Lawyers: Cosby's Drugs-Sex Admission Could Help Women's Suit
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Lawyers for women pursuing criminal and civil cases against Bill Cosby say his admission that he obtained quaaludes to give young women before sex could bolster their claims.
Court documents unsealed Monday and reported on by The Associated Press show that Cosby admitting giving the sedatives to at least one accuser and unnamed others.
The comedian was testifying under oath in a lawsuit filed by Andrea Constand, a former employee at Cosby's alma mater, Temple University. Constand accused Cosby of giving her drugs disguised as herbal medication, then sexually assaulting her.
Cosby testified he actually have her three half-pills of Benadryl.
But when a lawyer asks about another, unnamed woman who accused him of assaulting her at a Las Vegas show when she was 19, he says: "She meets me backstage. I give her quaaludes. We then have sex."
"If anything, I think she may very well have been very happy to be around the show business surroundings," Cosby added.
"Star struck?" the lawyer asked.
"You'll have to ask her," Cosby replied.
Cosby was then asked in the deposition: "When you got the quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?"
He answered "Yes."
"Did you ever give any of those young women the quaaludes without their knowledge?" the lawyer asked.
Cosby's attorney then objects to the question and instructs him not to answer.
But CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman said what happened next is also important.
"They stopped the deposition and Bill Cosby says he misunderstood the question. Yes, he used the quaaludes, but with one woman. But there was a time in recreational drug use when people used quaaludes consensually for sex."
The Associated Press went to court to compel the release of the documents. Cosby's attorneys had objected on the grounds that it would embarrass their client.
Cosby settled that sexual-abuse lawsuit for undisclosed terms in 2006.
A Cosby representative issued a statement to ABC News late Monday saying the only reason Cosby settled the case with Constand was it would have been hurtful and embarrassing to put the women involved on the stand, and his own family "had no clue," CBS News reported.
Cosby has been accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct dating back more than four decades.
Three women in Massachusetts are suing Cosby for defamation. They say his representatives branded them liars when the representatives denied accusations that Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them.
Lawyer Joe Cammarata represents one of the Massachusetts accusers. He says the use of drugs during sex has been a "recurring theme of the women's allegations.'' He says the documents unsealed appear to support their claims.
The allegations led to the cancellation of the comedian's projects at NBC and Netflix. He continues to perform stand-up comedy shows.
Cosby has never been criminally charged, and most of the accusations are barred by statutes of limitation.
Attorney Gloria Allred said Monday that she hopes to use Cosby's newly unsealed testimony in other court cases against him.
She said in a statement Monday evening that "this confirms the allegations of numerous victims who have alleged that he had used drugs to sexually assault them."
Meanwhile, an attorney for model Janice Dickinson said "now we know why" Cosby has failed to appear for a deposition in her defamation lawsuit against him.
Dickinson sued him in May, saying denials made by the comedian's representatives after she accused him last year of raping her in 1982 were defamatory.
"I will not stop. I'm a woman. I'm confident, and I'm an American," Dickinson said last last year. "And it happened to me, and that's the truth."
Given his testimony in 2005, lawyer Lisa Bloom said in a statement Monday evening, "How dare he publicly vilify Ms. Dickinson and accuse her of lying when she tells a very similar story?"
She said "it is time for Mr. Cosby to stop hiding behind his attorneys and publicists and to publicly apologize to Ms. Dickinson and the 46 other women who have publicly accused him of sexual assault."
Supermodel Beverly Johnson has also claimed Cosby drugged her, serving her a spiked cappuccino in the 1980s.
"I took another sip of the cappuccino, and that drug was so powerful it came on like a moving train, and I knew I had been drugged," Johnson said last year.
Prosecutors late last year rejected filing charges against Cosby based on allegations by Judy Huth, a Riverside County resident who is suing the comedian, alleging he abused her in the early 1970s when she was 15 years old. Huth's lawsuit states the abuse happened at the Playboy Mansion.
Cosby has publicly dismissed the allegations.
When asked about the subject in the Associated Press interview recorded on Nov. 6 of last year, Cosby said, "No, no, we don't answer that," and, "There is no comment about that."
Later, he pleaded with the interviewer not even to show the "no comment" response.
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