Former Supermodel Janice Dickinson Just Gave Powerful Testimony Against Bill Cosby
Reality TV star and former supermodel Janice Dickinson took the stand before a jury in Pennsylvania on Thursday on the fourth day of comedian Bill Cosby‘s retrial on three counts of aggravated indecent assault. (The first trial was declared a mistrial last summer after a jury failed to reach a verdict.)
On the stand, Dickinson described an incident in which she alleges comedian Bill Cosby raped her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982.
Dickinson, who is now 63, has spoken publicly about her allegations against Cosby in the past, saying that he drugged and raped her when she was 27 years old. According to The New York Times, Dickinson described what she remembered from that encounter to the jury, claiming that Cosby sexually assaulted her after giving her a pill that she believed to be for menstrual cramps. “He smelled like cigar and espresso and his body odor,” she described.
According to CNN, Dickinson said she passed out and woke up feeling sore. On the stand, she said she confronted Cosby and told him, “Do you want to explain what happened last night, because that wasn’t cool.” CNN reports she said in her testimony, “I wanted to hit him; I wanted to punch him in the face.”
The New York Times reports that Cosby’s defense attorney Tom Mesereau cross-examined Dickinson and asked about passages from her 2002 book, which don’t include details about the alleged assault. “You told a tale to the jury today that is completely different from the book,” he said, according to The New York Times. “You made things up to get a paycheck.”
Dickinson testified that her publishers advised her to leave the assault out for legal reasons, explaining, “You take poetic license in what you do. Today I am on a sworn Bible.”
Dickinson is one of the most high-profile women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault; 35 women previously shared stories with New York magazine in 2015. The charges in this current trial were brought by a woman named Andrea Constand, who says Cosby drugged and assaulted her in January 2004. Several media outlets have noted that unlike the first trial, the retrial has started in a post-#metoo environment, as the country reckons with widespread accusations of sexual assault in Hollywood.