Yet another woman has come forward alleging that she suffered abuse at the hands of Bill Cosby, and this time the accuser is former Hollywood executive Cindra Ladd, who claims that he drugged and raped her in 1969.
Ladd has opened up for the first time in a first-person essay for The Huffington Post, and she has made it clear that she will not be speaking up about the incident again in the future, but feels that it is important that she tells “the truth.”
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In the powerful piece, Ladd describes herself as “a 21-year-old single woman in the world’s most exciting city.” She met a much older Cosby, who was an “internationally known comedian and television star, one of the most likeable and popular entertainers in the business.”
Ladd — who is now married to Alan Ladd Jr. — describes how she met the comedian at his friend’s apartment but had a terrible headache at the time, for which Cosby claimed he had a “miracle cure his doctor had given him that would get rid of the headache.” He gave her a capsule, and the rest is somewhat of a blur.
“For more than 45 years I have tried to recall exactly what happened that night. To this day it remains a blur. I have a vague recollection of feeling like I was floating while walking through Times Square and watching some kind of Japanese samurai movie with him. I don’t remember where the theater was nor very much of the evening,” Ladd wrote.
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“What I do recall, vividly and clearly, is waking up the next morning nude in the bed of his friend’s apartment and seeing Cosby wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe and acting as if there was nothing unusual. It was obvious to me that he had had sex with me. I was horrified, embarrassed and ashamed. There was a mirror above the bed, which shocked me further.”
Ladd explains that at the time she never thought of going to the police because “it was a different time and ‘date rape’ was a concept that didn’t exist.”
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She kept the news of the night a secret (except for telling her roommate) for many years, but has decided to come forward now because she wants to give her support to the other accusers.
“As I write this, more than 20 women have come forward, many with stories that are remarkably similar to mine. In response to these brave women, I have read comments like, ‘What took them so long?’ and ‘What are they after now?’ I would ask these people to remember that up until relatively recently, prosecuting rape was a ‘he said/she said’ proposition where the victim was blamed for having worn ‘suggestive clothing’ or questioned as to why she went somewhere with her rapist,” she wrote.
Ladd’s essay is powerful and very moving, and you can read the full piece here.
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