Bill Cosby Verdict Draws Tears of Joy, Sense of Relief from Accusers and Survivors; ‘we’re All Vindicated’

By Rachel Desantis, Nicole Bitette, Nancy Dillon
New York Daily News
April 26, 2018

http://beta.nydailynews.com/news/national/bill-cosby-verdict-draws-tears-joy-sense-relief-article-1.3956493

His conviction was for sexually assaulting Andrea Constand — but to Bill Cosby's many accusers, it felt like collective justice.

"It's just wonderful. I feel like every one of us has been vindicated. I'm in tears," accuser Sunni Welles told the Daily News after hearing Thursday that a Pennsylvania jury found the fallen funnyman guilty of all three counts of aggravated indecent assault.

"I'm just so thrilled he's likely going to spend some time in jail. I don't even care if it's only a short sentence. He just needs to go to jail," she said.

Welles stepped forward in 2015 with a harrowing account of abuse that echoed Constand's claim she was drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby in his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004.

She recalled meeting Cosby in the mid-1960s through her mom, a story editor at Paramount Studios when Cosby was working on "I Spy."

Bill Cosby’s accusers expressed a sense of relief that their attacker had finally gotten his due. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

Welles said Cosby offered to help mentor her as a young jazz singer and served her a soda that caused her vision to blur. She recalled waking up naked in a room, feeling as though she had sex. She was 17.

"God bless Andrea for going forward with this case and not being scared. We're all vindicated, oh my God, after 50 years for me. This is fantastic."

Beth Ferrier, a former model who says Cosby drugged and assaulted her in the 1980s, said the verdict was a welcome relief after Cosby's first trial ended with a deadlocked jury last June.

"Boom, justice is served," she told The News.

Ferrier was one of the original Jane Doe witnesses who agreed to testify for Constand during her 2005 civil suit.

"It's been a long, hard haul. But now we have it. Now we have him. And they can't take that away from us," she said. "He deserves a full 30 years, if that's possible. He did all of those things. Those women told the truth."

Ferrier said she'd like to see the judge set up a sentencing hearing where all of Cosby's accusers are invited to speak.

She proposed something similar to the sentencing hearing recently held for Dr. Larry Nassar, the convicted pedophile doctor who allegedly sexually assaulted scores of young gymnasts including several Olympic gold medalists.

"I would like to see all of us have the chance to be together and read our statements to him. Women's lives matter. He took advantage of all 62 of us and took a piece of our innocence. He determined how our lives with men would be after him. Our ability to trust was totally disrupted," Ferrier said.

"I am overwhelmed with joy, relief and gratitude," fellow accuser Janice Baker-Kinney, who says Cosby knocked her out with pills and raped her in 1982, wrote in a statement Thursday.

She said the "toxic chain of silence" is now broken.

"May this verdict open the floodgates to those who have been hiding their shame for far too long and give them the courage to come forward," she added.

Lili Bernard, who accused Cosby of drugging and raping her in the early '90s, when she was a guest star on "The Cosby Show," left the courthouse visibly emotional.

"I feel like I'm dreaming. I feel like my faith in humanity is restored," she said. "This is a victory not just for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not just for the victim in the case Andrea Constand, not just for the 62 of us publicly known survivors of Bill Cosby's drug-facilitated crimes against women... It's a victory for womanhood. I thank the jury so much for positioning themselves on the right side of history. I just want to hug them."

Bernard later told CNN that she credited the #MeToo movement with helping bring Cosby to justice after the trial last June ended in a mistrial.

"If it weren't for the #MeToo movement I don't believe that society in general would have made this tremendous shift towards believing women and what this verdict has shown is that finally the justice system is catching up to modern culture, that women's voices are being believed."

She said Cosby deserved to go straight to prison.

"He should be treated like any other common, depraved, lying, coward serial rapist," she said. "He should go straight into the slammer where he belongs."

Another Cosby accuser, Patricia Steuer, who first said in 2005 that the star sexually assaulted her in 1979, shared some of Bernard's initial joy.

"I'm stunned. This is not something I expected in my lifetime and I'm also elated," she told CNN. "When I came forward in 2005, I thought I was the only one, until Andrea Constand tried to have him charged the first time, so I was Jane Doe No. 4 in the original 13 Jane Does. And I can't tell you how amazing it was to know that I was not alone anymore after 25 years of living with this."

Attorney Lisa Bloom, whose client Janice Dickinson testified earlier this month that Cosby raped her in 1982, took to Twitter to commend all the women who shared their stories.

"The day has come. Justice delayed, but justice delivered," she said.

Actor Terry Crews, who publicly accused a top Hollywood agent of groping his genitals at a party last year, tweeted: "ACCOUNTABILITY."

"This is the only way things will change," the "Everybody Hates Chris" star added.

Harvey Weinstein accuser Rose McGowan, a vocal critic of both Weinstein and Hollywood's complicity with his alleged crimes, reacted with a simple tweet.

"Cosby is guilty. I'm sorry if you loved a lie. His victims can now exhale. Thank you judge and jury. Thank you society for waking up," she wrote.