Cosby’s testimony read to jury

Associated Press

NORRISTOWN, Pa.

The jury at Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial heard from the comedian without him actually taking the stand Thursday as prosecutors read into the record his lurid, decade-old testimony about what he said were several sexual encounters with Andrea Constand that culminated in him giving her pills and then reaching into her pants.

Jurors sat riveted and took notes as they heard the TV star say that as he touched Constand’s body during one encounter at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004, “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.

Cosby testified in 2005 as part of a lawsuit brought against him by Constand, who testified this week that she rejected Cosby’s advances and would have fought him off again had the pills not left her paralyzed and semiconscious. Cosby eventually settled the case for an undisclosed sum, and his deposition was sealed for years, until a judge released parts in 2015 at the request of The Associated Press.

A portion of it was read aloud by a detective Thursday afternoon, with more expected today, including Cosby talking about giving quaaludes and alcohol to women he wanted to have sex with.

Cosby, 79, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of drugging and molesting Constand, a former employee of Temple University’s women’s basketball program. He has said the sexual encounter was consensual.

Constand, 44, testified this week that Cosby penetrated her with his fingers against her will after giving her pills that left her so limp that she was unable to push him away or tell him to stop.

Cosby, who said recently that he did not intend to testify at his trial, showed little reaction as the deposition was read.