In a stunning act of journalism and documentary writing, New York Magazine has interviewed 35 women of the 46 who have publicly come forward against comedian Bill Cosby and accuse him of rape or sexual assault.
The cover story is a feat of planning and circumstance—the magazine began contacting women six months ago when the number of Cosby accusers was much lower, and the project "snowballed" as more and more women shared their stories with the media. From the essay:
This project began six months ago, when we started contacting the then-30 women who had publicly claimed Cosby assaulted them, and it snowballed in the same way that the initial accusations did: First two women signed on, then others heard about it and joined in, and so on. Just a few days before the story was published, we photographed the final two women, bringing our total to 35. “I’m no longer afraid,” said Chelan Lasha, who came forward late last year to say that Cosby had drugged her when she was 17. “I feel more powerful than him.”
The 35 women featured have been interviewed separately, but they all appear together on the front cover of New York's July issue. Online, each woman has her own portrait, and readers can click on any one of them to read her own account of her assault. Many of them, according to New York, have said they know others who have been assaulted by the Cosby Show family man, and are choosing to still keep quiet about it.
Read the full story on New York Magazine's style blog, the Cut.