Bill Cosby: Rape Accusations
Have you read the news about the women accusing Bill Cosby of drugging and raping them? This isn’t the first time this has made the news and went silent again. Back in 2006, Andrea Constand went after Bill Cosby for rape in the courts, and there were 13 victims called to the stand (source). One of them was Barbara Bowman who has been talking about it more and more, and now today another woman, journalist Joan Tarshis, has come forward and said her story matches those of the other women.
When multiple people are coming forward with a similar story, and Bill Cosby refuses to say one word when asked in an interview, I am very suspicious.
Listen to Cosby being questioned this past weekend. Here is link.
Bill Cosby had power and influence with his status, and has done everything he can to keep this quiet instead of dealing with it head-on and directly. And so far it has worked. It has continually gone away, over and over again. But is this the right thing to do?
I say no. If he is honest and forthright, and being wrongly accused, he should be mad. He should be upset, but clearly he isn’t. Oh no, he’s much happier being quiet and that raises my eyebrows up and high.
Add to that–that this is not one accuser, or two accusers, oh no. It appears to be over a dozen, and that’s too many for a fluke or a coincidence for me.
I think it is time we stand together as a people and demand a response or stop supporting him. These are too many allegations to get swept under the carpet again!
I stand beside these women. There are too many of them for this to be a lie.
“I have never had an inappropriate relationship with any of those women. These are the same false allegations that appeared in 2006. They were not true then and they are not true now. I will not continue to dignify any further slander with a response.” — likely hypothetical response by Bill Cosby
I think that people always seem to idiolize these men and act like they are super human or whatever the attraction is. It is sad but this happens in all circles of life, doesn’t it?
Yup.
Usually, but not always.
I think it often goes like this: If we know someone rich, famous, intelligent, beautiful… then doesn’t that mean we’re … also?
I believe them too. I had a family friend who attempted to molest me and succeeded molesting other family members. He was a community leader and successful business owner in our community? Years later one of those family members decided to go public with her molestation, which triggered a shocking number of others to come forward. At one point,was close to 100 women(!) and all of their stories were the same. Like Cosby, there was no proof, statue of limitations were over, and even though he was Cosby’s age by then, he was still powerful. So many of these women were embarrassed and traumatized by their experience that they just wanted to sweep it under the rug. Based on my experience, I wonder how many more women are out there that were victims of Cosby.
I think you see people’s reactions too simplistically, especially one you say a lot about how people should be angry at false accusations. If you know an accusation has no weight you can easily ignore it. If “so far it has worked. It has continually gone away, over and over again” then why wouldn’t he keep dismissing them?
None of his behaviors at this point are looking good. It’s not just about anger. There is way more to this than that.
Such as?
It was already addressed in the past. If I was falsely accused, and famous, I wouldn’t dignify it with a public response. I would have my lawyer issue a statement, as Cosby did, and be done with it. He’s almost 80 and probably doesn’t want to deal with these crackpots. He doesn’t have to. All the loonies are coming out of the woodwork to try and leech onto his fame and parlay it into $$$ and attention, which our culture has encouraged in the last 10 to 15 years, especially with the boom of the internet, twitter, book deals for everything, etc.
That’s one way of looking at it; but not the only way.
Do you have some evidence to say they are loonies after money?
If there’s one thing being on the internet since the 1980s has taught me, it’s that only victims need evidence. Perpetrators and their defenders never do.
Alleged perpetrators never do, for good reason, and that’s why in a court of law, the State (for the victim), has to prove their case, and the accused has to prove nothing. It’s easy to be an accuser.
I was talking about evidence that the accusers are out for fame or his money or to destroy the career of an innocent man. There is zero evidence of this, but it remains a strong claim by Cosby’s defenders despite that dearth of evidence. Why might that be?
You can’t legitimately make the claim that Cosby is entitled to a presumption of innocence in the face of a lack of evidence while simultaneously accusing over a dozen others of something for which there is zero evidence. That doesn’t leave you in a strong position, it leaves you in a very weak one. It’s dangerous and not beneficial to anyone but the guilty when it comes right down to it.
You are right that there is zero evidence that they are out for fame or money. I was too quick to assume that motive. Time will tell, if any of them profit, or try to profit. Legally, in a criminal sense, he has the presumption of innocence. If the statute of limitations hadn’t expired, if a jury believed the alleged victims claims beyond a reasonable doubt, he would be convicted. In the court of public opinion, everyone has the right to believe, or disbelieve him.
You are right that there is zero evidence that they are out for fame or money. I was too quick to assume that motive. Time will tell, if any of them profit, or try to profit. Legally, in a criminal sense, he has the presumption of innocence. If the statute of limitations hadn’t expired, if a jury believed the alleged victims claims beyond a reasonable doubt, he would be convicted. In the court of public opinion, everyone has the right to believe, or disbelieve him.
Defender66, I just wanted to let you know that Disqus somehow posted a duplicate of this comment, so I deleted one of them. Let me know in case that’s an error on my part and I need to rescue your comment (for me, it was identical to the comment above that I’m replying to).
That is acceptable. I can agree to disagree with you on this case (either Cosby or his accusers honesty/dishonesty). You are correct about his presumption of innocence in the criminal sense, the statute of limitations, et al.
I can’t say that all of his accusers are telling the truth– I’ve not heard, seen, or read all of the accusations. I’ve seen one or two of his publicly identified accusers talk about their particular accusations and I found those credible based on my experience with victims of sexual violence. None of Cosby’s words or behaviors so far have done anything to exonerate him. I’m waiting for something that does, but not holding my breath based on everything else I’ve seen and heard that isn’t conjecture or second-hand so far. That doesn’t mean I’m definitely right, but I am right about these kinds of things much more often than not, so I have very little doubt so far. I remain open minded and looking for further evidence as always though– everyone is wrong sometimes. I would love for the allegations not to be true.
More evidence is coming out from independent sources. It looks like Cosby is probably guilty of these acts after all.
You can’t prove a negative, and there is no positive evidence right now. I’m conjecturing based upon the vast majority that profit over our “reality TV”, internet fame culture. I might be wrong about the profiting or “fame” aspect of the allegations. Time will tell, If we hear about a book deal etc.
>You can’t prove a negative
Math major here – that’s not exactly true. Some negatives can be proven. Other negatives can not. I can show mathematically there are no integers between 2.3 and 2.5. (the integers are numbers like 1, 2, 3 and so forth, no decimals). It’s easy to show that today (November 20, 2014) CNN did not air a live and in person interview with Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. Reason is he’s dead and been dead for well over 100 years. You get the idea. Some negatives can be proven. Now on to the case at hand.
If Bill Cosby is innocent (I don’t think he is, but let’s go with this for a moment) he would have to prove a negative. He would have to prove that he did not rape any of these women. If he was truly innocent, then it should be provable. The task is more difficult due to the passage of time and incomplete of evidence, so it may not pass the highest standards, but it should be possible to prove this negative – if he’s actually innocent.
This happens all the time in court – the court concludes that the accused did NOT do something the accused was charged with and they are declared innocent. So yes, it is sometimes possible to prove a negative in the court of law.
The fact that Bill Cosby is doing almost nothing to defend himself is a huge red flag. If he is innocent then it’s possible to prove the negative – that he is innocent on all counts. It will be very interesting to see how this develops.
You are wrong on so many levels. You don’t know the basic laws of logic. And in court, the defendant does not have to prove he did not do something. The prosecution has to prove that he did it. The burden of proof is on the accuser. And the defendant may be declared not guilty, not innocent. If there is evidence that positively supports the prosecution, a defendant may be convicted. If Bill Cosby is innocent he doesn’t have to prove anything, either in public, or a court of law, just like I wouldn’t have to prove I don’t wear purple underwear if somebody said I did. In your illogical analysis, that would mean I wear purple underwear.
>You are wrong on so many levels. You don’t know the basic laws of logic.
How about someone who has a PhD from Brown University in logic? Steven D. Hale writes,
“Among professional logicians, guess how many think that you can’t prove a negative? That’s right: zero. Yes, Virginia, you can prove a negative, and it’s easy, too.”
Source: http://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articlepdf/proveanegative.pdf
In other words, “you can’t prove a negative” is an example of folk logic, not based on the actual rules of logic.
In terms of logic, one example is the law of contraposition. In logic a conditional statement is equivalent to its contraposition, so if P implies Q, then ~Q implies ~P. This is one way used to prove a negative by professional logicians all the time.
While it is true that the prosecution’s job is to prove guilt, and the defendant might be declared “not guilty”, an intelligent defense can go one step better and show that the accused could not have committed the crime in question – thus the accused is innocent. The legal conclusion might be “not guilty”, but the reality is the person is innocent.
This is doing more than proving the absence of evidence – it’s proving evidence of absence.
The Innocence Project has undertaken this task and found hundreds of people are innocent of the charges they were convicted for. Sadly this has happened after they were found guilty – but they were actually innocent. The Innocence Project is showing that all these people did not do what they are accused – and found guilty of – doing.
Source: http://www.innocenceproject.org
To the point – if Cosby is innocent, he should be able to demonstrate that fact in at least one case. There should be some evidence that he did not do the acts in question. All he would have to generate is one counterexample, and that would raise questions about the rest. But he’s done nothing at all along those lines.
More info about proving a negative:
Stephen Law, holds a D.Phil from Oxford in Philosophy, on being able to prove a negative:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/believing-bull/201109/you-can-prove-negative
Law of contraposition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition
Yes. In that sense, you are right. If you show me the color red and say it’s blue. I could disprove the negative that it’s not blue. In that sense, you can prove a negative. I’ve been talking about the case of proving accusations, in that you can’t prove a negative. It’s up to the accuser to prove it, not the accused. New independent evidence is coming out, showing that Cosby most likely did commit these acts (hopefully all the women coming forward are truthful, and there aren’t some just joining the bandwagon). So now we have accusations, plus independent evidence, turning it into a positive. Probably enough to convict, if it was within the statute of limitations. In this case, Cosby may be proven guilty (although not legally at this point), and it would be in his best interest to defend himself if he says the allegations are false.
If you haven’t already, at least consider this during your discussion:
“Eyes For Lies has been put to the test, and scored better than 99.66% of the 15,000 people in a large scientific study which spanned more than two
decades [Ekman & O’Sullivan].”
– EyesForLies.com
That test was for recognising lies. There’s a lot of homespun logic and fear mixed in here.
You have to look a little bit deeper than that. It’s not as if there’s a little light in her head that goes on next to a label that says “lie” or “truth”. If it were that simple, then way more than 54 people out of 15,000 would have been able to pass those tests. There’s a lot more to it than just that, and those things are the reason Eyes can confidently say what she says and be proven right over and over and over again.
I know, which is why I asked for details of what Eyes is noticing here.
Fair enough. 🙂
Read today’s post.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Too many women are coming forward, and frankly, who knows if they are trying to get money from him? That is what HIS defenders are saying, but I believe Barbara Bowman said she wants nothing from him, she just wants the truth to be known. She also said she wanted to give others courage to come forward. And why are so many people “angry” that this is coming out so many years later? These women were young when they are saying it happened. I had a similar experience with a “kid” at my school, but this was almost 30 years ago, and now parents would take legal action for it, and this “16” year old “kid” would have a record, but then, it was just boys being boys. It’s not comfortable to talk about ever, and I can understand why no one would want to bring it up. Not to mention he is so “loved” by so many. I just don’t see these women having anything to gain. In fact, they lose their privacy, and look at all the horrible things people are writing about them in any comments of any articles that are circulating. It reminds me of Michael Jackson and his defenders.( Sorry people, normal men do not sleep with boys in their beds.) And other people were in on this with Cosby. His assistants, etc. He is a predator, and had a certain profile he would go after. Ugh. And did his wife not know? Yuck. I can’t stand him. He is so arrogant and just expects this will all go away.
You are so right…”where there is smoke, there’s fire…” It reminds me of my grizzled, street smart, old journalist professor who drilled into us “if it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck”.
Not from him, but her bank account will be open for deposits if Simon & Schuster come calling.
How is that exactly? Publishing written words accusing someone of something they didn’t do is a crime. She would never benefit from a dime of any money a book might make if she were lying because she’d be in jail for character defamation. And no publisher in their right mind would publish such a thing without having a pretty solid belief that what she wrote was true– THEY would stand to lose millions too. I don’t think you understand how the real world actually works.
I know how the real world works. People lie for profit, or attention all the time. They calculate the risks. I don’t think the allegations will be definitively proven, or disproven. Low risk. If disproven they won’t go to jail, but may be sued for defamation. People have received book deals on false pretenses in the past (ex. “A Million Little Pieces”, by James Frey, and he could be sued for fraud, if not already. )
There are a lot of women who would do anything for attention, but there does seem to be a lot of smoke to be no fire in this story. His wife is doing the speaking for him, and that is odd, also. If this is true, it is definitely due to a sickness with this man. He is well known and could, most likely, have many willing women as he wanted. The way this is being reported, that he chooses to drug them is sick. This is in no way excusing him. Not much surprises me, anymore.
Just this morning, I saw a report on a woman, who thinks Charles Manson is innocent, and she wants to marry him. Apparently, they are trying to get married. What????
The 26 year old Charles Manson fiancee is a kook. The 5’1″ eighty year old (80!!!!) Manson has no conjugal rights and is so far gone that he keeps forgetting who is bride to be is. Cosby wishes he had that problem.
Innocent. I believe that even your in doubt about this one eyes.
Please DO NOT put words in my mouth. In this situation, it looks ominous for Bill Cosby. Ominous and bad.
Im not putting words in your mouth, and those 5 people that agreed with eyes that I was, should be ashamed of themselves for ganging up against me. Again, im not putting words in your mouth, but i still believe in what I said.
I believe he is innocent too, but not fair to speculate what Eyes may think.
I like his comedy. What a disappointment.
Me, too. The older I get, the more people seem to disappointment me.
Years ago I saw a documentary on Hugh Hefner and they mentioned the parties at the playboy mansion and one of the regular guests was Bill Cosby. I remember thinking, what’s HE doing there? After reading this post I don’t support him.
i never knew that. When I first heard this story I had this impression of Cosby sitting home watching the History channel and eating meatloaf with his wife. What a creep.
Watch Barbara Bowman’s interview on Hannity. It’s probably on YouTube. She is lying. All the tell tale signs.
It’s not on YouTube that I could find. I’m assuming you mean this interview? http://video.foxnews.com/v/3896147878001/exclusive-bill-cosby-accuser-speaks-out/
Which tell tale signs are you seeing that she’s lying that makes you able to conclude that she’s lying? I’d be interested to hear you detail just a few of them.
Keith, you rock!! ♡
Yes. That is the video I’m referring to. First, she gives a straight stare, trying hard not to let her eyes give her away. People who are lying may try to lock in, with their eyes. Second, as she’s asked to recall things in response to questions asked, her eyes quickly dart to our left, indicating that she’s constructing her story, not remembering it. Same thing with the Janice Dickerson video I just watched on the recent blog post, taking into account that the interviewer is off to her left, where her eyes would naturally go while talking to him. Although, not a dead lock stare in this case, her eyes dart off to our left as she’s asked to recall.
OK, the eye gaze thing is entirely discredited in the scientific community. *SOMETIMES* staring at someone can be indicative of deception, sometimes not. It’s subtle and not reliable– certainly not on its own.
The Bandler & Grinder neuro-linguistic eye gaze direction thing has been even more thoroughly debunked many times in the scientific community. It makes for a neat parlor trick in the same way that cold reading does, but statistically speaking, it’s as useless as voice stress analysis, and more useless than a polygraph in accurately detecting deception vs. honesty.
Yes, the FBI put out a bulletin in 2011 that says 23 out of 24 peer reviewed scientific studies dispute the hypothesis that eye gaze can indicate deception accurately. Thank goodness!
I’ll concede to the eye cues not being reliable. Also, I’ll change course a bit. I don’t believe we can detect with any amount of certainty if they’re lying, or telling the truth from TV interviews.
It is somewhat lower stakes than if they were being interrogated by police, or under oath on the witness stand– but in this case, the stakes are still reasonably high, so we should see at least some leakage if they’re being deceptive. It might be less obvious to people who aren’t very good at deception detection, but it should be there for people who are very gifted. I know of two truth wizards, and one likely truth wizard, and all three of them are in agreement (actually I’m only pretty sure about the third, because I haven’t explicitly asked, but if that one weren’t in agreement, it’s likely the other two would be less certain themselves– we can ask Eyes about the third one since it’s her mom, but I’m 95% certain what the answer there is) about this case.
I’m laughing at this, Keith. My mom asked me the other day what I thought about Cosby. She is very strong in her opinion as am I. There is no doubt for either of us. This is black and white! We both came to the same conclusion without any discussion.
When there is smoke from over a dozen women (one or two may jump in for the train ride, we don’t know until we see them speak, but not 10 of them who remained Jane Doe #1, 2, 3, etc for over a decade. They are not). They show the opposite behavior of someone who wants to capitalize on Cosby, and in fact, this supports their story even further.
Add to that, you either have 10 liars or 1, and I will put my odds on 10 that they are likely telling the truth — hands down–especially given they remained nameless for over a decade!!
Add to that, Cosby has been seen talking about drugging women (even if comedicaly). He has shown very aggressive, manipulative behaviors which are all consistent with the accusations.
Both sides are so far very supported with behavioral evidence at this point and NOTHING to the contrary, so statically speaking the odds are very low Cosby is innocent.
Completely agree with the above. Just wish the statute of limitations hadn’t run out.
Given what I know about the effects that sex crimes have on their victims, I honestly don’t see how having a statute of limitations on any sex crime serves the public good in any capacity. I’m for eliminating them for this category of crime entirely. If it’s pretty clear that someone had a violation many many years ago and has kept their act clean in the interim, then that can be dealt with in sentencing– there is no useful purpose in having a statute of limitations for this kind of crime if you ask me.
Statutes of Limitations are there to allow the accused to not have to defend themselves after such a lengthy time that evidence has become lost and memory has faded.. but the Power of the State has not dimmed in the least.
http://time.com/3596545/cosby-responds-rape-allegations-ap-video/
Footage of Cosby addressing or not addressing rather the allegations.
This was the video that convinced me of his guilt. His stance is one of “supplication”. For a brief moment he really wants to know who some employee is and looks like he would like to pull some strings in his entourage to make sure that employee is stopped. That made him seem like someone used to wielding power.
This video also shows the lack of “normal” anger that Eyes for Lies mentions. He has the behavior of someone who wishes it would go away but knows that of course in God’s eyes he is guilty. He just wants it to all go hush hush away.
This was the video that convinced me of his guilt. Because it’s him. No need for the ladies.
Cosby was never my favorite, although I liked listening to his comedy as a kid because he was “safe” so I was allowed to, but I’m one of those people who wanted these allegations not to be true, however, nothing is pointing in that direction– nothing at all.
God forbid one of the accusers is lying, though, because she’ll destroy all the rest of them by doing it. :
I wonder if you are a comedian and you are a person who is capable of planning and executing drugged rapes whether some basic disrespect towards women leaks out into your comedy.
Oh so he had an act about drugging women. Well that’s pretty clear cut. Guess one should be careful with types of jokes. Some jokes are just never funny because of their negative content. But one totally might not notice when it’s a string of jokes in an act.
If you read some of my other postings, due to other independant evidence that has surfaced, I now believe he is guilty. Unfortunately, it is probably too late for legal recourse, although he will be harmed by a tarnished legacy. I personally couldn’t take the allegations at face value, with nothing further since so many people try to cash in on celebrities. But that has now changed.