Reality TV star and supermodel Janice Dickinson testified in court Thursday that she confronted Bill Cosby and wanted to punch him in the face after she said he drugged her and raped her in a hotel in Lake Tahoe in 1982.
“Do you want to explain what happened last night, because that wasn’t cool,” she told him, according to her testimony.
“I wanted to hit him, I wanted to punch him in the face,” she said. “I can remember feeling anger, disgust, and ashamed.”
Dickinson is the fourth “prior bad acts” witness to testify in Montgomery County court against Cosby, 80, in his trial on three charges of aggravated indecent assault.
The criminal charges deal solely with Cosby’s actions toward Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee who says Cosby drugged and then assaulted her at his home in January 2004.
However, prosecutors are allowed to seek testimony from up to five other women who have said Cosby also drugged and assaulted them in previous incidents. The prosecution argues that these “prior bad acts” witnesses show that Cosby’s behavior shows a pattern of misconduct and he did not make a one-time mistake in his actions toward Constand.
‘I couldn’t move’
Dickinson, now 63, was a supermodel in 1982 and said that Cosby flew her out to Lake Tahoe to meet her.
At dinner with him and another man, she mentioned that she had menstrual cramps, she testified. Cosby said he had something for that and she said she was given a blue pill.
They went to a room, and she began to feel really light headed and couldn’t get the right words out, she testified. He then got on top her, she testified.
“He smelled like cigars and espresso and his body odor,” she said. “I couldn’t move, I felt like I was rendered motionless.”
“Here was America’s dad on top of me, happily married man with 5 children and how very wrong it was,” she said.
She recalled feeling vaginal pain.
“I passed out after he entered me. It was gross,” she testified.
When she woke up, she was sore and remembers having her pajamas halfway on and halfway off, she testified. That’s when she confronted him.
During a spirited cross-examination, Cosby’s defense attorney Tom Mesereau asked why a passage in Dickinson’s 2002 book about the Lake Tahoe visit does not say she and Cosby had sex.
“I wasn’t under oath when I wrote that book,” she testified.
Heidi Thomas, Chelan Lasha and Janice Baker-Kinney have each testified over the past few days that Cosby incapacitated them with drugs or wine and then assaulted them in separate incidents in 1984, 1986 and 1982, respectively.
On cross-examination, Cosby’s defense attorneys have worked to point out inconsistencies in their stories. In opening statements, Mesereau called the prosecution’s strategy with these witnesses “prosecution by distraction” because they did not have enough evidence in Constand’s case.
“When you don’t have a case, you have to fill the time with something else,” Mesereau said. “Remember my words as you listen to the people testify.”