In case you missed it, Bill Cosby’s trial for sexually assaulting former Temple University assistant women’s basketball coach Andrea Constand in 2004 ended in a mistrial last weekend. After 52 hours of deliberations, jurors revealed they were unable to reach a verdict.
For much of the last week, the worst spectacle in the aftermath of the trial was Cosby’s announcement that he wanted to help young men avoid sexual assault allegations. No, this isn’t snark. The Young Turks discussed it on Friday.
This is coming from a guy who thought it was even remotely acceptable to joke about spiking a woman’s drink. Even if Cosby isn’t a rapist, that joke proved that he is a depraved and debauched jerk who has no business lecturing anyone about anything.
But as the weekend began, we got wind of something that may be even worse. One of the jurors in the case thinks Constand brought whatever happened on herself.
The Philadelphia Inquirer got in touch with one of the jurors who had been bused in from Pittsburgh for the trial. Although he didn’t disclose how he voted, he believed Cosby’s claim that any sexual contact between Constand and himself was consensual. He didn’t think Cosby should be retried, saying that he had “paid dearly” for the allegations against him with the loss of his reputation.
Conversely, he let it be known that he wasn’t impressed with Constand, and believed her mother “forced all this” by encouraging her to report the assault in 2005. Then things really went off the deep end. He not only accused Constand of lying, but claimed she deserved what she got by dressing too provocatively.
“She was well-coached. Let’s face it: She went up to his house with a bare midriff and incense and bath salts. What the heck?”
According to WPXI in Pittsburgh, who also spoke with the juror, it looked like he conflated a number of separate visits to Cosby’s house. On an earlier visit, Constand had given him incense. On another, she’d given him bath salts as a favor to a friend. On the night Constand says that Cosby raped her, she came to ask for help in writing her resignation letter.
The juror also found it hard to believe that Constand would turn around and accuse Cosby of raping her when she went to his house of his own free will, alone. Additionally, he recalled that Constand had brought him gifts on a number of occasions.
However, the minute he wagged his finger at Constand for wearing a shirt with a bare midriff, he might as well have sounded like a Peanuts adult. For all intents and purposes, he was saying that Constand was asking for it. Needless to say, this particularly degrading case of victim blaming hasn’t played well on Twitter.
NOPE. Fashion choices do not, and never will = consent. https://t.co/6O6Ujlz0vY
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) June 23, 2017
"I was raped."
"Yes, but what were you wearing?" https://t.co/YqhfjOYuW3— NastyWomenofNPS (@NastyWomenofNPS) June 23, 2017
https://twitter.com/bodaciousdudett/status/878664179938361345
Why do we need to teach consent? Because people think "a bare midriff" is consent. https://t.co/WbXWJIqaYZ
— T Karney (@pecunium) June 23, 2017
Rape culture at work…"bare midriff": Cosby juror says he didn't believe 'well-coached' Constand https://t.co/NPRpuquBdp via @phillydotcom
— Dr. Tracy Everbach (@TracyEverbach) June 23, 2017
If that wasn’t enough, this juror harrumphed that many of the women who have come forward to say Cosby assaulted them over the years are lying. He thought that at least half of them “jumped on the bandwagon” to attack him. So let’s see if we’ve got this right. We’re talking about women whose allegations date back as far as the 1960s. If you seriously believe that they all came together to cobble together nearly identical stories, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
One of those accusers, former model and current teacher Lise Lotte Lublin, believes this case is a textbook example of why many rape victims don’t come forward. I’d go one better. Victims don’t come forward because they fear that they will be effectively put on trial. There is something fundamentally wrong when this is even remotely possible in this country.
(featured image courtesy Nunezart, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
