Anderson Cooper did an excellent segment last night on the snowballing allegations of rape against Bill Cosby, and why he hasn’t been prosecuted, and why prosecution was difficult, and what that means for everyone else.
One of the women who has accused Bill Cosby of rape is Andrea Constand. Back in 2005, she came forward alleging the comedian drugged and groped her at his house.
Bill Cosby has not been charged in connection with any of the rape allegations made against him. Constand settled a lawsuit against Cosby.
Former Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Prosecutor Bruce Castor made the decision not to charge Bill Cosby in that case.In a discussion that also included CNN Legal Analyst Sunny Hostin, Mr. Castor told Anderson he believed Constand’s account, but did not have the forensics to back it up.
Castor and Hostin both talk about the fact that rape can be very difficult to prosecute, and that that does not mean the prosecution does not believe the woman who reports she was raped. For instance, when the victim is drugged, then her memory is blurry, and that makes it hard to prosecute. Does that sound familiar? Yes it does. Alison Smith told Mark Oppenheimer her memory was blurred.
What this means, of course, is that drugging a woman for purposes of rape is a very good way of ensuring you’ll get away with it. Win-win: she doesn’t struggle, and she can’t prosecute you. Total freebie! Minus the cost of the drug, of course.
Hostin points out that 13, maybe 14 women have come forward and described the same MO, and they have nothing to gain from this. At about 3:30:
I am just so sick and tired of reading on Twitter or getting emails from people saying, ‘they have a lot to gain, they’re gonna get fame and notoriety, I can tell you from working with victims of crime, they don’t want that kind of fame, they don’t want that kind of notoriety, they want their story to be heard, and I think that is why we are seeing so many people come forward. What I am curious about is when Bill Cosby is going to come forward.
Castor around 4:30:
My gut from 25-30 years of doing this business was that she was telling the truth and he was being evasive and lying. So this was a classic example of what drives prosecutors to wake up at night, which is, I thought he was guilty, I didn’t have enough evidence to prove it, and I was worried that he would go out and do it again. So I wanted to make sure that whatever investigation we did would be useful in the civil case. The public shaming here I think is going a long way, and at least in my case the victim did have a civil recourse.
The public shaming is going a long way. Huh. So we’re allowed to do that? We’re allowed to report allegations, and discuss them in public? Really? Isn’t there some guy in Ireland insisting that we’re not allowed to do that? And trying hard to extort apologies from people who do that?