for such offenses.
“Hopefully it sends a message to other celebrities, to the rich, the powerful, the famous, that to drug and assault women is no joke,” she said.
And Sonia Ossorio, the president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, released a statement praising “the courageous survivors who spoke out and the diligent prosecutors.”
“They exposed Bill Cosby,” she said, “and they helped pave the way for the #MeToo movement that is transforming our world.”
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