Bill Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault yesterday (26 April 2018). When I initially heard this, I was emotionally torn by the news. Thinking back, I remember watching videos of Bill Cosby talking about the importance of education for Black people. I remember of how he broke color barriers on TV. And who can forget the television shows he was responsible for: Fat Albert, The Cosby Show, and A Different World. The Cosby Show was really the first TV show that showed me that it was possible for to be successful and for the kids to be normal kids with normal kid problems. A Different World made going to college, not just college but an HBCU cool. I lived down the street from one HBCU and behind another HBCU. I had no desire to go to either of them but my senior year in high school I was accepted to an HBCU and it was one of the proudest moments of my life. Watching A Different World many of my friends wanted that college experience. We didn’t have a depiction of what college life would be like for us.
Bill Cosby was many things in his lifetime. He was a comedian, an actor, an activist, a philanthropist, a husband, a father, a mentor, and a rapist. Many may disagree but no matter how many years have passed from the time he committed such a heinous act to when the woman reported the act doesn’t make the act any less reprehensible. Does it matter if the woman takes a drug willingly prior to him having non-consensual sex with her? It doesn’t, it’s still rape or sexual assault.
What’s pretty disheartening is there some that are fixated on the fact that some women waited 30 and 40 years before they came forward. Yes, I know this is a long time to hold on to something like a sexual assault, but just because a woman doesn’t come forward right away doesn’t mean she’s making it up. I personally know a woman who has been sexually assaulted more than 30 years ago and she never went to the authorities. She never said anything for the same reason that is being thrown out there now, people are saying these women are lying, these women wanted to have sex with Bill Cosby and now are saying they were raped, these women wanted it. This is the reason why a lot of women don’t report rape as it is.
Women aren’t believed.
Do you know how hard it is for a woman who has been raped to go to the police (a male dominated profession) and report that she’s been raped? Then she has to go get a rape kit, and essentially be violated again just to determine if she was raped and to capture any of the rapist’s DNA. And when the rapist is caught for her to sit on the stand and relive that day again while looking in the rapist face. Do you know how traumatic that is? Do you know how that woman feel to be judged by everyone who said it was how she was dressed or she had too much to drink or how she led him on? No woman should ever have to feel like that whether it was 30 minutes after a rape or 30 years after a rape. Would you feel the same way if these women that were the minors Bill Cosby worked with on The Cosby show? Did you feel this same way about Larry Nassar? Did you feel the same way about Jerry Sandusky? What about Harvey Weintein? They all did the same thing. They all deserve the same fate. We have to be able to separate Bill Cosby from Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable. His legacy will be around forever, but we have to accept that Bill Cosby is a flawed human being and he is also rapist. ~o.flows.up