Pennsylvania’s highest court has questioned whether Bill Cosby’s alleged history of intoxicating and sexually assaulting young women amounted to a signature crime pattern, given studies that show as many as half of all sexual assaults involve drugs or alcohol.
The 83-year-old Cosby hopes to overturn his 2018 sex assault conviction because the judge let prosecutors call five other accusers who said Cosby mistreated them the same way he did his victim, Canadian Andrea Constand.
The defence said their testimony prejudiced the jury against the actor and should not have been allowed.
The prosecutor offered more precise details about the relationships, saying Cosby used his fame and fortune to mentor the women and then took advantage of it.
And he sometimes befriended their mothers or families.
Assistant District Attorney Adrienne Jappe says there was a built-in level of trust because of his status in the entertainment industry and because he held himself out as a public moralist.”
Jappe said “the signature was isolating and intoxicating young women for the purpose of sexually assaulting them.”
Cosby has served more than two years of his three- to 10-year prison sentence for drugging and molesting Constand, whom he met through the basketball program at his alma mater, Temple University.
© 2020 The Canadian Press
