Two More Women Come Forward With Bill Cosby Rape Allegations
Bill Cosby's never ending horror story continues: Two more women have shared their accounts of allegedly being raped by the comedian, one as an underage girl in Pittsburgh, the other when she worked at a Los Angeles talent agency in the 1960s.
Renita Chaney Hill told CBS Pittsburgh that she was involved in a four-year, on-again, off-again relationship with Cosby after she was cast in his educational program Picture Pages at age 15 in the 1980s. She recounts, in what has now become an all-too-familiar motif, accepting an invitation to see Cosby, being offered a drink, and then not remembering what happens next:
"He would fly me to a number of cities," including New York and Atlanta she remembers. "He would be busy during the day, then I'd come to his hotel room at night," she said.
Hill says when she was alone with Cosby the scenario was always the same. Cosby would insist she have a drink even though she was underage. She says she now believes she was drugged.
"One time, I remember just before I passed out, I remember him kissing and touching me and I remember the taste of his cigar on his breath, and I didn't like it," Hill said. "I remember another time when I woke up in my bed the next day and he was leaving, he mentioned you should probably lose a little weight. I thought that odd, how would he know that?"
Hill says after a while she began to put two and two together.
"I always thought it was odd that after I had this drink I would end up in my bed the next morning and I wouldn't remember anything," Hill said.
She says she doesn't know if she was raped because she was unconscious.
"It just felt weird to me, and I remember being in high school saying to him, 'I'll come see you, but I don't want to drink because it makes me feel funny,'" Hill told CBS Pittsburgh. "And he would tell me that if I didn't drink, I couldn't come see him."
Cosby apparently went on to pay Hill's college tuition, but at 19, she decided to end the relationship.
"No one wants to be associated with something like this," Hill said. "But the bottom line for me is that no one has the right to violate someone else, no matter who they are. I don't care how big they are or how the community sees them, it's not right."
Kristina Ruehli was among the Jane Does named in Andrea Constand's lawsuit against Cosby from last decade; her accusation of abuse dates back to 1965, when she worked at Artists Agency Corp, a talent agency in Los Angeles. After meeting Cosby in the agency's office, he apparently invited the staff to a party at his home after he taped an episode of Hollywood Palace. From her interview with Philadelphia magazine:
What happened when you got to the house?
When I arrived at his house — it was probably around 10 p.m. — I was surprised that there was no one else there. He was very well liked at the agency, and so I expected others to be there. But no one else arrived.
But you went in.
Yes, I remember the front of the house was brick and it had a slight Tudor design. It was in Brentwood or Bel Air — they all start with a "B."
He said that his wife was out of town, but he brought me in and into one bedroom where there was an infant child in the crib. He actually showed me, a very young baby. The child was fast asleep. He seemed so proud of it. He wanted to show me his little baby. I don't know where the nanny or maid was, but someone had to be there, because he had come from Hollywood Palace.
We went out into the kitchen. He proceeded to pour some bourbon. I drank a bourbon-and-7 at the time. I could really hold my liquor. I'm Irish. And I had a couple of those — just two — and then I just don't remember much.
"So, I ended up by the pool, and, well, I was in quite a foggy state. I have vague memories of someone walking next to me at the pool, and the next day, I realized that the bottoms of my nylons were completely tore up. Not just a run, but tore up. So I must have been walking around the pool for quite a while," Ruehli told Philadelphia.
And like many of the women who have come forward with stories of Cosby assaulting them, Ruehli believes she too was given a spiked drink.
"He must have drugged me. There is just one point at which I was having a drink and feeling normal and the next I was somehow passed out completely," Ruehli told Philadelphia. "He must have slipped something into my drink. It's the only way to go lights-out like that."
When did you wake up?
It was all foggy, and I woke up in the bed. I found myself on the bed, and he had his shirt off. He had unzipped his pants. I was just coming to.
He was attempting to force me into oral sex. He had his hand on my head. He had his cock out, and he had my head pushed close enough to it — I just remember looking at his stomach hair. And the hair on his chest. I had never seen a black man naked before.
And it never went past that. I immediately came to and was immediately very sick. I pushed myself away and ran to the bathroom and threw up. I was feeling really ill. And I never got sick like that from alcohol, at least not that small of an amount.
Once I threw up — it was five in the morning by now, I think — I left the bathroom and he wasn't there. I don't know where he went. But I left right away. I was able to drive myself home. I didn't live that far away.
"Until I read about Andrea, I never really had a reason to tell anyone about it. But when I read about her, she's getting called a liar, and I don't like that, " Ruehli told the magazine. "So I am going to say these people are not the only ones. And now that more women are coming forward and people are calling them liars, I decided to come forward again."
[Image of Hill via CBS Pittsburgh; Image of Ruehli courtesy Philadelphia magazine/Ruehli]