On cross-examination, Cosby’s chief accuser denies romance before alleged assault

Andrea Constand took to the witness stand in Montgomery County Courthouse in Pennsylvania on Tuesday (06Jun17), the second day of Cosby’s trial, to share her recollections of the night the now-disgraced comedian is said to have drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home. “I wasn’t able to (stop him from penetrating me)”.

“I was mistaken”, she said, unflustered. Cosby is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand a.

Aggravated indecent assault carries a potential maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

And what Constand called “suggestive” contact when she said Cosby on one occasion touched her thigh and on another tried to unbutton her trousers, she called “sexual” contact in her statement to the police, Agrusa pointed out.

Cosby’s defense team attempted to discredit Constand’s story.

Constand confirmed this was true, but said that at the time she made the claim, she had been trying to access her phone records from Temple University, her employer, to pin down when the alleged assault occurred. At his home one evening in 2004, he pressed her to take three blue pills, which he said were herbal and would help her relax, she said. They’re your friends; they’ll take the edge off’.

“I could see a bottle of lotion on the corner of the nightstand”, Johnson said. Cosby leaned in to listen, whispered to his lawyer and shook his head. Her deposition is still sealed from that lawsuit. The celebrity has been accused by more than 50 women of sexual abuse after drugging them.

For hours, Agrusa relentlessly questioned Constand who never once wavered.

Phone records showed Constand called Cosby 53 times between January 20, 2004, days after the incident, and March 31, 2004, when she left Temple University, including twice on Valentine’s Day.

Pulliam has defended him in the past and in an interview with Access Hollywood, she told the public to hold their judgment.

“He was a Temple friend, somebody I trusted, a mentor and somewhat of an older figure to me”, Constand testified.

The 75-year-old attorney says she was baffled because she thought the phone was turned off.

Cosby led her to a couch, where she passed out, she said. “I wanted guidance and I wanted to protect myself”, Constand explained.

She initially said she went to Cosby’s house and was assaulted after a dinner out with other people.

“It had more to do with business than it did with me personally”, she said.

“It was a very big burden on me, but”. “As an advocate for women and with my nonprofit the Kamp Kizzy Foundation, which is all about empowerment, self esteem for girls, I don’t take these charges lightly”.

Agrusa resumed grilling Constand on Wednesday, asserting that Constand’s account in court differed from what she told authorities in 2005, giving a different date for the encounter with Cosby than she had originally reported.

The court also heard from the mother of another one of Cosby’s alleged victims, who corroborated her daughter’s testimony of being assaulted by the comedian in 1996.

Prosecutors on Monday opened the trial with a woman who broke down in tears as she testified that the comedian had violated her, eight years earlier, at a hotel bungalow in Los Angeles.

Victoria Valentino is one of several Cosby accusers attending the trial.

He says she told him and two other investigators that she felt Cosby place “something foreign” in her genitals but wasn’t specific.

She said she woke up the next morning, and quietly went to work.

Some 60 women have come forward to say Cosby sexually violated them, all but destroying his nice-guy image, but the statute of limitations for prosecution had run out in almost every case.

She said that after he assaulted her, she felt humiliated. “He didn’t want that”, Sewell said.