Cosby tried to make it about race not rape
Cosby tried to make it about race — not rape
Roxanne Jones
Source: CNN
Cosby accuser 'exhilarated' to hear guilty verdict 04:42
"Roxanne Jones, a founding editor of ESPN Magazine and former vice president at ESPN, has worked as a producer, reporter and editor at the New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jones is co-author of "Say it Loud: An Illustrated History of the Black Athlete." She talks politics, sports and culture weekly on Philadelphia's Praise 107.9 FM. The views expressed here are solely hers."
(CNN)Finally, justice has been served in the Bill Cosby sexual assault case. And the second time around, the jury got it right: guilty on all counts. Just to be clear, it was Bill Cosby -- the real man, not the make-believe character who charmed us as a bougie black dad on "The Cosby Show," or the comedian who made the world laugh with his family brand of humor — who on Thursday was at last held accountable for his crimes against Andrea Constand. She is a woman he valued so little that he drugged her and assaulted her 14 years ago at his home. Sadly, some of Cosby's staunchest supporters seemed to confuse his TV persona with the real-life sexual predator that more than 50 women who have accused him of sexual assault have described. The 80-year-old entertainer was convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault: penetration with lack of consent, penetration while unconscious and penetration after administering an intoxicant. These are felonies, each punishable by up to 10 years in state prison; it's possible the sentences could be served concurrently.
At the time of the assault, Constand was a mentee of Cosby's and an employee at Temple University. And for all these years since, Cosby has insisted their sex was consensual, despite Cosby having paid a $3.38 million confidential settlement in 2006, after Constand filed a civil lawsuit against him when prosecutors refused to bring criminal charges. *******Cosby even admitted in a deposition that he gave women drugs as a way to get sex.******** And he has not been shy about having sex outside of his marriage. Even so, his lawyers argued, the sex with Constand was consensual.
Constand told a different story: "I was kind of jolted awake and felt Mr. Cosby on the couch beside me, behind me, and my vagina was being penetrated quite forcefully, and I felt my breast being touched," Constand testified in court. "I was limp, and I could not fight him off."
And unlike the first trial that ended in a deadlocked jury, this time the court believed her. I believed her, too.
This time around, the jury didn't buy it when Cosby and his lawyers tried to shame and discredit Constand in the most stereotypical and sexist terms, describing her as a gold-digger and a con artist who had deliberately tried to set up Cosby for a big payday. This time, after years of brushing off claims of dozens of women who said the entertainer had also drugged and assaulted them, the jury heard from five other women who all told stories similar to Constand's.
Most importantly, the jury didn't buy it — nor did I — when Cosby's family and many others shouted that this was a "public lynching," in an effort to get the black community to rally around his "innocence." Really? You drug women, then force them to have sex and have the audacity to call it a public lynching when you're finally held accountable? How insulting, especially when you consider the more than 4,400 known cases of public lynchings that actually did happen on US soil.
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https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/opinions/cosby-tried-to-make-it-about-race-not-rape-jones/index.html