Chasing Cosby by Nicole Weisensee Egan

Author:Nicole Weisensee Egan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2019-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

WHEN THE TIME came for Andrea to take the stand on the second day of trial, the courtroom was completely silent. She did not testify at any of the earlier hearings—including the preliminary hearing—so this was the first time we would hear what happened from her directly, in her own words.

Andrea had changed quite a bit since 2005. She no longer had long, flowing, curly red hair, nor did she have that happy, carefree smile she bore in the widely circulated photo of her holding a basketball at age nineteen. Her hair was now chopped fairly short, and the expression on her face was serious.

Andrea seemed nervous as she sat down and, with her left hand on the Bible, pledged to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Troiani and Kivitz, along with Kivitz’s daughter, a Miami prosecutor, were there for moral support, as was her sister, Diana, all of them sitting on the prosecution side. As she settled into her seat on the witness stand, Cosby swiveled his chair so he could face toward her as she testified, his chin resting on his hand, a thoughtful expression on his face. He seemed to be listening intently, leaning forward in his seat with his head cocked to the side and pointed toward Andrea, while at the same time not seeming to take it very seriously, smiling at the more emotional points of her testimony, like when she spoke of when she and her mother called to confront him. The jurors seemed to be paying close attention while she spoke.

Andrea’s voice was soft but firm as she began telling the story of how she first met Cosby. She remained calm as she described how he began to call her at her office at Temple University, at first to talk about the women’s basketball team. Slowly they began to build what she thought was a friendship and mentorship.

Andrea went on, saying Cosby invited her to his Elkins Park home a couple of times, and that during one of her visits he casually placed his hand on her thigh as he sat next to her. She moved her body away from his without saying anything, she said. It happened again, though, at another dinner at his home a few months later, and this time he reached toward the zipper of her pants. She gently pushed his hand away, and this time she was direct: “I said, ‘I’m not here for that. I don’t want that,’” she said.

Thinking the issue was behind them, Andrea kept accepting social invitations from Cosby, including a trip to a Connecticut casino where he invited her up to his room late at night to give her some baked goods to take back home.

“I trusted him,” she said. “He had never disclosed to me that he… was interested in a romantic interaction with me.”

Andrea went on to reveal all of the details of the night in January 2004, most of which I’d written about in 2005, but it was riveting to hear them from her now, in the courtroom.

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