Joan Tarshis

Tarshis gives details of two situations where she alleges she was drugged and raped by Cosby to Philadelphia magazine. The first in 1969  (when she was 19) at Cosby’s dressing house, on the set of The Bill Cosby Show.

We went up to his cottage after they were done shooting. That’s when it happened. He offered me a drink. It was a red eye, a bloody mary topped off with beer. He always made the drinks; he didn’t have a bartender. And then next thing I know, I was being undressed on his couch. I was so out of it. But I remember saying to him — I thought I would outsmart him — I said, I have an infection down there, and if you have sex with me, you’re going to get it, and then your wife will know. So what did he do? He immediately switched to another orifice, which was worse.

Interviewer: So you were aware of what was happening the entire time?

Yes. He was holding me down. He’s much bigger than I am. He’s very big. I couldn’t resist. He was forceful. He definitely used force. There was nothing I could do except wait for it to be over. I was in shock.

Later, at the Westbury Music Theater in Long Island.

He picked me up in a limo. During the ride, I had something to drink in the car. I don’t remember what it was. I started to feel very woozy. Stoned.

I walked into the theater with him and the chauffeur, and we didn’t have any seats, so we were just standing backstage, and Cosby went into the dressing room. And after a while, I couldn’t stand up, I was so drugged. I asked the chauffeur to bring me back to the car. And I don’t remember anything else that happened until I woke up in the bed the following morning. Naked.

Tarshis says she did not report the incidents at the time because she did not want to upset her parents, and did not want to fight against powerful lawyers:

What could I say? I was 19 years old. I felt, He’s Bill Cosby. He’ll lawyer himself up. I don’t have a lawyer. It’s going to be he said, she said, and they’ll look at me like I’m crazy. Keep in mind that if I had come forward back then, I would have been the first one that would have said this. And God knows what his lawyers would do to me. My reputation would have been ruined. They would have said that I was there to seduce him. They would have turned the story around. And part of me was saying, hey, this guy knows a lot of big guys. Maybe they would find my body in a canyon in L.A. He became a scary guy to me.