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New York Magazine Cover: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Cosby

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Ratrat

Member
Well I would hope they did their "JOB" and ivestigate performing a rape kit and see his DNA was all over me. If they couldn't do that then I do not know what to say. You have to let it be known no way 35 - 40? women have this happen and he get away with it
Many were aspiring models/actresses. They would still have trouble getting people to believe it wasn't consential. Again, we have people TODAY still accusing them of lying.
 

Hackworth

Member
Well I would hope they did their "JOB" and ivestigate performing a rape kit and see his DNA was all over me
Oh you sweet summer child.

You're saying cops should actually use rape kits to gather evidence? Yeah, they probably should.
Often they don't.

Rape is one of the least correctly investigated crimes in the justice system, and that's assuming the victim is willing to talk and isn't scared of reprisal.
 

Ratrat

Member
well I get it but you have to be careful. am I wrong to assume these things happen at night? If a famous actor says i want to help you with your career meet me here at 8:00-9:00 pm would it be wrong to question why you guys can't meet in the day time? Am I wrong to make this assumption?
Not sure what you're even on about, but I'd tread carefully.
 

NEO0MJ

Member
And to think Cosby almost got away with this.

I think he already did, at least legally.

I heard many actresses have to sleep with well-known producers and directors to star in films, shows and plays. I know it isn't the same thing, but there's still plenty of disgusting stuff that people in power are getting away with.

It does seem that the practice is still going, regardless of gender. Whatever happened to those bryan singer accusations?
 
So whats stopping Cosby from reading all this and then packing all his shit up and fleeing to some country with no extradition treaty?
 

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
Could somebody from psychology GAF explain to me how the brain of such a person even works?

I'd really like to understand how the Bill Cosby persona and this serial rapist can occupy the same body and not cause it to explode?

People love to use the word psychopath, and I don't doubt it's an appropriate one, but to me it always seems to imply "there is no way to understand how such a mind operates, it is too alien", and I don't accept that.

I believe we need to understand the mechanism behind this better, if we ever want to be able to diagnose and treat these people at an early age, before they've become a menace to society.
 

Hackworth

Member
From what I've read, most of the time rape is about power. Rapists either want to impose their power on someone else or are so used to having power over other people that they don't care who they hurt.
 

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
isn't that just an actor though. I mean the bill cosby show is a guy acting a good dad loving husband.

But it was such a huge part of how he presented himself to the world. Not just on that show, but on countless others. The man also did lots of work with young children. I don't buy into the notion that people live on a one dimensional moral scale, and I don't think there was a man or woman that ever lived whose life and personality could be accurately summed up in a single sentence. We all contain within us multiple contradictions, some more (and harsher) than others obviously.

And since there must be at least some level of genetic tendency to develop certain undesirable personality traits, by learning more about how this manifests we should be able to improve the rate of diagnosis at an early enough age to prevent some of these people from reaching the point where they can hide it from society. It's the only way to put a stop to this.
 

lenovox1

Member
It does seem that the practice is still going, regardless of gender. Whatever happened to those bryan singer accusations?

On the flip side of this coin, that boy was dropped by his lawyers like a bag of boiling hot potatoes. Credibility issues started to roll in after it was discovered the the boy had already claimed in 2003 in a sworn deposition that Singer (and the others he was suing) was never involved in the mansion parties and sexual and physical assaults that he was accusing him of in his filing. But there was already a small thread on that months ago, to not derail this thread.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=864212&highlight=bryan+singer
 

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
agree with this on so many levels. Was just saying this to a co-worker the other day. This needs to be a priority ... mental health studies need to be taking more seriously

exactly! It's a big reason why I object to the popular use of terms such as "insane", "psychopath" etc. Because when most throw them around it seems like they actually mean: "this is such an extreme and unlikely abnormality that there's no point trying to understand or predict it, and it could never happen to me or anyone I know!"

And that attitude is not only non-constructive it's ignorant and dangerous. It spits in the face of future victims and simultaneously encourages people's natural irrational prejudices, which are almost always misguided, thereby creating even more innocent victims. It's burying your head in the sand, just like people in the middle ages must have thought that certain bacterial infections where a sign of being cursed by the devil.
 

NEO0MJ

Member
On the flip side of this coin, that boy was dropped by his lawyers like a bag of boiling hot potatoes. Credibility issues started to roll in after it was discovered the the boy had already claimed in 2003 in a sworn deposition that Singer (and the others he was suing) was never involved in the mansion parties and sexual and physical assaults that he was accusing him of in his filing. But there was already a small thread on that months ago, to not derail this thread.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=864212&highlight=bryan+singer

Thanks for the link.
 

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
The reality is we have a hard time in the worl but specifically this country having the tough conversations on topics that need to be dicussed. Everyone like to get emotional, point fingers, and make no progress at all. Going to be hard to make real change in the world.

You're right, and this is something all societies are guilty of, but it's time we grew up and collectively realized that people who commit heinous crimes aren't demons, just as people who perform wondrous acts of great merit aren't gods. Besides the dangers I already pointed out, it also has the unpleasant side effect of condemning the majority of us to a life of inaction and mediocrity.
 

jred2k

Member
exactly! It's a big reason why I object to the popular use of terms such as "insane", "psychopath" etc. Because when most throw them around it seems like they actually mean: "this is such an extreme and unlikely abnormality that there's no point trying to understand or predict it, and it could never happen to me or anyone I know!"

And that attitude is not only non-constructive it's ignorant and dangerous. It spits in the face of future victims and simultaneously encourages people's natural irrational prejudices, which are almost always misguided, thereby creating even more innocent victims. It's burying your head in the sand, just like people in the middle ages must have thought that certain bacterial infections where a sign of being cursed by the devil.

It's easy to rationalize shitty behavior if you want it bad enough. In his mind he probably thought that by taking them out, bringing them to hotels, and "letting" them be with a famous person he was doing them a favour.

I'm not too familiar with Cosby's public persona, he's usually ranting about the way young black men dress and act in public. He isn't talking about the importance of consent, so he might not feel that hypocritical. I don't think it's psychopathic, I think it's pretty naturally human. Cosby is obviously an extreme case, but I think you can compare it to how you can morally justify eating meat or speeding in your car. As long as you create a list of reasons why what you're doing is not so bad, or is natural it's easy to not feel guilty about it.
 

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
It's easy to rationalize shitty behavior if you want it bad enough. In his mind he probably thought that by taking them out, bringing them to hotels, and "letting" them be with a famous person he was doing them a favour.

I'm not too familiar with Cosby's public persona, he's usually ranting about the way young black men dress and act in public. He isn't talking about the importance of consent, so he might not feel that hypocritical. I don't think it's psychopathic, I think it's pretty naturally human. Cosby is obviously an extreme case, but I think you can compare it to how you can morally justify eating meat or speeding in your car. As long as you create a list of reasons why what you're doing is not so bad, or is natural it's easy to not feel guilty about it.

I agree that we all find ways to rationalize some of the less agreeable actions we perform. It's probably part of the mind's way of maintaining cognitive coherence as a survival mechanism. But most people also have enough empathy to be able to understand that how others really feel about the way we treat them and how we think they feel aren't the same thing. I'd say that anyone who isn't capable of making this distinction regularly should consider that a malfunction.
 
exactly! It's a big reason why I object to the popular use of terms such as "insane", "psychopath" etc. Because when most throw them around it seems like they actually mean: "this is such an extreme and unlikely abnormality that there's no point trying to understand or predict it, and it could never happen to me or anyone I know!"

And that attitude is not only non-constructive it's ignorant and dangerous. It spits in the face of future victims and simultaneously encourages people's natural irrational prejudices, which are almost always misguided, thereby creating even more innocent victims. It's burying your head in the sand, just like people in the middle ages must have thought that certain bacterial infections where a sign of being cursed by the devil.

Those are just labels to classify a set of symptoms and assign a diagnosis.

There are many, many very smart and skilled people around the world doing this research. The fact is that the mechanics of how a brain operates on a physical level is tricky and not a 100% complete picture, and thats to say nothing of the mind and the possible illusion that is a sense of self. Its only a more recent development that neuroscience and studies of the mind are working more in sync.

At this point psychologists could profile Cosby and neurologists could map the physical charqcteristics of his brain functions but the knowledge isnt there yet to link the two sets of data in a comprehensive way to get the hard answers you are looking for.
 

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
Those are just labels to classify a set of symptoms and assign a diagnosis.

There are many, many very smart and skilled people around the world doing this research. The fact is that the mechanics of how a brain operates on a physical level is tricky and not a 100% complete picture, and thats to say nothing of the mind and the possible illusion that is a sense of self. Its only a more recent development that neuroscience and studies of the mind are working more in sync.

At this point psychologists could profile Cosby and neurologists could map the physical charqcteristics of his brain functions but the knowledge isnt there yet to link the two sets of data in a comprehensive way to get the hard answers you are looking for.

Yet despite the very high level of complexity which you correctly point out, these labels seem to have a weird tendency to always become ingrained in our culture and eroded to the point of no recognition by popular (mis)use. Why is that?
Think about words such as "depression", "schizophrenia", "OCD", "ADD", "asperger's", "paranoid", "delusional", "maniac", "sociopath"... this list could go on for a long time...
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
I read every testimony they posted. At this point I'm wondering if there is even one young woman out there that he met that he didn't rape.
Yet it's crazy how similar each story is, despite being told independently. So many young women trusting him to help them break into the industry. But sometimes just plain random women too, like that journalist who asked him for an interview, or a waitress at a bar, or even a completely random woman who worked in a donut shop he happened to patronize. He acts all fatherly and kindly and no one would ever not trust him, so when he gives them a drink why should they refuse? He pretty much perfected the pattern. Sickening.

And how many times the lines "You do know that’s [Hugh] Hefner’s best friend, right? Nobody’s going to believe you. I suggest you shut your mouth.". Whoever the people who said this are, should be tried as accomplices. Fucking assholes. And whoever provides all these pills, too. There's no way he obtained so much drugs legally, is there?

And in some of the stories, Cosby actually did have an accomplice. In one of the stories the woman was raped by a friend of Cosby while he watched and they laughed at her. Just how fucking evil and depraved can a man be?

Under the pictures is a link to "Read her story", when I click the stories don't show up. Is this happening to anyone else?
Yeah happened to me with Firefox. Try Chrome.

Not sure what you're even on about, but I'd tread carefully.
Oh, I think you do know what he's on about... :\

It's easy to rationalize shitty behavior if you want it bad enough. In his mind he probably thought that by taking them out, bringing them to hotels, and "letting" them be with a famous person he was doing them a favour.

I'm not too familiar with Cosby's public persona, he's usually ranting about the way young black men dress and act in public. He isn't talking about the importance of consent, so he might not feel that hypocritical. I don't think it's psychopathic, I think it's pretty naturally human. Cosby is obviously an extreme case, but I think you can compare it to how you can morally justify eating meat or speeding in your car. As long as you create a list of reasons why what you're doing is not so bad, or is natural it's easy to not feel guilty about it.
Rationalizing your evil is not mutually exclusive with being a psychopath. I'm not a psychiatrist but I'm still very convinced that he's 100% psychopathic.
 
People who might have known:

Camille Cosby
Other members of the Cosby family
Robert "I Spy" Culp
Sidney Poitier
Hugh Hefner
Richard Pryor
Other famous contemporary comedians or jazz musicians
Actors on the Cosby Show in general
Phylicia Rashad (maybe Debbie Allen? Ahmad Rashad?) in particular
Whoopi Goldberg (I'm just putting her on the list out of spite)

More people know than are willing to admit, I'm sure.
 
People who might have known:

Camille Cosby
Other members of the Cosby family
Robert "I Spy" Culp
Sidney Poitier
Hugh Hefner
Richard Pryor
Other famous contemporary comedians or jazz musicians
Actors on the Cosby Show in general
Phylicia Rashad (maybe Debbie Allen? Ahmad Rashad?) in particular
Whoopi Goldberg (I'm just putting her on the list out of spite)

More people know than are willing to admit, I'm sure.



Yeah let's just shit on the reputations of people who might have known nothing at all. I'll bet Malcolm Jamal Warner held them down while the CEO of Jello pudding watched.
 

Kinsella

Banned
People who might have known:

Camille Cosby
Other members of the Cosby family
Robert "I Spy" Culp
Sidney Poitier
Hugh Hefner
Richard Pryor
Other famous contemporary comedians or jazz musicians
Actors on the Cosby Show in general
Phylicia Rashad (maybe Debbie Allen? Ahmad Rashad?) in particular
Whoopi Goldberg (I'm just putting her on the list out of spite)

More people know than are willing to admit, I'm sure.

He didn't hide what he was doing. Listen to his old comedy routines. Specifically the bits in which he referred to giving women "Spanish fly" to get them to fuck him.
 
What set Cosby off?

Who was the first victim?

Why do this to people?

Considering how long he's been alluding to things like "Spanish Fly" in his routines from the angle that's it's a common boy's fantasy, it's probably a lifelong fetish or compulsion. I'm guessing you'd have to dig pretty deep or far back to find what started it, if anything.
 

Calamari41

41 > 38
I'm just glad this all hit the fan before the fucker died. There will never be justice for these women, but at least the guy's life is ruined, and he lives to see his legacy for what it truly is.
 

Tomita

Member
Statute (not "statue") of limitations laws exist because they recognize that merely beginning court proceedings against someone is itself prejudicial; it's painful for all involved, it's costly for both the state and people, and more importantly, the likelihood of securing a conviction is extremely low unless the jury behaves in a prejudiced way. The kind of evidence needed to secure a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt in any serious crime vanishes the longer the time horizon goes. DNA is not available; already unreliable eyewitness accounts (not whatsoever saying anything about the victims, but rather corroborating witnesses) become even more unreliable, key actors move away or die, dates become fuzzy, etc. Which puts the jury in an unenviable position of deciding whether a likely guilty man should go free, or if they ought to "stretch" to convict. The system is engineered to make it hard to make people go to jail because it's much worse to have innocent people to go to jail than guilty ones walk.

There may well be grounds for dropping statute of limitations in the case sexual assault, as many jurisdictions do in murder and other serious crimes, but the logic has to be stronger than "Here is a guilty guy. We're mad we can't prosecute him. Time to find a way to throw him in jail."

Yeah sorry, that was a typo. The laws just frustrate me because every state has a different set of limitations, and the laws usually seem to affect kids poorly, where the statute ends after the victim turns eighteen, or sometimes twenty-one. The problem is, as a victim it's already hard to come to terms with what happened to you and to find the courage to speak out as an adult. As a child? They might not be okay to talk about it at eighteen, when the statute of limitations have already kicked in.

I know the subject of children makes this a bit off topic, so I apologize. But the law can be a problem with adults too, and victims have advocated for change. As terrible as it is, there should probably be limitations on stuff that happened in the 60s, 70s, 80s, because yes, the evidence is hard to gather at that point. But there are victims in this case from the 90s (at least two, according to the article; I dunno about all 46).

I just meant to say, I don't see any way that Cosby can go to jail at this point, but if we can improve the law in other ways, in ways that does help victims in the future? If that kind of outcome can happen, at least we could get that.

Well I would hope they did their "JOB" and ivestigate performing a rape kit and see his DNA was all over me. If they couldn't do that then I do not know what to say. You have to let it be known no way 35 - 40? women have this happen and he get away with it

What Hackman said, but also, it seems like in a lot of these stories, Cosby digitally raped the woman. So there wouldn't be semen for a rape kit to find. He knew what he was doing. He had this act perfected: act all nice and fatherly, give them a date with intentions to boost their career, drug them, and very rarely penetrate with his genitals. It was systematic.

This DDoS attack, if it's what it is, is just sad at this point.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
But it was such a huge part of how he presented himself to the world. Not just on that show, but on countless others. The man also did lots of work with young children. I don't buy into the notion that people live on a one dimensional moral scale, and I don't think there was a man or woman that ever lived whose life and personality could be accurately summed up in a single sentence. We all contain within us multiple contradictions, some more (and harsher) than others obviously.

And since there must be at least some level of genetic tendency to develop certain undesirable personality traits, by learning more about how this manifests we should be able to improve the rate of diagnosis at an early enough age to prevent some of these people from reaching the point where they can hide it from society. It's the only way to put a stop to this.

Eh, I get where you're going with this, but at the same time I think this line of thinking tries to pathologize behavior that we dislike, but I don't think is actually that unique.

The serial killers who can only get off by killing people? Might be something screwy with them. But Cosby? Who's to say he's not a generous philanthropist who also wanted a sense of power over these women and knew he could get away with it? It makes him a flawed person and nasty piece of work, but I don't think mental illness is needed to explain it.

I tend to think of it in terms of Groundhog Day—if you experienced no consequences for your actions, would you really treat people the same way, day-in or day-out? For some people in this world, no sci-fi macguffin is needed; they really don't experience consequences the way common folk do. And that seems like it would be highly corrupting.

People who might have known:

Camille Cosby
Other members of the Cosby family
Robert "I Spy" Culp
Sidney Poitier
Hugh Hefner
Richard Pryor
Other famous contemporary comedians or jazz musicians
Actors on the Cosby Show in general
Phylicia Rashad (maybe Debbie Allen? Ahmad Rashad?) in particular
Whoopi Goldberg (I'm just putting her on the list out of spite)

More people know than are willing to admit, I'm sure.


While it's entirely true people close to him could have known, or otherwise abetted his crimes, sometimes people just can't believe it. We had a teacher in high school who always had girls going into his office during non-lunch hours, and we asked him about it and he shrugged that they were just trying to beg better grades and the like. We joked about "oh what's he getting up to in there..." all the time. And then a year after I graduated it turned out that he had been sleeping with girls, and basically avoided any consequences because when he was caught the girl was over 18 and they couldn't prove anything happened prior to that. Maybe some of the people around Cosby thought "oh, Cosby's a creeper..." but it never actually occurred to them there actually might be a disturbing reality to that behavior.
 

Leeness

Member
Reading some of these testimonies.

I feel awful for all of them, but Victoria Valentino's story was...what the fuck. :(
 
The visual on the cover of the women is a blunt, humanizing visual which should make Cosby's defenders, both former and current, feel very ashamed of themselves.
 
Just finished reading the entire thing, still can't get over how simultaneously disgusting, terrifying and sad it all collectively is. Cosby destroyed so many lives, he may never go to jail but at least his reputation has been destroyed and he's gotten a big taste of what it feels like to have one's power taken away.
 
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