I just finished the biography of Bill Cosby by Mark Whitaker. The book shed a lot of light on the current controversy over recent accusations, some a few years back and some as old as forty years, that Cosby drugged women in order to have sex with them.
Whitaker draws this picture of Bill and Camille’s marriage. In 1984, he and his wife came to an agreement. It was time for him to grow up and to be the man he was as Cliff Huxtable in the new “The Bill Cosby Show.” Up till then, he was doing TV work in California while she stayed home with the kids in New York and later, Massachusetts. Hugh Hefner saw to it that Cosby always had a night of “respite.” And, charmer that he is, never seemed to lack in the “respite” department wherever he was when he was away from Camille.
Cosby came clean when a woman went public about an affair they’d had from which she claimed her child was his. He took financial responsibility for the child’s health, well being, and education even though he had his doubts about being the father. When a man who looked like her stepped forward claiming he was the true father, he and Cosby offered to have DNA tests to prove parenthood but the mother, Shawn Berkes, refused. The affair drew national attention in 2004 when Cosby won in criminal court against the daughter who was trying to extort $24,000,000 from him. The entertainer whose stock-in-trade was family values as the father in the Huxtable family and as a stand-up comedian in concerts all over the country was widely decried for his having been unfaithful to his wife. By then Camille was furious, writing an op-ed published in USA Today that she and Bill had long ago put behind them the immaturity involved and had a solid marriage.
Whitaker, in describing their life and times included another observation that spoke to the current allegations. Date rape was known about in the 1970s when a good share of the current allegations are said to have taken place. The women making their complaints in recent years could have known at the time about it and could have been heard by some police at the time because of that common knowledge. After all, Cosby is Black, and someone would have taken the allegations seriously at the time.
While no male truly understands, I have some idea of the reasons women who have been raped would not want to come forward. Having lived through that era, however, I saw how women were coming forward by the 1990s, some based on memories surfaced by psychological therapies (and some of those discovered to be based on “false memory syndrome”), some based on new found courage generated by feminism, and some seeking attention or financial settlements. This listing does not provide quantities under each category so please do not presume that I think the number of complaints of rape victims is smaller than those that were spurious. I can attest to the fact that among the complaints there were spurious ones. I just have insufficient data to say more than that.
In our denomination today, it seems that all a woman has to do to prove she was raped is to come forward and say it and name the pastor. Our denomination then goes through the motions of trial and appeal but the presumption is that the man is guilty and every church law process used is unrelentingly so.
In secular law, it seems that women still face the same barriors to fair treatment they have faced all these years. Who would believe them? How can they overcome the shame? Where can they find help, especially in small towns and on many college campuses? More and more go to emergency rooms and are tested. Here may be a new barrior: the testing agencies are not always very prompt in reporting out results and so some rape cases are never prosecuted.
Into this context come the allegations of the past forty years against Bill Cosby, and contrary to his taking responsibility for any of them as he did in the Berkes case, he has denied them.
The pattern among the allegations is pretty consistent. The women say that while they were with Cosby, they drank something, and later found themselves in a compromised position, remembering nothing, but sometimes claiming they had the residue of sex on them, and Cosby standing there, cool and distant, a monster.
No one knows for sure at this point what may have happened. In one of the most recent allegations, Cosby’s lawyer had records to prove he wasn’t where she said he was. In cases in the denomination to which I have had access, I saw two where women became copy cats or clearly were not truthful when several claimed sexual misconduct of the same pastor. So I am not intimidated by numbers bringing claims. I have seen where some women have projected behaviors of men with whom they had affairs onto the pastor who had tried to help them. I have seen some completely distort the facts to cover their own predatory action. I have seen some retaliate like scorned lovers when their advances were appropriately rebuffed.
Does that mean I disbelieve every allegation of a woman against a man? No! But like the old Norwegian who has seen everything, I am more likely to say, “Oh?” And then look at the facts. Studying many cases in our denomination, I was surprised at how many facts there were surrounding the allegations. There were enough that I could show many of the complaints were fabrications. If there are no facts beyond “he said/she said,” I look to see if it is plausible. In Cosby’s case, the “MO” is not plausible for the reasons cited above. The actors, men and women, in the TV Huxtable family who have been interviewed all found the accusations hard to believe. While that may persuade me for now until new facts are unearthed, that does not prove innocence. Neither does it prove guilt. Especially when Cosby’s millions could be at stake.
Finally, all I can see to be said is that sometimes where there is smoke, there may never have been a fire. We need more than smoke to presume that Cosby is guilty. While it is possible, we do not have enough facts to say it is even likely.
