Bill Cosby admitted under oath that he got a sort of sedative for the purpose of giving the drug to young women with whom he wanted to have sex, newly released documents show.
The documents date back to 2005, and they stem from a lawsuit filed by one of the many women who have publicly accused the comedian of sexual assault. The records were made public Monday after The Associated Press went to court to compel their release.
According to the documents, Cosby was asked by attorney Dolores Troiani: “When you got the quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?”
Cosby answered yes.
The attorney then asked: “Did you ever give any of those young women the quaaludes without their knowledge?” At that point, Cosby’s lawyer objected, stopping his client from answering.
Cosby then clarified an earlier remark saying that he had misunderstood.
He’d said he gave quaaludes to other people, and he later said: “I misunderstood. Woman … not women.”
The documents include Cosby’s recollection of an incident in Las Vegas in the 1970s.
“She meets me backstage. I give her quaaludes. We then have sex,” he said.
While the woman’s name was redacted, the details of the encounter closely mirror those provided by one of Cosby’s accusers, Therese Serignese.
An attorney who represents three Cosby accusers, including Serignese, told “CNN Tonight” that “it appears” Cosby was talking about Serignese, although Joseph Cammarata stopped short of saying for sure.
Previously, Serignese had told ABC’s “20/20” that she was a 19-year-old model visiting Las Vegas when Cosby handed her pills in a private dressing room after a performance.
“Take these,” Cosby told her, according to Serignese.
After consuming the pills, she remembered “feeling drugged, and I was kind of leaning forward, and he was behind me having sex with me. And I — I remember it because it was not good.”
Serignese did not make public accusations in the immediate aftermath of the 1976 incident. She explained her decision in a November 2014 article she wrote in the New York Daily News.
“Cosby was everywhere. Everyone thought he was a great family man. I knew he wasn’t. I just couldn’t prove it with anything but my word. There was no video camera or DNA evidence. No one else had accused him publicly yet,” Serignese wrote.
She added: “He didn’t drink or take the pills. They could test him, and he’d be clean.”
Cosby, 77, has never been criminally charged and has vehemently denied wrongdoing. Efforts to contact his attorney for comment on the latest allegations were unsuccessful Monday.
Cosby had fought the release of the documents, arguing it would violate his and others’ privacy and be a source of embarrassment.
More than 25 women have alleged that Cosby assaulted them over the past 40 years. Most of the allegations have passed statutes of limitations, preventing criminal legal action.
“I am so overwhelmed that this has come out at long last. At last we are being validated, and there is vindication,” Victoria Valentino told CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” soon after news of the documents broke.
She claims that Cosby raped her.
“This has opened the door for all of us to speak out against rape culture in our society. Just because someone is famous and wealthy and powerful does not mean he gets away with it. He doesn’t get to drug and rape women. And we don’t have to live with the shame and the blame,” Valentino said. “Silence is a rapist’s greatest weapon.”
