At a Wednesday press conference led by women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, three more women came forward to publicly accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault. With their claims, the total list of alleged Cosby victims is now nearly 50 names long.
The women, former actress Linda Ridgeway Whitedeer, former American Airlines flight attendant Colleen Hughes, and actress Eden Tirl, gave their statements alongside an empty chair, a visual callback to the recent New York Magazine cover featuring over 30 Cosby accusers. The cover included an empty chair, for all the alleged victims who had yet to speak out against Cosby. As USA Today reported, Whitedeer said, “It is my turn to take the empty chair.”
Whitedeer’s ex-husband, an executive at the William Morris Agency — which represented Cosby at the time; Cosby’s latest agency, CAA, dropped him last month — introduced her to Cosby. Allred read a statement from Whitedeer in which the latter described how, in 1971, Cosby forced her to perform oral sex on him just minutes after they entered an empty room together on a movie set.
I felt Cosby’s left hand gently grab my long hair behind my head. His giant frame blocked the door, so if anyone should try to enter, they would not be able to see what he was doing. As I looked up, his penis was out of his pants and he shoved it into my mouth. His attack was fast, with surgical precision, and surprise was on his side.
After Allred spoke, Whitedeer describe the aftermath of the alleged assault:
I couldn’t breathe. I was in shock,” Whitedeer said. “When Cosby was done, there was a horrible mess of semen in my clothes, my face and my hair. he took out a Kleenex to try and wipe off my face. I was bordering between vomiting and passing out. He was mumbling that I had been blessed with his semen, as if it was holy water.
She did not come forward at the time because, as USA Today reports, “she promised her ex not to do anything to embarrass him, because Cosby was too powerful in the industry and because she was worried about upsetting Cosby’s wife, Camille, who was pregnant at the time.”
Hughes also detailed an assault that she says occurred in the early 1970s. She agreed to have lunch with Cosby after meeting him on a flight. She was using a hotel room to “freshen up” when Cosby ordered champagne and gave her a glass. When she woke up, she says, hours had passed. Cosby was gone, and she was “covered in semen.” A year later, she says, he saw her on a flight and flirted with her, as if he had no idea who she was or that they had previously met.
Tirl appeared on The Cosby Show in 1989. At the time, she said, he sexually harassed her, “hugging her in an overly intimate way,” but she didn’t report him for fear that he would use his influence in Hollywood to wreck her career.
The conference was held in Allred’s office in Los Angeles, where she has previously stood by two other Cosby accusers, actress Lili Bernard and writer Sammie Mays, as they made their statements against the comedian. Allred represents 21 Cosby accusers, including Judy Huth, who alleges Cosby molested her at the Playboy Mansion when she was 15 years old. It is Huth’s case for which Cosby must give a deposition this October.