Meet The Women Allegedly Raped By Bill Cosby (Photo)

Women Allegedly Raped By Bill Cosby Appear On The Cover of New York Magazine

In the years since women first said Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them and the months since the media started paying attention, it’s been difficult to keep track of the comedian’s alleged victims. Many publications — including The Washington Post — have reported dozens of versions of the same story: A young woman, often an aspiring actress, is violated by a man who thinks himself a mentor. 

After a few weeks, unfortunately, it became difficult to tell such stories apart. Was it P.J. Masten who said Cosby drugged and raped her in a Chicago hotel, or was that Lise-Lotte Lublin? 

New York magazine may have ended the relative anonymity of many Cosby accusers for good. For a cover story this week, New York interviewed and photographed 35 of Cosby’s alleged victims, supplementing the story with video interviews with six. 

“The group of women Cosby allegedly assaulted functions almost as a longitudinal study — both for how an individual woman, on her own, deals with such trauma over the decades and for how the culture at large has grappled with rape over the same time period,” the magazine wrote.

“In the ’60s, when the first alleged assault by Cosby occurred, rape was considered to be something violent committed by a stranger … But among younger women, and particularly online, there is a strong sense now that speaking up is the only thing to do, that a woman claiming her own victimhood is more powerful than any other weapon in the fight against rape.”

- Washington Post