Two more women come forward with Bill Cosby accusations
Two more women have come forward with accusations against Bill Cosby.
Renita Chaney Hill, 47, and Kristina Ruehli, now 75, both claim the comedian got them alone and then drugged them decades ago.
Hill told CBS Philadelphia she met Cosby in the 1980s when she was 15 and appeared on his "Picture Pages" educational TV segments. "He would fly me to a number of cities," she said, adding, "He would be busy during the day, then I'd come to his hotel room at night."
She claims that when they were alone, Cosby would insist she have a drink even though she was underage and now believes she was drugged. "One time, I remember just before I passed out, I remember him kissing and touching me and I remember the taste of his cigar on his breath, and I didn't like it," Hill recalled. She said she doesn't know if she was raped because she was unconscious, and decided to cut off contact with Cosby when she was 19.
Ruehli spoke out in an interview with Philadelphia magazine, saying that she met Cosby in 1965 when she was a 22-year-old working as a secretary at a talent agency in Beverly Hills, California. She claims Cosby invited her to a party at his home but that when she arrived no one else was there. He fixed her two bourbons that she says knocked her out.
"At that age, two bourbon-and-7s would not have knocked me out cold, believe me," Ruehli told the magazine. "He must have drugged me. There is just one point at which I was having a drink and feeling normal and the next I was somehow passed out completely."
She said she woke up in a bedroom as Cosby was attempting to force her into performing oral sex, and that when she came to she was able to push him away, ran to a bathroom and drove herself home.
Ruehli told Philadelphia magazine she was one of the women who'd agreed to testify on behalf of Andrea Constand, a Pennsylvania woman who alleged that she was sexually assaulted by Cosby and settled before the case when to trial. Hill, meanwhile, told CBS Philadelphia she decided to come forward now after hearing Cosby's attorney criticize the other women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault in recent weeks.
"No one wants to be associated with something like this," she said. "But the bottom line for me is that no one has the right to violate someone else, no matter who they are. I don't care how big they are or how the community sees them, it's not right."
A number of planned Cosby projects have been canceled or postponed this week in the wake of the allegations, including dates on his stand-up tour. A comedy show date in Melbourne, Florida, is still apparently set for Friday, and at least 34 other shows currently remain on his schedule through May 2015.