witness woman bill cosby While behind bars – only for him to reverse his sentence on a technicality in June – he spoke out about his bad feeling upon being released and his anger at the court’s decision.
48-year-old Andrea Konstand told the new York Times, in an interview to promote her new memoir, she was shocked when she was told that Cosby’s sentence had been overturned.
‘I had a lump in my throat,’ she said.
‘I really felt like they were letting a hunter loose and it made me sick.’
Andrea Constand (right), who accused Bill Cosby of 2004 sexual assault, writes a memoir about the encounter and the criminal case that followed
Constand is seen hugging his supporters outside the Norristown, Pennsylvania courtroom in April 2018
Cosby, after spending nearly three years in prison, was freed in June, when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 sentence—a conviction after two trials, on charges filed by Constand, one at Temple University in Philadelphia. Former Canadian basketball coach.
The court found that Cosby had relied on a written promise from the district attorney that he would never be charged for giving objectionable testimony in Constand’s civil trial—only to use it against him in two subsequent criminal trials. for.
In that civil lawsuit, Cosby paid Constand $3.8 million.
Prosecutors in suburban Philadelphia will have to decide this month whether to appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court.
Cosby recently turned 84, and the statute of limitations for all other accused has expired—though he faces another civil trial related to the 1974 charge.
Constand began writing her memoir, published Tuesday, dealing with the lasting trauma from the 2004 encounter. She fell ill with COVID while writing this, and compared the illness to sitting on an elephant’s chest.
She told the newspaper, ‘The healer in me knew I had to dive into everything again and really try to remember and it was really cold for me.
Trauma is not wired for you to remember. It is wired to forget you.’
Constand, who lives quietly north of Toronto and runs a massage therapy business, said she wants to share her lessons with others.
She said, “I thought it was important to write a story for other survivors who also had stories.”
‘I wanted to be a symbol of hope for them. That their stories matter. And their stories are important.’
Bill Cosby, who was released from prison in June at the age of 84, is now trying to rebuild his reputation. He is portrayed as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable during The Cosby Show era.
She admitted that when she was told of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, she was furious that she would be back on the streets.
She said she received phone calls and messages from other women who accused Cosby, explaining: ‘They were devastated, they were very angry.’
But Konstand said he had to be philosophical.
“After a few deep breaths, I figured it wasn’t my problem,” she said.
‘Now this made me feel ashamed of the Supreme Court. It’s not on me anymore.’
She said: ‘I hope this doesn’t deter anyone.
‘I hope people still find their voices. I hope they don’t see their independence as a reason not to come forward. On the contrary, I hope she feels that if Andrea can do it, so can I.
‘There were a lot of victories along the way.
‘Society noted.’
Constand is pictured as a basketball player in Toronto in 1987 – where she is from, and now lives
Constand has now decided to tell her story in a memoir titled ‘The Moment’ on Tuesday.
Of overturning the verdict, she writes, “Now that I have taken another strange turn in this long saga, I realize that I cannot reverse the (Pennsylvania) Supreme Court’s decision.”
‘life is unpredictable. A lot is out of our control.
‘In the end, happiness is what matters and I am determined to live a happy, purposeful life.’
Constand said he was saddened that a ‘hunter’ had been released from prison
She and Cosby first crossed paths at Temple University in Philadelphia, where Constand, who played professional basketball in Europe, worked for the women’s basketball team and was a trustee and noted alumnus.
Cosby said in a statement that he first fell in love with Constand at the gym. Constand was half his age and dated women.
She writes, ‘I knew who he was, but I had never seen The Cosby Show and had no idea what a big celebrity he was.
However, she noted on campus: ‘Her calls were to be returned immediately, her interest in our new locker room was met with an offer to visit the facility immediately.’
Yet she found him ‘simple and friendly’.
She recounts the friendship and advice with which she admits she missed the warning signs, when Cosby proceeds to what her lawyers later call evidence of an ongoing, consensual relationship.
Their conversation included a shared interest in health and holistic medicine, which he said led him to take the pills offered one night in January 2004, believing they were herbal products.
He soon found his body numb.
‘The inability to control my own body was utterly terrifying. At six feet, I’m the opposite of short. … I had never before, as a child, felt physically intimidated by anyone or anything. I was an athlete,’ she writes.
‘But I no longer had control over my organs.’
Constand ended the 2017 trial, which ended in a stalemate, and the 2018 retrial, which ultimately convicted him.
Constand gave steady, emotional testimony at his first trial in 2017, which ended in a deadlock, and the second trial in 2018, when the jury convicted Cosby of drugging and infringing.
The sentence was secured after five other women were called by prosecutors for sharing similar stories of alleged drugging and sexual assaults by Cosby. He denied their claims.
Even in the midst of a barrage of hostile interrogations from the defense, he refused to rattle.
And even after she emerged victorious on April 26, 2018, when Cosby was convicted and a crowd of cameras clicked on her, she remained silent outside the courtroom.
But she offers a glimpse of her feelings in describing a secret meeting with jurors after Cosby’s sentence falls.
‘ As we hugged, I heard the same words over and over: ‘We always believed in you, Andrea.’
‘Of course their decision told me they came to the conclusion that my testimony was credible.
She writes, ‘But there was something in hearing the words… that took my breath away.’
Constand never wavered in 2015 when she was asked to put her life on hold for a possible trial when the testimony of Cosby’s statement became public after a court battle by the Associated Press.
And she agreed to do it again after the initial mistrial.
As she awaits the jury’s decision in 2018, she writes: ‘The outcome of the trial seemed strangely insignificant.
‘It seemed that the world had become more important in a way again.’
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