Bill Cosby's chief accuser today rejected a defence allegation that she manufactured her account of sexual molestation and was backed up by her mother, who said the comedian apologised and called himself a "sick man."
Andrea Constand withstood a defence cross-examination that sought to expose her as a con artist who set Cosby up, leaving the witness stand at his retrial without having budged off her allegation that he drugged and molested her at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.
"Did you ever fabricate a scheme to falsely accuse him for money?" Cosby lawyer Tom Mesereau asked her today.
"No, sir," Constand replied.
Constand, a former Temple University women's basketball administrator, remained calm and composed throughout her testimony, which lasted more than seven hours over two days.
Her mother followed her on the witness stand today and was more feisty, often clashing with prosecutors and bristling when they asked her if she benefited from Andrea Constand's USD 3.4 million civil settlement with Cosby.
"She didn't buy ME a house," Gianna Constand snapped. "This isn't about money." The mother testified about a phone conversation she said she had with Cosby about a year after the alleged assault on her daughter in which he described in graphic detail their sexual encounter and then apologised.
She told jurors that she was concerned because her daughter hadn't been the same since leaving Temple in March 2004 and moving back to Canada, screaming in her sleep and waking up in a sweat.
Gianna Constand said she was "very combative" with Cosby, demanding he tell her the medication he'd given her daughter and what he'd done to her.
She said Cosby told her he'd given Andrea Constand a prescription drug not the cold and allergy medicine Benadryl as he has claimed but didn't provide the name of it. She said he described how he'd touched Andrea Constand's breasts and vagina and guided her hand to his penis.
"He said to me, 'Don't worry, Mom, there was no penile penetration,'" Gianna Constand testified.
She told jurors that Cosby said he "felt like a dirty old perverted man" and, at the end of the call, conceded he was a "sick man." Her testimony prompted Cosby, sitting with his lawyers at the defence table, to open his eyes wide.
Andrea Constand told jurors last week that Cosby knocked her out with pills and then sexually assaulted her. Cosby, now 80, says Constand consented to a sexual encounter. His first trial ended with a hung jury.
At last year's trial, Cosby's lawyers suggested that Constand and the former "Cosby Show" star were lovers who'd been intimate with each other in the past. This time, defence lawyers are trying to portray Constand as an opportunist who feigned romantic interest in him and then levelled a false accusation of sexual assault so she could file a lawsuit.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
