Bill Cosby has been at the center of an escalating sexual assault controversy for the past few weeks, and on Sunday, another woman came forward with details of an alleged sexual assault at the hands of the actor.
Publicist Joan Tarshis penned an essay on Hollywood Elsewhere on Sunday, saying she was raped twice by Cosby when she was 19 years old and working with him in the fall of 1969.
Tarshis said she had flown to New York and met Cosby through mutual friends, who invited Tarshis to lunch with Cosby on the Universal lot. She wrote that Cosby invited her back a few times and was always generous with drinks — though never drank himself.
Tarshis goes on to detail her first alleged rape from Cosby, after he had asked her to stay one day after shooting and work on material in his bungalow.
“The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed,” Tarshis writes. “Through the haze I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an infection and he would catch it and his wife would know he had sex with someone. But he just found another orifice to use. I was sickened by what was happening to me and shocked that this man I had idolized was now raping me. Of course I told no one.”
Tarshis says she felt she could not tell her mother what happened, as her mother saw the fact that she had worked with Cosby as a point of pride. Cosby apparently later called her and invited her to the Westbury Music Theater and Tarshis, saying she could not see a way out, went.
Tarshis writes that she went to Cosby’s hotel room, where the actor made her a drink, and when they went to the Westbury, there was no seat for her, so she stood at the back of the theater.
“But soon after, I remember feeling very, very stoned and asking his chauffeur to take me back to the car,” she writes. “I was having trouble standing up. The next thing I remember was waking up in his bed back at the Sherry, naked. I remember thinking ‘You old s–t, I guess you got me this time, but it’s the last time you’ll ever see me.’”
Tarshis did not reveal the account to anyone for 20 years.
Tarshis is only the latest to publicly accuse Cosby of sexual assault. Arizona woman Barbara Bowman penned an op-ed in the Washington Times on Thursday, detailing her struggle to get others to believe her story that she was drugged and raped by Cosby in the mid-1980s.
Earlier on Sunday, Cosby’s attorney, John P. Schmitt, issued a statement on the 77-year-old’s official website saying Cosby would not comment on the allegations.
“Over the last several weeks, decade-old, discredited allegations against Mr. Cosby have resurfaced,” the statement reads. “The fact that they are being repeated does not make them true. Mr. Cosby does not intend to dignify these allegations with any comment.”
The allegations resurfaced in October, when Hannibal Buress brought them up during a stand-up bit and called Cosby a rapist on stage. Since then, Cosby’s past has been in the spotlight, and he recently canceled an appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman” that was scheduled for Wednesday.
It’s not the first time Cosby has faced such allegations. In 2006, Cosby settled a civil suit with another woman who accused him of sexual assault, according to the Associated Press. She claimed in her filing that 13 more victims were ready to come forward, one of which was Bowman.
Despite the storm of negative press, a comedy series Cosby is working on with NBC and Sony has not changed its status, sources confirmed Saturday. Sources also confirmed Sunday that a Cosby special, “Bill Cosby 77,” is still set to stream on Netflix on Thanksgiving.
