The Emmy-winning Cosby, NBC’s most bankable star at the time, used Scotti to deliver monthly payouts to eight different women in 1989-90 — including Shawn Thompson, whose daughter Autumn Jackson claimed the actor was her dad.
Frank Scotti says he did "a lot of crazy things" for Bill Cosby, including being a coverup for the actor.
Cosby, while denying paternity, paid out more than $100,000 to Thompson over the years after their 1974 affair began. Scotti told The News that he believes Cosby was sleeping with all the women who received money.
“I didn't realize that I had been raped. Back then, rape was done in an alleyway with somebody holding a knife to your throat that you didn't know. There was no date rape back then. I just knew that something horrible had happened. But I couldn’t put a name to it. The difference between this and that rape in the dark alley is that his face would be before me every week on TV. People would mention a joke that he said: ‘Wasn't that funny?’ And all the while, my stomach would just be churning.” —Joan Tarshis
“In 1975, it wasn't an issue that was even discussed. Rape was being beaten up in a park. I understood at the time that it was wrong, but I just internalized it and dealt with it and pushed it down, and it resided in a very private place. It affects your trust with other people.” —Marcella Tate
There was the disoriented and drugged woman who said Bill Cosby put his forearm under her throat after she revealed to hotel staff she was 19 and staying with the superstar.
There was the woman who couldn't form words as the star of “The Cosby Show” leered at her and her unconscious friend with “a very predatory look on his face,” according to a New York magazine article that publishes Monday.
And there was the woman who thought she was one of Cosby’s best friends — until she woke up naked after he plied her with medicine for a “headache.”
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Many of the women say that speaking out is therapeutic.
“I’m no longer afraid,” said Chelan Lasha, 46, who says Cosby drugged her when she was just 17. “I feel more powerful than him.”
A total of 46 women have come forward to say they were assaulted by Cosby, according to the magazine. Many in the group say they've been contacted by others who have not yet spoken publicly.
“It was sort of like we were yodeling in a canyon and set off an avalanche,” Tarshis said.
Triggering that avalanche — a radical, rapid change in public opinion — took years.
Cosby’s accusers were previously portrayed as gold diggers and not taken seriously.
Our site is still down but you can listen to 2 women's testimony about Cosby on Instagram
https://t.co/GEoDc8pMF0 + https://t.co/CLlPl40cGS
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) July 27, 2015