Domestic Violence Awareness Month: Bill Cosby

Via Feministing: Stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress did a bit on alligations of Bill Cosby being a serial rapist. 13 women have accused Cosby of rape. Andrea Constand has brought a civil lawsuit against Cosby. That lawsuit was settled out of court.

What Cosby never mentioned was the civil lawsuit he settled just two days earlier with Andrea Constand, 32, a former Temple University employee who claimed Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in his Philadelphia-area mansion in 2004. Constand's lawyers Dolores Troiani and Bebe Kivitz ended up with 13 witnesses, most referred to in court documents as "Jane Does," who came forward voluntarily with strikingly similar claims of drugging and or abuse by Cosby. Terms of the settlement, reached before any of the women could testify, were not disclosed. But PEOPLE reporters have interviewed five of the women and share three of their stories now.

Cosby defenders can say why didn't these women press charges? The other view is if Cosby is innocent why settle? If true this is highly unsettling. Barbara Bowman says she was drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby.

A month or two later, she was in Atlantic City and says she was given another glass of red wine and felt "completely doped up again." Confused, Bowman somehow made it back to her room, but the next day Cosby summoned her to his suite. After she arrived, Bowman says, Cosby "threw me on the bed and braced his arm under my neck so I couldn't move my head, and he started trying to take his clothes off. I remember all the clinking of his belt buckle. And he was trying to take my pants down, and I was trying to keep them on." Bowman says that not long after she resisted the assault, Cosby cut off contact with her and had her escorted to the airport for a flight back to Denver. She didn't tell authorities about what happened, but she did approach an attorney who "wouldn't take it seriously," says Margo Singagliese, 52, the friend who went with her to see the lawyer.

This is something to think about the next time you hear Cosby lecturing others on the standards and morality.