The woman who finally got Bill Cosby charged with sexual assault, Andrea Constand, is a Canadian with a Greek father and Italian mother.
Described by the Philadelphia Daily News as “strikingly beautiful, with long, curly red hair. Six feet tall. A smile a mile wide,” she worked at Cosby’s Philadelphia alma mater of Temple University.
Constand, 31, a former basketball player, said her one-time mentor Cosby, drugged and assaulted her at his Montgomery County mansion. His primary home is in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, a tiny town of only 1,731 residents.
The newspaper said her father shortened his last name once he moved to Canada. Her mother is Italian, a niece of a World War II hero whom the Roman Catholic Church is considering for sainthood.
She is an enigma even in Philadelphia, where she helped Temple women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley lead the team for 2 1/2 years.
According to court filings from both sides, Constand often attended dinner parties, and occasionally private dinners, at Cosby’s home in Elkins Park, a suburb of Philadelphia, the News said.
Constand alleged that after a night out with friends in January 2004, Cosby invited her to his home and listened to her complaints about stress. She alleged the comedian gave her three blue pills he claimed were herbal to help her relax.
Constand said the pills made her semi-conscious and she alleged that Cosby touched her breasts and crotch and put her hand on his penis. She claimed she woke up around 4 AM to find her clothing askew.
BACK HOME
Constand returned to Canada in April 2004 and continued to have some contact with Cosby, it was reported. According to the Toronto Sun, she took her parents Andy and Gianna to meet Cosby at an August 2004 show at Casino Rama.
On Jan. 13, 2005 — a year after the alleged sexual assault in Pennsylvania — Constand filed a complaint against Cosby with Ontario’s Durham Regional Police, who passed the case on to police in Cheltenham Township, Pa.
According to a Philadelphia Inquirer in January 2005, Constand said: “I did what I thought was right.”
She refused to talk about her allegations. “I don’t express my feelings to anyone about this situation. I just don’t.”
Prosecutors accused Cosby of plying Constand with pills and wine, then penetrating her with his fingers without her consent while she was drifting in and out of consciousness, unable to resist or cry out.
She was “frozen, paralyzed, unable to move,” Montgomery County District Attorney-elect Kevin Steele said. In court papers, prosecutors said the drugs were the cold medicine Benadryl or some other, unidentified substance. Steele noted that Cosby has admitted giving quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with.
Cosby acknowledged under oath a decade ago that he had sexual contact with Constand but said it was consensual.
Constand, now 42, lives in Toronto and works as a massage therapist. Her attorney, Dolores Troiani, welcomed the charges.
“She feels that they believe her, and to any victim, that is foremost in your mind: Are people going to believe me?” Troiani said.
The attorney added: “Naturally it is troubling that it took until the eleventh hour for this day to arrive. She is hopeful that her patience has encouraged other victims to come forward.”
Cosby was arrested in the twilight of his life and career Dec. 30 and charged with a decade-old sex crime after a barrage of accusations from dozens of women made a mockery of his image as TV’s wise and understanding Dr. Cliff Huxtable.
FALL FROM GRACE
Holding a cane, the 78-year-old comedian walked slowly and unsteadily into court on the arms of his lawyers to answer charges he drugged and sexually assaulted a woman less than half his age at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. He had no comment as he was released on $1 million bail.
The case marks the first time Cosby has been charged with sexual misconduct despite years of lurid allegations and sets the stage for perhaps the biggest Hollywood celebrity trial of the mobile-news era.
“Make no mistake: We intend to mount a vigorous defense against this unjustified charge, and we expect that Mr. Cosby will be exonerated by a court of law,” his attorney Monique Pressley said in a statement.
The decision to prosecute came just days before Pennsylvania’s 12-year statute of limitations for bringing charges was set to run out.
It represents an about-face by the District Attorney’s office, which under a previous DA declined to charge Cosby in 2005 when the woman first told police that the comic put his hands down her pants.
The former Cosby Show star and breaker of racial barriers was charged with aggravated indecent assault, punishable by five to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine. He did not have to enter a plea.
HEY! HEY! HEY!
Wearing a black-and-white hooded sweater, Cosby tripped on a curb as he made his way into court. Inside, he seemed to have trouble seeing the paperwork and finding the place to sign, and his lawyers helped him hold the pen. But he seemed at ease, laughing and chatting with his attorneys.
When the judge said, “Good luck to you, sir,” he shouted: “Thank you!”
Prosecutors reopened the case over the summer as damaging testimony was unsealed in Constand’s related civil lawsuit against Cosby and as dozens of other women came forward with similar accusations that destroyed his good-guy image as America’s Dad.
“Reopening this case was not a question. Rather, reopening this case was our duty as law enforcement officers,” said Steele, who is the top deputy in the DA’s office and will take over next week.
In court papers, prosecutors said there are probably other women who were similarly drugged and violated by Cosby. Steele urged them to come forward.
Cosby also faces a raft of defamation and sexual-abuse lawsuits filed in Massachusetts, Los Angeles and Pennsylvania.
But in nearly every case, it is too late to file criminal charges. One exception: a 2008 case involving a model at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. It is still under investigation by police.
A key question if the Pennsylvania case goes to trial is whether the judge will allow testimony from some of those other accusers to show a pattern of “bad acts.” The judge could decide such testimony would be unfair to Cosby.
MORE TO COME
In Los Angeles, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, who represents more than two dozen Cosby accusers, pronounced the arrest “the best Christmas present they have ever received.” She said her clients are willing to testify if called.
Then-District Attorney Bruce Castor declined to charge Cosby, saying at the time that the comedian and his accuser could be portrayed in “a less than flattering light.” Constand eventually settled a lawsuit against Cosby in 2006 on confidential terms.
Cosby’s lawyer noted pointedly that the charges come “on the heels of a hotly contested election” for DA in which the handling of the Cosby case became a major issue. Castor was seeking to reclaim his job as DA but lost to Steele.
Constand’s allegations and similar ones from other women in the years that followed did not receive wide attention at the time but exploded into view in late 2014, first online, then in the wider media, after comedian Hannibal Buress mocked the moralizing Cosby as a hypocrite and called him a rapist during a standup routine.
That opened the floodgates to even more allegations.
The women were mostly from the world of modeling, acting or other entertainment fields, and Cosby or his representatives denied any wrongdoing, accusing some of them of trying to extract money from him or get ahead in show business.
A LONG LINE
Earlier this year, The Associated Press persuaded a judge to unseal documents from the Constand lawsuit, and they showed the long-married Cosby acknowledging a string of affairs and sexual encounters.
Cosby testified that he obtained quaaludes in the 1970s to give to women “the same as a person would say, ‘Have a drink.’” He denied giving women drugs without their knowledge.
In his deposition, Cosby said he gave Constand three half-pills of Benadryl for stress without telling her what they were. He said he groped Constand, taking her silence as a green light.
“I don’t hear her say anything. And I don’t feel her say anything. And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped,” Cosby testified. He said Constand was not upset when she left.
The AP generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they agree to have their names published, as Constand has done.
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Material from the Associated Press was used in this report)
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