For the few men (and women) in here who questioned why they stayed silent...
Ex-Supermodel Beverly Johnston offers why she didn't...
Link:
Bill Cosby Drugged Me. This Is My Story. By Beverly Johnson
"..As I thought of going public with what follows, a voice in my head kept whispering, “Black men have enough enemies out there already, they certainly don’t need someone like you, an African American with a familiar face and a famous name, fanning the flames.”....
- The 62-year-old businesswoman told Vanity Fair that the attack took place at the TV star's New York brownstone when she visited his home to read through lines for her part on The Cosby Show in the mid-80s
- Ms Johnson ate a light dinner with the star before he insisted that she have a coffee from his expensive espresso-maker.
- After initially refusing, the model felt pressured and took a few sips of a cappuccino he made for her.
- Ms Johnson claimed instantly she knew the drink had been drugged...
She wrote: 'My head became woozy, my speech became slurred, and the room began to spin nonstop'...
As I felt my body go completely limp, my brain switched into automatic-survival mode.
That meant making sure Cosby understood that I knew exactly what was happening at that very moment."
-Cosby grabbed her. The model described how she then began repeatedly calling Cosby a 'motherfucker'
She told him: 'You are a motherfucker, aren’t you?', according to the detailed Vanity Fair account, published on Thursday. She repeatedly kept cursing at Cosby.
The TV star appeared angry, she claimed, then grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down stairs with force before pulling her out into the street and dumping her in a taxi.
Ms Johnson said that it took several days for the effects of the drug to wear off and that when they did, she called Cosby's number to confront him.
Instead of the comedian, his wife Camille answered the phone and told her that it was too late for her husband to take the call and she should call back.
She never did.
'At a certain moment it became clear that I would be fighting a losing battle with a powerful man so callous he not only drugged me, but he also gave me the number to the bedroom he shared with his wife,' Ms Johnson wrote in the magazine.
'In the end, just like the other women, I had too much to lose to go after Bill Cosby.'
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Beverly said that the current racial climate in the U.S. and the cases of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner remained in her mind, even as she saw others come forward to claim that they had been attacked by Bill Cosby.
Something clicked. 'I couldn’t sit back and watch the other women be vilified and shamed for something I knew was true,' Ms Johnson told Vanity Fair.
In the article, she also addressed why she had not included the Cosby allegations in her memoir published last year.
Ms Johnson said she feared a 'he-said/she-said' scenario but now felt the time was right to come forward. She also said that she no longer feared damaging the African-American community by making her allegations against Cosby.
She added:
'He brought this on himself when he decided he had the right to have his way with who knows how many women over the last four decades.'
