Deposition paints image of ‘America’s Dad’ as womanizer who plied women with drugs

By GEOFF MULVIHILL

Associated Press

Under oath in a hotel – away from the TV cameras and the soapbox where he did his public moralizing – Bill Cosby sketched a very different image of America’s Dad: a philanderer who plied young women with Quaaludes, claimed to be adept at reading their unspoken desires and tried to use his wealth to keep “Mrs. Cosby” in the dark.

The portrait comes from Cosby’s own words in a transcript of a 2005-06 deposition taken in Philadelphia that represents the only publicly available testimony he has given in response to accusations he drugged and sexually assaulted women. Cosby has denied the allegations, calling the sexual contact consensual.

In his testimony, the comedian told of how he tried to gain women’s trust and make them comfortable by talking about their families, their education and their career aspirations.

He seemed casual about his affairs, describing his relationship with one woman this way: “We had sex and we had dinners and sex and rendezvous.”

Asked how it ended, he said: “Stopped calling for rendezvous.”

Why? “Just moving on.”

There’s no clear-cut evidence in the documents that he committed a sex crime, but his testimony adds to the unsavory details that have all but wrecked his nice-guy reputation as TV’s Dr. Cliff Huxtable and made a mockery of his preaching about decency and personal responsibility.

The transcripts, obtained by The Associated Press on Sunday, are from a lawsuit filed by a former Temple University employee who accused the actor and comedian of drugging and molesting her. Earlier this month, a judge unsealed a summary of the deposition as a result of a lawsuit from the AP. The New York Times was the first to obtain the entire transcript.

He told of how he tried to gain women’s trust and make them comfortable by talking about their families, their education and their career aspirations.

In the deposition, Cosby said that on one occasion, he and Temple’s Andrea Constand engaged in sexual contact, in which he reached into her pants and fondled her, taking her silence as consent.

“I don’t hear her say anything. And I don’t feel her say anything. And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped,” he said. He said she then groped him in return.

Later that night, he said, he tried to resume contact with her, but she said no, and “I pull back.”

He said that he avoided intercourse with her, suggesting he was afraid she would become too attached. He said intercourse “is something that I feel the woman will succumb to more of a romance and more of a feeling, not love, but it’s deeper than a playful situation.”

He said Constand was not upset when she left that night, and he assured his questioner: “I think I’m a pretty decent reader of people and their emotions in these romantic sexual things, whatever you want to call them.”

Cosby’s lawyers and representatives did not respond Sunday to email and telephone calls.

Patrick O’Connor, the lawyer representing Cosby in the deposition, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the transcript offers only a one-sided account since Constand’s deposition remains sealed. He said he believed the release of the transcript violated the terms of the 2006 settlement in her case.

The 78-year-old has never been charged with a crime. In most cases, the statute of limitations has run out, though at least one case, from 2008, still is under investigation in Los Angeles.

Constand has accused Cosby of drugging her with something powerful and molesting her on a different occasion; Cosby said that he gave her the cold and allergy medicine Benadryl to calm her down, and he denied assaulting her.

“I think Andrea is a liar, and I know she’s a liar because I was there,” he said under oath.

Cosby testified that in the 1970s, he received about seven prescriptions for Quaaludes from a Los Angeles doctor who since has died. He acknowledged he obtained them with the intention of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with.

Under oath, he denied giving women the sedatives without their knowledge. He said he used Quaaludes “the same as a person would say, ‘Have a drink.’”

Constand’s lawyer, Dolores Troianai, asked Cosby about his wife’s knowledge of his affairs.

He said his wife, Camille, learned about the Constand case and others. But he said he hid cases from her, funneling money to one woman through accounts that “Mrs. Cosby” would not see.