Three women came forward Thursday with new accusations that comedian Bill Cosby sexually assaulted them, bringing the total number of women making such claims to 38.
At a press conference in Los Angeles hosted by attorney Gloria Allred, three women provided detailed accounts of assaults that Cosby allegedly committed against them. All three accounts are very similar to previous claims.
Janice Baker Kinney said Cosby assaulted her in May of 1982 while she was working as a bartender at Harrah's Hotel and Casino in Reno, Nevada, and he was a visiting performer. She said Cosby invited her to a party at a house where he was staying, but when she got there, only three people were in attendance.
She accepted two pills Cosby offered her, began losing her vision and eventually passed out during a game of backgammon. Her next memory is awaking on a couch with her jeans unzipped and blouse opened, and Cosby put his hand in her blouse. She awoke again the next morning naked in Cosby's bed, who allegedly told her, "This is between me and you."
"All this time, and for many, many years, I felt this was my fault," Kinney wrote in a statement Allred's office sent to The Huffington Post. "I took the pills from him."
She said it wasn't until recently, when she heard the stories of other women coming forward, that she realized she was a victim.
"It was like the light bulb FINALLY went on after all these years," the statement continued. "I was 24 years old and I was naïve thinking that this funny and sweet, trustworthy man would never give me something that would harm me. I was wrong and now I know that Mr. Cosby is a predator and needs to be held accountable for what he did to me."
Marcella Tate said Cosby assaulted her in 1975 when she was working as a model in Chicago, where she met him through mutual friends at a club. One day, she agreed to pick him up from the airport and drop him off at the Playboy mansion, where he invited her in and offered her a glass of wine. Her next memory is waking up in bed with a naked Cosby.
"I knew that I was in a sexual situation," she wrote in a statement Allred's office sent to HuffPost. "I never intended to be in that situation ... but because I was barely conscious and felt drugged, I was unable to do anything to get out of it."
The third woman, Autumn Burns, said she was assaulted by Cosby in 1970 when she was 20 years old working as a model and game starter at the Sahara hotel in Las Vegas. One night, she said, Cosby approached her at another hotel, gave her $500 to gamble with or spend elsewhere and invited her to his show that night. They began spending time together, she said, and he offered to help her find acting and modeling work. One night he invited her back to his room, gave her a scotch and asked her to the bedroom.
"I started feeling woozy and not in control," she wrote in a statement sent to HuffPost from Allred's office. "He told me to sit on the edge of the bed. When I did he grabbed me by the back of my neck and stuck his erect penis down my throat. I remember my head was being pounded up and down and then he lifted me on top of him and had sex with me. When he was done I knew I had to leave the room and get home. I felt like everyone on the casino floor was staring at me and had known what happened."
The three women join a number of others whom Allred is also representing.
"The women who are with me today are not the last ones who will come forward," she wrote in an email to HuffPost. "I can assure him that there will be more, because women are no longer going to be intimidated by Cosby’s celebrity, money or power."
Allred is also discouraging people from buying tickets to Cosby's upcoming show in Atlanta and said she hopes the theater will be full of empty seats.
In a November Interview with the Associated Press, Cosby responded publicly to the accusations for the first time, saying, "There’s no response ... There is no comment about that. And I’ll tell you why. I don’t want to compromise your integrity, but I don’t talk about it."
He also joked about the accusations during a performance in Ontatio in January, when he told a woman in the audience, "You know, you should be careful drinking around me."
Cosby's attorney, Martin Singer, did not immediately return HuffPost's request for comment.
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