Bill Cosby Walks Free - a Sad, Infuriating day for Sexual Assault Victims

“Finally!! A terrible wrong is being righted - a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” so read Phylicia Rashad’s tweet today. Ms. Rashad, known around the world as the smart and poised Claire Huxtable from “The Bill Cosby Show” was reacting to the news that her costar and convicted sex offender, Bill Cosby’s guilty verdict has been overturned and that he is being released from prison. 

What Ms. Rashad fails to comprehend or give a f@$# about is the fact that Cosby’s verdict is not being overturned because he has been found innocent, but rather because of a technicality in the judicial system that disallows the use of some of his own incriminating testimony, to be used to obtain a conviction. None of this changes the fact that Cosby is guilty of assaulting multiple women.

Sixty women have accused Bill Cosby of rape and other sexual misconduct, spanning a course of over forty years (from 1965 to 2008 according to Wikipedia). What about justice for them?!! What about the wrongs committed by Cosby against them, Ms. Rashad?!! As a woman, do you not care about victims of sexual abuse? Or are you a completely self-absorbed celebrity who's only interested in safeguarding your own legacy, which starts and ends with the character, Mrs. Huxtable from “The Bill Cosby Show”?

Today is a sad and infuriating day - for the women who had the guts to come forward and accuse Bill Cosby, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, of sexual assault, and to millions of women around the world who saw that a sexual predator was finally found guilty for his crimes and sent to prison, making them believe in the judicial system. 

What message does this send to the victims of sexual abuse out there in the world now? Will this example of the judicial system failing the victims yet again deter them from coming forward? What is the whole point of going through months of media scrutiny, giving heart wrenching testimony in court and being subject to humiliating cross questioning from the defense lawyers, if the perpetrator can get out on a simple technicality?!! The nail in the coffin for the hope of justice ever being served for Bill Cosby’s victims comes in the form of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling that Cosby cannot be prosecuted again on the same charges!! 

Given the fact that Cosby’s pattern of abuse spanned four decades, it’s safe to assume that the sixty women who actually came forward and accused Cosby are just the tip of the iceberg, and the real count of women who have suffered at the hands of the man often dubbed “America's Dad”, is far higher.

I’m shocked and enraged that the judges who make up the Pennsylvania Supreme Court treated this matter with such complete and utter disregard for the victims, instead doing everything in their power to make sure that the accused criminal be protected to the maximum extent allowable by law. It appalls me that the court had the audacity to use phrases like "an affront to fundamental fairness" and the need to uphold "fair play and decency" to justify this shameful ruling, so as to make sure Mr. Bill Cosby's rights have not been violated by the judicial system. No matter how many women Cosby has abused, God forbid his judicial rights not be upheld to ensure "fairness"!!

Instead of overturning Cosby’s verdict and letting him out of prison to be able to walk the streets as a free man again, the judges could have handled this in a more empathetic manner that showed their regard for the suffering of the victims. The current verdict by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is nothing, but a slap in the face of every sexual abuse victim in the country.