From Vox..
Bill Cosby, let me say this: I believe you.
I believe you when you say in a
2005 deposition that “yes,” you give women Quaaludes.
I believe you when you say you knew it was illegal to get the prescriptions. (I also believe that the
gynecologist who gave them to you knew you really shouldn’t be his patient in the first place.)
I believe you when you describe your version of what consent means, one that isn’t so much based on “yes.”
“
I don’t hear her say anything,” you say during the deposition, describing your encounter with the plaintiff. “I don’t feel her say anything. And so I continue, and I go into that area between permission and rejection. I am not stopped.”
I believe you when you say you’ve done this many, many times, giving young, slim women strong sedatives before these encounters.
I believe you when you say you first started to think the idea of drugging and sexually assaulting women was funny when you were 13 years old. You’d heard about a mythical drug, “Spanish Fly,” that could make women do things they didn’t want to do.
I believe you when you said decades later that you still thought it was funny, so funny that you included it in your comedy routine.
“Go to a party and see five girls standing alone, boy, if I had a whole jug of Spanish Fly I’d light that corner up over there. Hahaha,”
you joked in 1969 about your younger days. You made the same joke for years and years after.
A jury couldn’t decide this week if you were guilty of three charges of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, with whom you settled a civil case in 2006. That case involved an incident at your house where she said you tricked her into taking pills that left her dipping in and out of consciousness, while you assaulted her.
This incident is the reason you sat for a deposition in 2005.
I believe you made a good decision when you decided it was best to settle that civil case with Constand. It wasn’t frivolous.
There are many people who don’t take you at your word, like I do.
And to those people I say, you don’t have to just take Cosby’s word for it. Here are
35 women who told New York magazine about their own experiences with him. They use different words, but they paint a similar picture of strong
sedatives and a man who doesn’t look for an affirmative yes. You don’t have to believe Cosby; you can chose to believe these women instead.
...
