"You Old Shit": Another Woman Accuses Bill Cosby of Raping Her
The firestorm of rape accusations leveled against Bill Cosby continues: Music publicist and journalist Joan Tarshis accuses the comedian of raping her twice in 1969 when she was 19-years-old in an essay published on Hollywood Elsewhere.
Tarshis apparently met Cosby in the fall of 1969 in Los Angeles through the women she was staying with while working on a monologue for Godfrey Cambridge. After hitting it off at a lunch, Cosby started inviting Tarshis to the set of the Bill Cosby Show. Then one day after shooting, he asked her to return to his home:
One day he asked me to stay after the shooting and work on some material with him. I was even more flattered and thought this would help move my writing career along. In his bungalow he made me a redeye, and I began to tell him about the earthquake Los Angeles had just had and the sound it made. He liked my ideas for an earthquake bit.
The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed. Through the haze I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an infection and he would catch it and his wife would know he had sex with someone. But he just found another orifice to use. I was sickened by what was happening to me and shocked that this man I had idolized was now raping me. Of course I told no one.
At a later date that fall, Cosby apparently invited Tarshis to the Westbury Music Theater in New York, after which he allegedly raped her again:
He sent a limo to pick me up and I was dropped off at the Sherry Netherland Hotel and went up to his suite. I remember noticing that his leather shaving kit was filled with bottles of pills, and thinking that this seemed odd. He was, of course, very friendly and I, of course, was very uncomfortable. He made me a redeye, and I, being nervous and dealing at the time with an alcohol problem (I’ve been in recovery since 1988), drank it. In the car I had something else to drink, but was already beginning to feel a bit stoned.
When we got to Westbury and he went on, there was no seat for me. I stood in the back of the theater with his chauffeur, feeling insulted that I wasn’t respected enough to be given a reserved seat. But soon after, I remember feeling very, very stoned and asking his chauffeur to take me back to the car. I was having trouble standing up. The next thing I remember was waking up in his bed back at the Sherry, naked. I remember thinking ‘You old shit, I guess you got me this time, but it’s the last time you’ll ever see me.’
"It took me about 20 years to admit this to anyone," Tarshis writes. "My girlfriend, who was a cartoonist, told me she had heard rumors about Cosby, and believed them. She always thought where there's smoke there's fire."
Over the weekend, Cosby's lawyers have said the comedian "does not intend to dignify these allegations with any comment."