After talking to the Daily Mail a few weeks ago, Barbara Bowman—who alleges Bill Cosby manipulated and raped her multiple times her when she was just a teenager—has spoken out again, this time in the Washington Post.
In an Op-Ed, Bowman renews her allegations against Cosby and shares her bemusement that, 30 years after the fact, it took a rant by a man (comedian Hannibal Buress to be specific) to make the public aware of Cosby’s crimes. “While I am grateful for the new attention to Cosby’s crimes, I must ask my own questions,” she wrote. “Why wasn’t I believed? Why didn’t I get the same reaction of shock and revulsion when I originally reported it? Why was I, a victim of sexual assault, further wronged by victim blaming when I came forward? The women victimized by Bill Cosby have been talking about his crimes for more than a decade. Why didn’t our stories go viral?”
Bowman goes on to say that while the statute of limitations has passed for Cosby to be prosecuted in her case, her fight for victims' rights continues. “It often takes years for young women to overcome those feeling and gain the confidence to come forward (by which point physical evidence is long gone),” she said. “Our legal system shouldn’t silence them a second time.”
Cosby has been getting skewered in the media lately, with TV appearances being canceled and an ill-advised “meme me” challenge going horribly awry. This is certainly not going to help rehab his image as he gears up for the release of a Netflix standup special and works on a new sitcom for NBC.
[via Washington Post]
