Cosby accuser seeks release of full 2006 court deposition

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA

Bill Cosby’s first accuser asked a judge Wednesday to release the comedian’s full deposition in her sex-assault lawsuit, including questions he answered under oath about his use of Quaaludes and other drugs, his alleged use of hush money to silence women, his deal to have an accuser’s story spiked and his alleged affairs with other women.

Andrea Constand’s lawyer argued in a sanctions motion that Cosby, along with his lawyers and agents, broke the confidentiality agreement that sealed the 2006 court settlement with public comments made over the years and again this week. Yet she has been powerless to respond, her lawyer said.

“The release of these documents will assist other women who have been victimized and bring awareness to the fact that sexual assault is not just committed with a gun or knife but is also committed by mentors who engage in exploitative behaviors,” lawyer Dolores M. Troiani wrote in asking the judge to sanction Cosby and his lawyers.

Lawyers for Cosby, 77, did not immediately return calls for comment.

The motion comes after U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno unsealed excerpts from Cosby’s deposition this week in response to an Associated Press request, concluding that the public had a right to see “the stark contrast” between Cosby the public moralist and the statements he made under oath about his lifestyle and conduct.

The excerpts show Cosby admitting that he obtained Quaaludes in the 1970s so that he could give them to young women he pursued for extramarital sex. Asked if they knew what they were taking, his lawyers objected and he never answered.

Frustrated by their attempts to dodge questions, Troiani went to court then to force Cosby and his lawyers to cooperate in the pretrial deposition. She asked that Robreno force the comedian to answer 50 questions about his lifestyle, drug use and sexual encounters with 13 other “Jane Doe” women who had come forward to say Cosby had molested and perhaps drugged them years earlier.

The deposition eventually proceeded. And Troiani now wants his answers to those questions made public.

“Although some of the women engaged in consensual relations with Cosby, their accounts substantiated defendant’s alleged predilection for somnophilia,” Troiani wrote in her motion Wednesday, referring to a term used to describe someone aroused by having sex with an unconscious person.