“Right - just wondering though why now?”
Celebrity rapists know they can rely upon the fact celebrities are at risk of false rape charges and the public will usually give the celebrity the benefit of the doubt whether or not the celebrity really is a rapist. The rapist then uses that confidence to intimidate and threaten the rape victim to remain silent or face bodily harm and/or ruination of personal reputation and finances.
As these articles about Bill Cosby so ably demonstrate, there are still strong prejudices, especially by males, that the woman must be a liar in this circumstance. Yet, how many people, especially men, have ever stopped to consider how they would feel if they found themselves in similar circumstances; i.e. everybody sitting in judgment about your actions and failure to defend yourself?
I ran into a comparable situation as a university student. I was assigned to be the university’s host for an international diplomat attending an official conference. When I delivered this diplomat to his hotel room he turned on me like a Jeckyll and Hyde personality and demanded that I serve as his pimp and immediately deliver some girls and boys, adult and underage, to his room for some sexual entertainment or face certain physical threats from him. Knowing his diplomatic passport gave him diplomatic immunity, I backed out of there while not saying a word in response to the attempted intimidation. It was obviously a situation which came down to who would be believed if it came to a confrontation.
As soon as I left the hotel I telephoned the professor who was the sponsor and my supervisor for this event at the university. I reported to him exactly what happened and told him I wasn’t having anything further to do with this person. The professor said he understood and said I did the right thing by reporting it to him and let him handle the problem diplomatically. A couple of weeks after the event was finished, I was summoned to the office of a visiting laureate professor from the diplomat’s own home nation. I had never seen or heard of this professor before. After being ushered into his office, he began to unleash a torrent of verbal abuse against me and described how he was going to ruin my reputation and run me out of the university. To avoid giving him an opportunity to claim I said anything improper to him, I kept my mouth shut and left his office without saying one word.
In the following weeks and months he made good on his promise to retaliate for my reporting the attempted sexual misconduct of the diplomat. I was forced out of the university when they started plastering my vehicle with university parking tickets and hundreds of dollars of fines even though my car was parked off campus on the private property of a family friend well beyond their university jurisdiction. Books returned to the university library on time and in original condition suddenly all started disappearing with thousands of dollars in late fees, fines, and replacement costs being levied against me. Years later the same books were found on the library’s book shelves in original condition. The library manager smiled as he refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing and refused again to cancel the levied fines and costs. Somebody tampered with my car’s transmission and destroyed it, so I couldn’t meet a class schedule. And so it went until I could not afford to stay in school at that university any further.
Don’t discount these women and their allegations. These criminals can and do ruin people’s lives so long as the public unquestioningly protects their celebrity and privileged status.
I wonder where 0bama’s ex-gf’s or intimate bf’s are?
I am so sick and tired of liars in this country. If even some of the women are liars that is awful. If even some of the women are telling the truth while Cosby lies, that is horrible.
Lying to the public is one thing we can count on these days.
Bearing false witness- one of the big ten. That goes for Cosby calling truthful women liars and women who may be lying about Cosby to smear him. It is poisonous to the soul of the individuals and to our Nation’s culture.