Andrea Constand told a detective in 2005 that she gave Bill
Cosby a sweater as a present during months after she claimed the comedian
sexually assaulted her.
Katharine Hart, a
former detective for the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office,
testified at a preliminary hearing in the criminal case against Cosby in court
on Tuesday. A judge ruled that the sexual assault case against Cosby will move
forward. If convicted, the 78-year-old comedian could face as much as 10 years
in prison.
Constand claims that
Cosby sexually assaulted her inside his Philadelphia home in January 2004. A
year later, she was interviewed by Hart where she laid out what she said happened
between her and Cosby. (Hart read mostly from a transcript in court that
Constand reviewed and edited following the interview.)
After testifying for
the prosecution, Hart was cross-examined by Cosby’s attorney, Brian McMonagle.
His strategy is simple: discredit Constand by questioning her behavior after
the alleged rape.
“Is it the case that
[Constand] told you she brought her family to his show, and brought him a
present, a sweater?” McMonagle asked Hart as he directed her to that portion of
Constand’s transcript.
“Yes,” Hart replied.
McMonagle then moved to
undercut Constand by contrasting her account of what happened immediately prior
to the alleged assault that she first gave to police in Canada before she spoke
to American authorities.
Constand, who was
living in Toronto when she first reported Cosby to police in January 2005, told
them that Cosby had “taken her out to dinner and out in [Philadelphia’s]
Chinatown,” according to a police report read in court. Constand later told
Hart, according to the transcript, that she had driven herself to Cosby’s home.
The prosecution
objected to McMonagle’s questions as being irrelevant to whether or not
Constand was assaulted.
No matter how they got
to his home, Constand recalled telling Cosby she did not feel well soon after
they arrived. Constand said that’s when Cosby briefly left the room they were
in and returned with blue pills, which he said were “herbal” and would “make
you feel good, make you relax.”
“I said to him that I
trust him,” Constand said, according to Hart, and she swallowed the pills.
Cosby insisted she try the wine he’d poured for her, Constand said, though
she’d declined because she said had not eaten.
“OK, you can drink it
or you can nurse it,” Cosby told her, according to the interview transcript.
Constand told
detectives that she began to feel dizzy and afraid soon after ingesting the
pills.
“I said to him ‘I can’t
even see, Mr. Cosby,” Hart recounted Constand as saying.
“I’m going to lay you
down on the couch and let you relax,” Cosby said, according to the interview.
Constand told Hart she
lay on the couch, unable to move or open her eyes.
“I wasn’t aware of any
sounds. I don’t know where Mr. Cosby went,” Hart said Constand recalled.
Then Constand said she
was very much aware of Cosby when he put his hands on her breasts and his
fingers inside her vagina. Constand told Hart that Cosby lay behind her on the
couch and reached into her pants from behind. Constand said Cosby took her
right hand and placed on his penis, which was erect.
Constand says she fell
asleep and found her shirt pulled up and her bra backwards when she woke up at
4 a.m.
“The snap was in the
front not the back — I couldn’t have done that myself if I wanted to,” Constand
said, according to Hart. Cosby then gave Constand her a mixed-berry muffin and
tea before she left, she recalled.
McMonagle said he
objected to Hart’s testimony in its entirety, arguing it was hearsay and that
the accuser herself, Constand, should be required to appear before the court
and “answer questions like: ‘Why did you wait so long to report?’”
Judge Elizabeth A.
McHugh agreed with the prosecution that she could not consider questions of
credibility during the preliminary hearing and dismissed McMonagle’s attempt to
compel Constand to take the stand on Tuesday morning.
Constand met Cosby at
Temple University, where she was the director of the women’s basketball team
and he was a prominent booster for the university.
Following Constand’s
report to authorities in 2005, Montgomery County D.A. Bruce Castor said he
found insufficient evidence to corroborate her story and indict Cosby. Ten
years later, however, D.A. Kevin Steele reopened the case and indicted Cosby
thanks in part to his deposition in a civil trial brought by Constand.
In the deposition, Cosby
admitted giving other women quaaludes before sex. (Cosby said this sex was
consensual; several dozen women have said it was not.) A judge unsealed the
transcript said last year because Cosby had “voluntarily narrowed the zone of
privacy” he was entitled by by donning “the mantle of public moralist,” the
judge wrote. Constand and Cosby settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of
money.
