Cosby Sentence

[Rev. Rye]

A huge study of how rare false rape accusations in America really are has, in fact, been done recently. The results? About 5.55%. (1 in 18) A fairly small drop in the bucket compared to the number of rapes that actually do happen, even moreso when considering the many that are never reported, but hardly as astronomical as you imply. For Cosby's 60 accusers to make up that quota, there would have to be either 1080 reports nationwide or over 5,537 false accusers.

But, of course, we have several people who accused him before the Hannibal Burress routine that made the allegations went viral besides the ones in Green et al. vs. Cosby (the initial lawsuit). Janice Dickinson, who apparently wrote the incident in her autobiography, but the publisher cut it before it got published (in 2002), and years later, would make vague allegations in a Howard Stern interview.





And also Cynthia Myers, who said this in a posthumously published interview: “My stomach still turns when I see Bill Cosby in his ads sitting with a bunch of youngsters. I saw firsthand how he would use drugs to have sex with women. I never shed a tear when I heard his son was murdered on the 405. I do feel sorry for his son that he paid with his life for the sins of his father."

Cases of this magnitude where all the accusations are fake are very rare, and the only cases I can think of with anywhere near as many completely false accusations are the "Satanic Panic" Daycare trials (McMartin and the like), likely Michael Jackson, and (possibly) Jian Ghomeshi. The former had highly ambitious prosecutors brainwashing small children into testifying about ludicrously implausible crimes, and the latter was marked by so many unusual circumstances (including, but not limited to, thousands of texts between two of the accusers, and the police actively soliciting more victims) that it's damn near impossible to objectively gauge Ghomeshi's actual guilt. And also, even Michael Jackson and Jian Ghomeshi didn’t have 60 accusers.

It's theoretically possible that all sixty of these women were in on some plot that eventually took off in 2014 after a bunch of false starts, but do I really have to explain how unlikely it sounds? One accusation that turns out to be false is certainly believable. Multiple accusations push credibility. Sixty accusations, all false? Basically pimp-slapping willing suspension of disbelief.

One incident that comes to mind as making a lot more sense in the light of the accusations is this article from an AP reporter who interviewed him in 1992, at the height of his tenure as America's Dad, and he ended up talking a lot about how he didn't trust the press (even though he didn't have ANY reason to distrust them at this point, with hardly any negative press at all), and did whatever he could to control the interview. Years later, the AP reporter in question wrote about the interview. Reading that he was a serial rapist who could lose control over his family-friendly image at any moment, it makes a hell of a lot more sense.