Bill Cosby

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

As I'm sure you know, an extremely high number of these date rape cases go unreported for a number of reasons. The victims often times feel that they are partly to blame. These cases are obviously different from a stranger grabbing a woman on a street and raping them. I think those cases are usually reported a much higher percentage of the time.

Anyway, I don't know what the answer is. Many women in these cases would just rather pretend that the incident never happened and forget about it. That is their choice. But I think it is also their choice if they decide they want to talk about it, even if it isn't until many years later. I agree with you that if they want to press charges then they better report it immediately. The law agrees also. That is why we have statute of limitations. But in terms of a person simply telling their story, they can do that whenever they feel like it. If you want to judge these women for waiting or if you want to accuse them of lying, that is your prerogative.

I heart you for this comment. A high school friend of mine was raped (this was way back in the late 1980s)- she was passed out asleep at a friend's house after drinking too much and a friend (or so we thought) assaulted her (she was also a virgin; she woke up from the pain of the assault). When she told our circle of friends, and the girls got upset, our male friends patiently mansplained to all of us that it wasn't really rape because, let's face it, she acted really slutty when she was drunk, so what did you expect? And so, she never reported it, and tried to pretend it didn't happen and he went on to get married and now has a daughter, I hear (I wonder if he hopes she'll date a guy just like her dear old dad), and my friend was really, really, affected by this; it's screwed up her life for many years now.

And this was just some loser ******* who hung out with us. Had it been someone who could make or break her career, too? Yeesh.

Look at how horrifically all these colleges and universities have handled sexual assault accusations. Women don't talk about sexual assault because they fear that inevitably, they get blamed for it. And they often do.

As you say, these women have NOTHING to gain by coming forward now. I guess maybe they're just not afraid anymore. For that matter, look at the security guy (story in the NY Daily News this weekend) who says he was the one in charge of paying off the women Cosby was involved with. He knew this was going on, too, and never said anything:

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...icle-1.2020464

And this doesn't take away from Cosby's immense talent, or his groundbreaking place in television history. I have fond memories of my elementary school teacher bringing in LPs of his comedy routines and playing them for the class and us just losing our marbles because we were laughing so hard. But really talented people are not necessarily nice people, too, and too much time spent being rich and powerful can make a person forget how to be human. Because the rules don't apply to you anymore, and for decades, they didn't apply to Cosby. But now he's less powerful and so the rules are starting to come back to bite him. Bryan Singer was in the spotlight a while ago for allegedly doing the same thing (minus the drugging, I think) to young male actors; once he's not churning out blockbusters anymore, those stories will probably come back again. But right now he's too powerful.