Over the last year, the reports about Bill Cosby’s alleged sexual assaults have been relentless.
Just last week, the New York Times released a bombshell court deposition revealing how Cosby used sedative drugs in his sexual pursuit of young women.
In total, more than 40 women have come forward to accuse Cosby of sexual assault.
Add another story to the list.
On Sunday night, New York Magazine released a stunning cover story, collecting the accounts of 35 of Cosby’s accusers to paint a picture of Cosby as an unrepentant, manipulative sexual predator. The cover image is particularly striking. It features all 35 women seated in a row, with an empty 36th chair for the victims that have yet to come forward.
35 women speak about being assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the culture that wouldn't listen: http://t.co/H5dss5F2F4 pic.twitter.com/RCF0BWBrxA
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) July 27, 2015
The story itself features a combination of video, photos, individual testimonies and a narrative tying it together. The accounts are harrowing in their detail and similarity. Each woman was interviewed separately.
One account, from Patricia Leary Steuer, a former training and development specialist who encountered Cosby in the late 1970s, is emblematic of the accounts:
Then-22-year-old Steuer worked at the University of Massachusetts and met Cosby there after he gave a lecture in 1978. He offered to mentor Steuer as she pursued a singing career. Cosby later invited her to a dinner party at his Massachusetts home. When Steuer got there, the table was set for just two people. Cosby handed Steuer a drink and insisted she perform an improv exercise, pretending she was a queen with oatmeal covering her face. She began to feel woozy. Her next memory is of Cosby standing above her — her clothes off — in a bathrobe. He handed her a toothbrush, telling her she had gotten sick and passed out in his guestroom. Steuer went home, still unsure of what actually happened to her. Cosby kept in touch, arranging for acting lessons and a gym membership for her. He invited Steuer to events, but nothing more occurred until he asked her to join him in Atlantic City. In the evening, she met him in his suite, where he handed her two large pills and a glass of Champagne. The next morning, she woke up naked in one of the rooms of his suite. Steuer joined on as a Jane Doe in the 2005 Andrea Constand lawsuit; she had initially wanted a pseudonym in New York, but when the news broke that Cosby admitted in depositions that he’d given women quaaludes, she sent an email saying that protection wasn’t necessary. “He can no longer claim that we are lying,” she wrote.
As reported by Business Insider