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Ex-supermodel Janice Dickinson, who has accused comedian Bill Cosby of drugging and raping her in 1982, took the stand Thursday at his retrial. Dickinson didn’t hold back, telling her version of events in great detail.
Dickinson, 63, contends that the ex-TV star, 80, raped her after giving her wine and a pill in his Lake Tahoe hotel room.
Cosby denied Dickinson’s accusations through his lawyer, and he’s never been charged for any crime based on her allegations.
“Do you want to explain what happened last night, because that wasn’t cool,” she claims she told him at the time. “I wanted to hit him, I wanted to punch him in the face. I can remember feeling anger, disgust, and ashamed.”
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Cosby lawyer Tom Mesereau cross-examined Dickinson, and the pair went back and forth with questions and answers for approximately 30 minutes. As in the past, Mesereau’s defence tactic was to make Dickinson appear money-hungry.
Dickinson alleged that after Cosby gave her a blue pill, he got on top of her and raped her while she wasn’t able to consent.
“I remember his breath and taste of his kiss — just like cigars and espresso,” Dickinson said. “I remember here was America’s dad on top of me, a happily married man of five children. I remember thinking how wrong it was, how very wrong it was.”
She claims that she felt vaginal pain and fainted shortly after the initial penetration.
“I passed out after he entered me. It was gross,” she said. When she woke up, she said she was sore and remembers her pyjamas were halfway on and halfway off. This is when she confronted him, she testified.
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To counter, Mesereau brought up Dickinson’s 2002 memoir, No Lifeguard on Duty, in which it was written that she never entered Cosby’s Lake Tahoe room. Dickinson didn’t deny what was written by her ghostwriter (Pablo Fenjves), instead saying that the book publisher advised them to change the passage to avoid any trouble with Cosby’s legal team. Fenjves has corroborated this statement, and Dickinson even suggested to Mesereau that he could be called as a witness.
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“It’s all a fabrication there,” Dickinson said. “I wasn’t under oath when I wrote that book. I wanted the paycheque from the book.”
“So you made things up to get a paycheque?” Mesereau asked multiple times.
At that point, the cross-examination stopped for lunch. It’s expected to resume on Thursday afternoon.
Dickinson is the fourth witness to testify at Cosby’s retrial, to help the prosecution display his allegedly abusive sexual history with women.
The first of the women to testify, Heidi Thomas, told jurors Tuesday that Cosby knocked her out with wine and forced her to perform oral sex in Reno, Nev., in 1984.
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The women also could help prosecutors insulate the main accuser, Andrea Constand, from the defence’s contention that she’s a “con artist” who preyed on Cosby’’s vulnerability after the 1997 killing of his son, Ennis, and then framed him to score a big payday via a $3.4-million civil settlement.
Mesereau’s attack on Constand was a striking departure from the more subdued tone that Cosby’s previous lawyer took at the first trial, which ended in a hung jury last spring. The jury that time was not permitted to hear about the settlement.
Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
— With files from The Associated Press
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