NEW YORK | Model and TV host Janice Dickinson added her name to the women who have accused comic Bill Cosby of sexual assault.
In an “Entertainment Tonight” interview that aired Tuesday, Dickinson said that the 1982 incident occurred in Lake Tahoe, California, where he was appearing.
She told the TV newsmagazine that she wrote about the assault in her 2002 autobiography, “No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel,” but that Cosby and his lawyers pressured her and the publisher to remove the details.
Several hours after the interview aired, Netflix said that it was postponing the Nov. 27 premiere of a new Cosby standup special, “Bill Cosby 77.” The company’s brief statement did not say why or when the show might debut.
The company had no further comment, a spokeswoman said.
Cosby agreed with the decision, his publicist, David Brokaw, said in an email Tuesday. There was no immediate comment on Dickinson’s allegations.
In the TV interview, Dickinson said she met Cosby in Lake Tahoe at his urging after he said that he would help her with her singing career. They had met earlier when her agent had introduced them, hoping that she could get a job on “The Cosby Show.”
Dickinson said that after dinner, she and Cosby were in her hotel room and that he gave her some red wine and a pill. She told “Entertainment Tonight” she had asked for a pill because she had stomach pains.
“The next morning I woke up and I wasn’t wearing my pajamas and I remembered before I passed out I had been sexually assaulted by this man,” she said. She said she remembered Cosby dropping the robe he had been wearing and getting on top of her.
She said she never confronted Cosby about the incident.
“I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do and this happened to me and this is a true story,” she said.
In the memoir, Dickinson described stopping at his hotel room door when he invited her in after dinner. She declined, claiming exhaustion.
“After all I’ve done for you, that’s what I get?” Dickinson quoted Cosby as saying. He then “gave me the dirtiest, meanest look in the world, stepped into his suite, and slammed the door in my face,” she wrote.
Cosby, 77, who was never criminally charged in any case, settled a civil suit in 2006 with another woman over an alleged incident two years before.
Attention to the legendary entertainer’s past flared suddenly in recent weeks after another comic, Hannibal Buress, called Cosby a “rapist” during a Philadelphia performance. Two other women have emerged as accusers, including Barbara Bowman, who wrote an online Washington Post piece.
Cosby has remained silent, and his attorney, John P. Schmitt, issued a statement Sunday saying his client would not dignify “decade-old, discredited” claims of sexual abuse with a response. Schmitt later exempted the 2006 civil case from the blanket statement.
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AP Television Writer Lynn Elber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Just what do these women expect society to do, when they did not press their cases all those years ago? If you were not believed then, what changed that makes any of them believe they will be believed now? If so, to what solution?
For your information, Frank, raping a woman is all about control and power. Back in the days,
Cosby was well loved, financially well off, and I’m positive these women felt no one would
believe them. Also, it is a traumatic event in your life, embarrassing, as many people wouldn’t
have believed these women. Did the police back then even have rape kits? Obviously even
today there is a shortage of rape kits.
The solution is happening. It’s called KARMA. Many money making opportunities are being
denied to Cosby. He should be behind bars, but depriving him of making $$$$ will have to
do for now.
You obviously have no expertise in matters of rape Frank. You’ve said some pretty stupid
things, but this comment is definitely in your top ten.
I had always hoped for the day when the media would finally stop covering up for this disgusting man, and give proper attention to the brave women who have risked everything to come forward and make rape allegations in a world that, sadly, questions their motives and gives the rapist a pass.
I’m speaking, of course, about Bill Clinton!!!