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Cosby: A Blackened Legacy
By Kofi Poku Jr.
On Apr. 26th, 2018, Bill Cosby was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault. He faces up to 10 years in prison for each count. The once beloved television star will spend the last days of his life behind bars for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand. This verdictis another part of a dark chapter in Cosby’s life that has tarnished his legacy.
Four years ago, Cosby was in the midst of a career revival. NBC announced that they were developing a new sitcom for him to star in. He was set to play a patriarchal character like Cliff Huxtable from the unforgettable hit sitcom, The Cosby Show. Cosby: His Life and Times, a new biography on Cosby’s life written by Mark Whitaker, came out in September. Netflix had a new comedy special, Bill Cosby 77, ready to be released on their streaming platform in November.
In October 2014, a one-minute clip from a comedy set by comedian Hannibal Buress put an end to Cosby’s new found spotlight. A reporter from Philadelphia Magazine recorded a snippet in which Buress accused Cosby of being a rapist.
In the clip, Buress joked about Cosby’s clean image and how it contrasted with his status as a serial rapist. The clip made its way online where it quickly went viral. The story was picked up by major news networks including CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
Cosby’s new NBC show was cancelled. Reruns of The Cosby Show were taken off TV Land. The release of his Netflix special was placed on hold indefinitely. Cosby refused to speak about the allegations in public.
“There is no comment about that,” Cosby said to the Associated Press in a 2014 interview when asked about the accusations.“I don’t talk about it.” Cosby’s silence didn’t make the allegations didn’t go away.Buress was not the only person to call out Cosby as a sexual predator. Sixty women came out to accuse him of mistreating them. No charges could be filed in almost all the cases as the statue of limitations on the alleged crimes had run out.
Ms. Constand’s case was the most recent. In 2005, Ms. Constand told her mother that she had been sexually assaulted by Cosby a year earlier. They contacted the police which declined to bring charges against Cosby, stating that there wasn’t enough evidence to do so.
Later that year, Ms. Constand filed a civil suit against Cosby. He agreed to pay her $3.38 million to settle the suit out of court. Both parties signed a non-disclosure agreement. In July 2015, a judge released parts of Cosby’s deposition. In this deposition, Cosby admitted to using Quaaludes, a sedative drug, to obtain sex with women. The criminal investigation was then reopened.