I finally met Andrea Constand, 13 years after reporting on Bill Cosby's crimes

Note: This column first appeared on Philly.com (now Inquirer.com] and in The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Philadelphia Daily News in April 2018.

I will never forget the day the Bill Cosby story broke. It was Jan. 20, 2005.  I was working for the Philadelphia Daily News as an investigative crime reporter so the story was assigned to me. "Not 'the Cos,' " I thought to myself as I raced out the door. I was a huge fan of The Cosby Show and I  truly thought he was Dr. Huxtable. But I covered crime and this was a story so I set out to report it.

In many ways, I couldn’t have been more prepared. Not only did I have a master’s in criminal justice, I’d spent much of the past year and a half digging into sexual misconduct scandals within the Pennsylvania State Police, an investigation launched after trooper Michael Evans was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting six women (he pled guilty in October 2000).  By the time the civil case was about to come to trial in September 2004, there were more than 30 accusers, none of whom had ever gone to police.

And in April 2002 I had done an expose on drug-facilitated assaults, which were on the rise in Philadelphia. I remember how horrified I was when I dug into those crimes. “It’s pre-meditated rape,” I thought to myself. And the perfect crime. The drugs these predators use wipe out a woman’s resistance and their memory. By the time they wake up and realize something happened to them, the drugs are probably already out of their system so even if they go to the hospital, it’s too late. Even if it’s not, the perpetrator can argue the victim took the drugs willingly. And if the assailant is a powerful man with a pristine public reputation, who is going to believe her? 

Still, similar allegations being lodged against “America’s Dad”  were shocking.

A woman who used to be the director of operations at Temple University’s women’s basketball team had accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her at his Elkins Park mansion in January 2004. I spoke with people at Temple who knew her and discovered her reputation there was pristine.

But that didn’t stop the Cosby team from trying to smear her and many in the media were their willing accomplice. They leaked a story to the now-defunct website “Celebrity Justice” that a taped phone call between Cosby and Andrea’s mother, Gianna. T// They claimed it? // was a “classic shakedown”yes in which Gianna tried to get money out of Cosby. It wasn’t true and I followed up with my own story from sources that said in that call Gianna turned down money from Cosby. (That phone call, in which Cosby offers Andrea an “educational trust”  -- an offer she did not accept –- became key prosecution evidence in the trial.)

I watched  in horror as all the usual journalistic rules went out the window. Sexual assault victims are normally not identified unless the victim gives their consent but Andrea Constand’s name and photo were quickly all over the media. (The Daily News did not run her name or photo until her attorneys gave the OK).

That wasn’t all.

I soon discovered Constand wasn’t the only accuser; that while Cosby built his career with his wholesome, no-profanity comedy routines and cultivated his image as “America’s Dad,” he lived a dark, secret life drugging and sexually young women. California attorney Tamara Green contacted me and gave me her exclusive story along with permission to run her name and photo. We ran it on the cover on February 8, 2005.

Twelve other accusers came forward as well, with similar stories. Like Green, they came forward to support Constand. They were the original #MeToo women, long before there was such a movement. I got an exclusive interview with one of them, Beth Ferrier, that ran in June 2005. She had passed a lie detector test by the National Enquirer, which was going to run her story, but then dropped it in exchange for their “exclusive’ interview with Cosby that ran in March 2005.

I went on national TV shows like Greta Van Susteren’s on Fox and Dan Abrams on MSNBC, where I was attacked (Greta herself was fair). I got many phone calls from Cosby’s attorney, Marty Singer, trying to intimidate me off the story. A negative story was planted about me in the Philadelphia Weekly. Bruce L. Castor, Jr., the Montgomery County district attorney  at the time, made what I perceived to be veiled threats about having me arrested for writing and doing radio and TV interviews about Gianna’s taped phone call, what he called an “illegal wiretap.” (It was not illegal and was used as evidence in the tria.)

Far worse than anything I experienced, though, was how Constand and her attorneys were treated by Castor. He issued press release saying he wasn’t going to charge Cosby  on February 17, 2005, citing “insufficient credible and admissible evidence.” (It came out during the trial that detectives were still in the middle of investigating the case when he pulled the plug.) However, he neglected to tell Constand’s attorneys, Dolores Troiani and Bebe Kivitz, so they could warn Constand. They found out when the media showed up on their doorstep that night. (Castor claims he faxed them the news release). Castor never even bothered to meet with Constand himself before making his decision (In February 2016 he said he believed Constand at the time but didn’t think he could prove it in a court of law).

 When this scandal bubbled again in October 2014, after Hannibal Burress’ video calling Cosby a rapist went viral, my reaction was, “It’s déjà vu all over again” as the same accusers I’d spoken with in 2005 came forward again. This time they got a different reception from the media.

It was surreal sitting in court on April 26, 2018 when the verdict was read. These cases, especially ones involving drugs, are tough to win. Sometimes the only justice a victim will receive is being able to tell their story to the media, which hopefully will be more open to listening instead of dismissing them outright because their accusations are against someone who’s never been publicly accused before. Sometimes, if they’re lucky, they’ll get prosecutors like Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele and his incredible team and investigators like Cheltenham police Sgt. Richard Schaffer and Montgomery County Detective James Reape. Even though, Steele had nothing to do with the callous way Castor treated Constand in 2005, he still apologized to her at Thursday’s press conference. “We are sorry for what happened,” he said. “We got a chance to make up for it. And we hope we have.”

Nicki Weisensee Egan is the author of the book CHASING COSBY, host and executive producer of the podcast based on the book, coauthor of VICTIM F and an investigative journalist. You can see more of her work at  https://www.nicoleweisenseeegan.com/