Actress, Barbara Bowman, is about the 14th female to openly accuse TV star, Bill Cosby of sexual abuse.
‘He told me over and over again, “Trust me like I was your father.” He zeroed in on that like a laser beam,’ she said in a recent interview with Daily Mail.
The 46 year old actress, revealed how Cosby had sexually abused her several times in her teenage years, noting how the older man had cajoled her to trust him like a father.
‘I’m finally revealing all of my full story in hopes that others will learn to read the tell-tale signs of abuse and not wait as long as I did. No one believed me for years. They said Bill would never do that. That it was preposterous. But I’m putting my name out there and standing behind these words, just like Burress. No more code of silence.’
A few days ago, comedian Hannibal Burress attacked the image of Bill Cosby and asked why he was still a much loved American figure despite several allegations of rape by 13 women.
The attack, has been credited as the spur Barbara needed to speak up.
“I thank Hannibal Burress for speaking out over and over again, despite the threats from the Industry that it could ruin his career. He is standing up for me and the other women who are too afraid to speak out.”
According to her, ‘And the timing couldn’t be better. It sickens me to think he’ll be on TV again, playing a father, no less.’
Bill Cosby is expected to feature in a new sitcom, to play a patriarchal father figure, just like he played the quintessential family man Dr Cliff Huxtable on The Bill Cosby Show in the 1980s.
‘Maybe he should also teach his fictitious TV family how to escape the talons of sexual predators. Bill used to tell me that he was my father figure and that I needed to trust him as a father, 100 percent. Then he’d drug me and attack me. I was too afraid to talk back.
Barbara, who admitted that her ambition and eagerness to please Cosby played a role in her becoming a victim, disclosed that the advances began in 1985, when she was a 17-year-old and had been invited to audition for him.
‘He wanted me to act completely drunk, wasted, while he stood behind me and stroked my neck and upper chest. He didn’t touch me beyond that, on that day, but that’s where it certainly started.
‘Even though it felt off to do the exercise, I gave it my all. I’d learned from years of acting classes that I had to take direction. After all, I was in the presence of the most powerful man in America at that time. Dr Huxtable chose me!’
She recounted another ordeal in Cosby’s New York apartment.
‘He invited me to his New York brownstone for dinner. Staff was there. We ate in the kitchen. I had one glass of red wine with dinner. My next recollection is me, coming to, slumped over the toilet bowl, throwing up. I was wearing a man’s white t-shirt and my panties.
‘The t-shirt was not mine. Bill was standing over me, holding my hair out of my face as I threw up. I had no idea how I’d gotten there. I’d had one glass of wine with dinner. He was trying to soothe me with his words, “It will be okay. It’s okay.”
‘By the time I came to, the staff was gone. No one in the house but us. And as the fogginess lifted, he escorted me to the couch where I recovered. I then got dressed and he called me a cab.
‘I was mystified. It was a sick pit in my stomach, knowing that I was out of control over the last undetermined amount of time. And that I was undressed, while he was in a white robe, and how had I gotten there?
Photo Credit: Daily Mail