Fox News Flash top Entertainment headlines 09/07
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Andrea Constand is opening up for the first time on television since Bill Cosby’s release from prison after a sexual assault conviction was overturned by Pennsylvania’s highest court in June.
The former Temple University employee was among the first to accuse Cosby of sexual assault – an allegation she said occurred in 2004 and ultimately led to the disgraced actor’s conviction in 2018.
Constand has previously said she took pills Cosby offered one night in January 2004, presuming they were herbal products, but she soon found her body going numb. Constand gave steady, unemotional testimony at both his first trial in 2017, which ended in a deadlock, and a second trial in 2018, when the jury convicted Cosby of drugging and violating her.
About 60 women have accused Cosby of sex crimes ranging from misconduct to battery to assault and beyond.
Now, in Constand’s first interview, the former professional basketball player told NBC that it was "disgusting" watching Cosby and his team lauding his release so openly in the public.
"He's a sexually violent predator who basically was let out of jail," Constand told NBC News’s Kate Snow in an interview previewed Tuesday on the "Today" show.
She added that Cosby’s release "didn't surprise me, given the level of the arrogance and having no remorse. During the time he was incarcerated, absolutely zero remorse for what he did to me."
Constand will be penning her experience and testimony in a new book, titled, "The Moment: Standing Up to Bill Cosby, Speaking Up for Women."
Andrea Constand is opening up for the first time on television since Bill Cosby’s release from prison in June after a sexual assault conviction was overturned by Pennsylvania’s highest court in June. (Getty Images)
Elsewhere in her sit-down with NBC, the former administrator said that while "Bill Cosby walks free, it doesn't change the fact that my testimony was believed."
"I have come way too far to go back to that place to wonder whether it's all worth it, or to have regrets," she continued in the preview. "It was worth it. But it was worth it because I didn't feel alone. I had a whole community, a whole army of women and other survivors, strangers, family, friends, who were right there with me."
BILL COSBY ACCUSER ANDREA CONSTAND WRITES ABOUT ACTOR'S TRIAL, #METOO MOVEMENT IN NEW MEMOIR
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the 83-year-old actor’s conviction for sexual assault after finding that District Attorney Kevin Steele, the prosecutor who brought the case against Cosby, violated an agreement to not charge him. It was a deal that previous District Attorney Bruce Castor had made with Cosby in 2005, though it had apparently never been put in writing.
Cosby was released from SCI Phoenix in Collegeville, Penn., outside Philadelphia, just before 2:30 p.m on June 30, state corrections officials told Fox News at the time. He was seen leaving the prison in a white car shortly afterward.
He had vowed to serve all 10 years rather than acknowledge any remorse over the 2004 encounter with Constand, who at the time slammed the overturning of the conviction and his release as "disappointing."
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"How can you — [a] district attorney without a judge's written immunity — enforce a decision on a backroom handshake?" Constand probed in her interview. "How can you give any credibility to that?"
In July, Cosby’s publicist confirmed to Fox News that his legal team is filing to recoup "hundreds of thousands" of dollars from the state for wrongful incarceration.
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"Mr. Cosby’s Constitutional Rights were abolished by D.A. Kevin Steele and Judge O’Neill and we’re exploring possible lawsuits against Montgomery County, as well as reviewing all mechanisms to ask that their bar license be suspended permanently," he said at the time.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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