"I remember a lot of pain": Janice Dickinson accuses Bill Cosby of raping her

The model told "Entertainment Tonight" that her publisher pressured her to leave the 1982 rape out of her memoir

Published November 19, 2014 2:49PM (EST)

Janice Dickinson     (AP/Jordan Strauss)
Janice Dickinson (AP/Jordan Strauss)

Janice Dickinson is the latest woman to accuse Bill Cosby of drugging and raping her. After passages from her 2002 memoir, "No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel," were rediscovered and found to contain recollections of being sexually harassed by the comedian, Dickinson sat down with "Entertainment Tonight" to expand on her account of meeting Cosby in the early 1980s. She claims that while he posed as a potential mentor to guide her to a singing and acting career, Cosby sexually assaulted her.

The self-proclaimed "world's first supermodel" and former "America's Next Top Model" judge told "ET" that she and Cosby had dinner together in 1982, shortly after she left rehab. During dinner, the comedian gave Dickinson a pill and a glass of red wine; after that, she claims, things got fuzzy:

The next morning I woke up, and I wasn't wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man ... Before I woke up in the morning, the last thing I remember was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me. And I remember a lot of pain. The next morning I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.

Dickinson also claims that she included her full account of the assault in the first draft of her memoir, but was pressured by her publisher and by Cosby's attorneys to remove the scene. As for why she never went to the police, she says she was “embarrassed and ashamed.”

"I was afraid of the consequences,” Dickinson told ET. “I was afraid of being labeled a whore or a slut and trying to sleep my way to the top of a career that never took place."

Like music publicist Joan Tarshis, who came forward earlier in the week to accuse Cosby of sexually assaulting her in 1969, Dickinson says she has chosen to speak out about her experience now in solidarity with the other accusers. "I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do, and it happened to me, and this is the true story," she said. "I believe all the other women."

Watch a portion of Dickinson's interview with "Entertainment Tonight" below:


By Jenny Kutner

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