Over the last year, numerous women have come forward to tell their stories of being drugged and raped by Bill Cosby. Of those women, 35 are now featured on the cover of New York magazine.
The women, who range in age from 44 to 80, are from all walks of life and races. From former models Beverly Johnson and Janice Dickinson to artist Lili Bernard, the women bravely shared their stories with the magazine.
“I’m no longer afraid,” Chelan Lasha, who claimed Cosby assaulted her when she was 17, told the magazine. “I feel more powerful than him.”
According to the magazine, the cover and article started six months ago, and even though the women were interviewed at different times, they all shared similar stories.
The cover story comes on the heels of the release of a Cosby deposition, which was published by the New York Times. The deposition was from a 2005 sexual assault civil suit, and Cosby admitted giving the plaintiff, Andrea Constand, one-and-a-half tablets of Benadryl to relieve stress. According to Cosby, the sexual contact they had was consensual.
“I walk her out. She does not look angry. She does not say to me, don’t ever do that again,” he said in the deposition. “She doesn’t walk out with an attitude of a huff, because I think I’m a pretty decent reader of people and their emotions in these romantic sexual things, whatever you want to call them.”
Constand was not included in New York’s cover story. As of last week, Cosby was seeking to have sanctions brought against Constand, charging that he believes she was the one to leak the deposition to the New York Times. Constand and Cosby had settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.