14 DAY TRIAL // Beverly Johnson, one of the biggest names in modeling in the ‘70s and one of the top 20 most influential people in fashion, is speaking out against Bill Cosby, saying the comedian also drugged and tried to rape her back in the ‘70s.
Johnson makes her accusations in an op-ed in Vanity Fair, in which she also argues why Cosby defenders shouldn’t include him in the same group as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner: he is not a victim like these people were, he is not a victim of racism, he is a monster.
Like the monster that he is, he deserves to be punished.
Using his fame and influence to lure young girls back to his home with false promises
Johnson’s account is similar to those of all the other women who have been speaking out in the past couple of months on the ways Cosby lured them to an isolated location on the promise of a career boost, only to drug and rape them.
Fortunately, Johnson understood what was happening, so she made sure she let him know that she knew he had drugged her, and this helped her avoid being raped, because it threw Cosby in a passion and he sent her packing.
Cosby promised her a role on his show, to boost her acting career, and when he was left alone with her, he tried to get her to “act” drunk to see how she’d fare on camera playing a drunk young mother. Before that though, he insisted that she drink a cappuccino he had just made, even though it was late at night and she told him she wasn’t in the habit of having caffeine at that hour.
He wouldn’t relent. By the second “sip,” Johnson knew that he’d drugged her – and “drugged [her] good.” She admits that she came up in a time when drugs were everywhere in the fashion industry, so she had naturally tried her share of mood enhancers.
Still, whatever he gave her was so strong that she could barely stand, she says. Understanding what was happening to her, she caused a major scene and got him so furious that he literally dragged her down the stairs and shoved her into a taxi.
She woke up the next day without a single memory of the ride home or how she’d gotten back in her bed, but a vivid memory of the attempted rape she managed to avoid.
Cosby is a monster
Johnson also spends a large chunk of the essay explaining why she didn’t come forward before: she was ashamed, she was afraid, she thought none of that had really happened to her. Since the first woman stepped forward in November with her account of the rape, she had been debating with herself whether to do the same.
In the meantime, the former model says, she talked to other women who have been raped by Cosby and got to know their stories and find out that they shared similar circumstances.
“I couldn’t sit back and watch the other women be vilified and shamed for something I knew was true,” Johnson says.
As for Cosby apologists who put him in the same sentence as the black men killed by whites in recent months, that’s not the case, the former model says: he is not innocent, he is a monster.
“I reached the conclusion that the current attack on African American men has absolutely nothing to do at all with Bill Cosby. He brought this on himself when he decided he had the right to have his way with who knows how many women over the last four decades. If anything, Cosby is distinguished from the majority of black men in this country because he could depend on the powers that be for support and protection,” Johnson concludes.
