Reality TV star and supermodel Janice Dickinson took the stand Thursday at Bill Cosby’s retrial and echoed the feelings of the three women who’d testified earlier in the week that he raped and drugged them.
“I wanted to hit him, I wanted to punch him in the face,” she said of the alleged 1982 encounter with the comedian. “I can remember feeling anger, disgust, and ashamed.”
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Dickinson, 63, said that Cosby had flown her out to Lake Tahoe to meet her, and at a dinner with him and another man, she told Cosby she had period cramps. Cosby said he had something that would help with the pain, and gave her a blue pill, Dickinson testified.
After she took it, she said she felt light-headed and couldn’t move. Then Cosby got on top of her.
“I remember his breath,” Dickinson said. “I remember the taste of his kiss. It smelled like cigars and espresso. I remember, here was …a happily married man of five children, and I just remember thinking how wrong it was. How very, very wrong it was.”
“I passed out after he entered me. It was gross,” she said.
Cosby’s retrial began on Monday after his first trial ended in a deadlocked jury last year. The 80-year-old entertainer, best known as the father in “The Cosby Show,” is now facing the same charges he did during his mistrial: drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his home over a decade ago. A key difference between the mistrial and this retrial is that attorneys on both sides were allowed to include more witness testimonies.
Since there’s little to no forensic evidence of the alleged crime, the prosecution’s case relies heavily on the testimonies of Dickinson and other women who say they have been victims of Cosby to show that Cosby was a serial predator.
Heidi Thomas, Chelan Lasha and Janice Baker-Kinney each shared similar stories over the past few days: they took a pill from Cosby, immediately felt dizzy and unable to move. Then, they say, Cosby sexually assaulted each of them.
Thomas was the first accuser to testify, and she was straightforward about her motivations: “I want to see a serial rapist convicted.”
Lasha had an emotional testimony that almost resulted in another mistrial. She described being drugged and raped by Cosby in 1986, when she was just 17 years old, at a Las Vegas hotel where she worked. During her testimony, she said, “You remember, don’t you, Mr. Cosby?”
Defense attorneys moved for a mistrial, because Lasha directly commented to Cosby. The judge denied the motion.
Baker-Kinner testified that in 1982, Cosby drugged and raped her at Cosby’s house in Reno Nevada. He was throwing a pizza party, she said.
Cosby is facing three counts of aggravated indecent assault, and if convicted, he would face up to 10 years in prison for each count.