The disturbing saga of Bill Cosby, master manipulator, continues. The last time I covered this sad story, three of Cosby’s accusers held a press conference with Gloria Allred. Cosby has yet to respond to Gloria calling him out, and of course he refuses to set up a victims’ fund. Vulture is still keeping an incredibly detailed timeline of events. Of particular note: Someone defaced Cosby’s Walk of Fame star by scrawling “rapist” all over it. Five of Cosby’s accusers appeared on CNN. Janice Dickinson paid an emotional visit to Nancy Grace to give more details.

Now something very poignant has happened. Supermodel Beverly Johnson (who was huge in the 1970s) penned a column called “Bill Cosby Drugged Me. This Is My Story” in Vanity Fair. Beverly tells the tale of how Cosby wooed her for a small role on The Cosby Show. She was to play one of his OB/GYN patients, a pregnant woman who was drunk. The essay is two pages long, and I’m only including the bare bones excerpts. The whole piece is available here. Beverly begins by discussing her guilt as she debated whether to come forward. We join the story at Cosby’s home. His staff had left the room, and Beverly expected to talk about her role:

Cosby said he wanted to see how I handled various scenes, so he suggested that I pretend to be drunk. As I readied myself to be the best drunk I could be, he offered me a cappuccino from the espresso machine. I told him I didn’t drink coffee that late in the afternoon because it made getting to sleep at night more difficult. He wouldn’t let it go. He insisted that his espresso machine was the best model on the market and promised I’d never tasted a cappuccino quite like this one. It’s nuts, I know, but it felt oddly inappropriate arguing with Bill Cosby so I took a few sips of the coffee just to appease him.

Now let me explain this: I was a top model during the 70s, a period when drugs flowed at parties and photo shoots like bottled water at a health spa. I’d had my fun and experimented with my fair share of mood enhancers. I knew by the second sip of the drink Cosby had given me that I’d been drugged–and drugged good.

My head became woozy, my speech became slurred, and the room began to spin nonstop. Cosby motioned for me to come over to him as though we were really about to act out the scene. He put his hands around my waist, and I managed to put my hand on his shoulder in order to steady myself.

As I felt my body go completely limp, my brain switched into automatic-survival mode. That meant making sure Cosby understood that I knew exactly what was happening at that very moment.

[This is where Beverly struggles not to pass out and yells several expletives at Cosby, who grows very angry.]

What happened next is somewhat cloudy for me because the drug was in fuller play by that time. I recall his seething anger at my tirade and then him grabbing me by my left arm hard and yanking all 110 pounds of me down a bunch of stairs as my high heels clicked and clacked on every step. I feared my neck was going to break with the force he was using to pull me down those stairs.

When [a taxi] stopped, Cosby opened the door, shoved me into it and slammed the door behind me without ever saying a word. I somehow managed to tell the driver my address and before blacking out. The next day I woke up in my own bed after falling into a deep sleep that lasted most of the day. I had no memory of how I got into my apartment or into my bed, though most likely my doorman helped me out.
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As I wrestled with the idea of telling my story of the day Bill Cosby drugged me with the intention of doing God knows what, the faces of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and countless other brown and black men took residence in my mind. The current plight of the black male was behind my silence when Barbara Bowman came out to tell the horrific details of being drugged and raped by Cosby to the Washington Post in November. And I watched in horror as my longtime friend and fellow model Janice Dickinson was raked over the coals for telling her account of rape at Cosby’s hands. Over the years I’ve met other women who also claim to have been violated by Cosby. Many are still afraid to speak up. I couldn’t sit back and watch the other women be vilified and shamed for something I knew was true.

I reached the conclusion that the current attack on African American men has absolutely nothing to do at all with Bill Cosby. He brought this on himself when he decided he had the right to have his way with who knows how many women over the last four decades. If anything, Cosby is distinguished from the majority of black men in this country because he could depend on the powers that be for support and protection.

[From Vanity Fair]

That last sentence is incredibly powerful, right? Beverly highlighted exactly why nobody should feel sorry for Bill Cosby. He’s manipulated journalists and settled claims out of court and has (allgedly) abused women for decades. He’s always gotten his way, and now he’s surprised that women have the audacity to keep coming forward. Beverly says there are more women, some of whom she’s spoken to over the years, who will come forward.

Beverly’s account is absolutely horrifying, and I’m glad she told her story. After she took two sips of that cappuccino, she knew something was up. Two sips. That’s one hell of a drug. All of these women share strikingly similar tales, and it’s all very terrifying. Praise Hannibal Burress for opening these floodgates.

Here’s a photo of Cosby’s Walk of Fame star after some poor employee cleaned off the graffiti.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN