10 Things We Learned From ‘Cosby: The Women Speak’ Special

5. Time has done little to mitigate the women’s anguish.
Tears flowed easily for many of Cosby’s accusers, especially those who only recently came forward publicly, like Lublin, Lasha and Butterfield.

Victoria Valentino, a model who met Cosby in 1969 after losing her 6-year-old son in a drowning accident (Cosby’s own son, Ennis, was born that year), said Cosby offered her a pill to “help with the grief,” then assaulted her while she was drugged. “If there’s any question about why women don’t report rape, it’s because it’s so damned humiliating,” she said. “You don’t ever want to talk about it again.”

6. It seems Cosby had a large network of enablers.
“Elizabeth,” a flight attendant who met Cosby on an airplane, said during the special that he invited her to dinner at a Japanese restaurant and encouraged her to try his sake. She tried the drink, and reports not remembering how she wound up in Cosby’s hotel room. She said he assaulted her, and she later vomited in the Rolls Royce that was taking her home. When she apologized to the driver, he reportedly told her, “You aren’t the first.”

Eden Tirl, an actress who appeared on The Cosby Show in 1989, said Cosby called her to his dressing room, locked the door and attempted to assault her. “I cannot imagine there aren’t people that were working in and around that set that knew that something was going on,” she said.

Actor Joseph C. Phillips, the only man interviewed for the special, had this to say about working on The Cosby Show set: “I didn’t witness anything, but there was always a sense of something, and there were people whispering. This parade that would come through of beautiful women…. Something was going on. Everybody’s not auditioning.”

7. He allegedly assaulted at least one woman he had a long-term relationship with.
Beth Ferrier had a two-year consensual affair with Cosby before, she says, he drugged and assaulted her; she said that after the alleged assault, she woke up alone in the back of her car, parked in an alley. Because her memory of the experience was so clouded, she visited Cosby to ask questions, but she said it was clear she wouldn’t get answers. 

8. The women don’t consider Hannibal Buress a hero.
The story of Cosby’s alleged sexual assaults took off in the media after comedian Hannibal Buress discussed them in a stand-up routine in October 2014. But the women interviewed for A&E don’t think of him as a savior. “This guy is a man. A man is making a joke about it in his stand-up routine, and suddenly everybody believes him?” Valentino said.

Tirl agreed, saying, “There were many, many, many women that had come forward long before this comedian had said anything, so I think that’s bullshit” to suggest he’s their white knight.

9. Lise-Lotte Lublin successfully lobbied to amend Nevada’s statute of limitation for sexual assault cases.
This May, in apparent response to the emerging Cosby allegations, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a bill extending from four years to 20 years Nevada’s statute of limitations for the criminal prosecution of sexual assault. Five women, including Lublin, have alleged that Cosby assaulted them in the state. The new statute goes into effect October 1.

10. Despite the number of women who’ve come forward, their credibility is still being called into question.
Tarshis said that just two weeks before the A&E taping, she was confronted on the street. “A woman drove by and spit at me and called me a liar, which really shook me up,” she said, tearfully. “Nobody likes to be called a liar [or] spit at, especially when you’re not lying. Why would I lie? That’s not what I want my legacy to be.” All the women in the special said the courage of other victims coming forward emboldened them to tell their own stories.