Bill Cosby, once one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars, has dramatically fallen from grace since facing multiple accusations of sexual assault and misconduct — leading to a criminal conviction in 2018 on three counts of aggravated sexual assault. Here’s a look back at the scandal.
1965
In 2014, Kristina Ruehli accused Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting her when she was 22 years old.
July 1997
Cosby admits to paying $100,000 to a woman named Shawn Berkes to keep secret an extramarital affair they had in the 1970s. But he denied he was the father of her 22-year-old daughter.
March 2000
Lachele Covington files police report claiming Cosby touched her inappropriately. No charges were brought against Cosby.
May 2004
Cosby delivers his famous “Pound Cake” speech at NAACP Awards, criticizing too-permissive parenting by African-Americans. A judge later cited the moralizing speech when unsealing Cosby’s deposition in 2015.
Jan. 13, 2005
Former Temple University student Andrea Constand files a police report accusing Cosby of sexual assault. She later files a civil suit citing 12 other Jane Doe accusers.
October 2014
A video of comedian Hannibal Buress doing a stand-up routine about Cosby’s reputation with women goes viral, bringing the accusations back to public attention.
Nov. 18, 2014
Former “America’s Next Top Model” judge Janice Dickinson accuses Cosby of sexual assault. Cosby’s lawyers later call her a liar.
Nov. 18, 2014
Netflix cancels Cosby’s planned stand-up special after more than a dozen women come forward accusing the actor of sexual assault.
Nov. 19, 2014
NBC drops planned comedy series starring Cosby. NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt later explains that the accusations had reached “critical mass.”
Nov. 19, 2014
TV Land pulls reruns of Cosby’s 1980’s sitcom “The Cosby Show” from the air just hours after the cancellation of his NBC series.
Nov. 21, 2014
Cosby receives a standing ovation at a stand-up comedy show in Melbourne, Florida. The rest of the tour is plagued by cancellations, hecklers and protests.
Dec. 26, 2014
One of the comedian’s most outspoken critics, Judd Apatow, begins his Twitter crusade against Cosby. “Guys who rape a lot aren’t cool,” the director writes.
Jan. 6, 2015
Phylicia Rashad, the actress who played Cosby’s wife for eight seasons on “The Cosby Show,” defends her former TV husband: “What you’re seeing is the destruction of a legacy. And I think it’s orchestrated.”
May 15, 2015
Cosby breaks his silence on the allegations in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I have been in this business over 52 years, and I have never seen anything like this,” he says.
July 6, 2015
A judge makes public Cosby’s 2005 deposition from the Andrea Constand civil suit. In the documents, Cosby admits to obtaining Quaaludes to give to young women he intended to have sex with.
July 7, 2015
Bounce and BET-owned Centric networks pull all reruns of “The Cosby Show” in the wake of the new revelations.
July 14, 2015
After months of defending her friend against his accusers on “The View,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg reverses course, saying, “All of the information that’s out there kind of points to guilt.” Her reversal follows other former Cosby backers like singer Jill Scott.
July 18, 2015
After obtaining the full 1,000-page deposition from the Constand case, The New York Times publishes excerpts that detail his history of womanizing with women as young as 19.
Dec. 21, 2015
A week after Cosby filed a countersuit for defamation against seven of his accusers, the comedian sued model Beverly Johnson for defamation. A complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court accuses Johnson of trying to push herself back into the limelight with a false allegation that he drugged her and attempted to have sex with her.
Dec. 30, 2015
Cosby was arraigned on felony charges of criminal sexual assault stemming from a purported incident more than a decade earlier in Pennsylvania involving a former Temple University employee. A previous district attorney declined to charge the star in 2005.
Feb. 3, 2016
Pennsylvania judge Steven O’Neill denies Cosby‘s lawyers’ request to have the criminal sexual assault charges dismissed.
Feb. 19, 2016
Cosby drops the defamation lawsuit against model Beverly Johnson.
May 24, 2016
Montgomery County district judge Elizabeth McHugh finds in a preliminary hearing that there is enough evidence for the criminal trial to proceed.
Feb. 24, 2017
The judge rules only one of the 13 other accusers prosecutors had planned to call to the stand may testify at the criminal trial. The unnamed woman was previously employed by Cosby’s former agent at WME.
May 16, 2017
Cosby says in an interview with SiriusXM radio host Michael Smerconish that he likely will not testify at the trial.
May 19, 2017
Montgomery County Judges Thomas DeRicci and Steven O’Neill bar all electronic communications from the courthouse, meaning the trial will not be televised and journalists will be barred from live-tweeting.
May 24, 2017
A jury is selected for Cosby’s trial. Following Cosby’s assertion that race could be a factor in the decision, the jury is made up of four white women, six white men, one black woman and one black man.
June 5, 2017
The criminal trial begins in Norristown, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia.
June 17, 2017
After 5 days and 52 hours of deliberations, the 12-person jury is unable to reach a unanimous verdict and a mistrial is declared. Montgomery County D.A. Kevin Steele said he intends to retry Cosby at a later date.
June 22, 2017
Following the mistrial, representatives for Cosby said the comedian had planned a tour for a series of educational “town halls” about sexual assault. “People need to be educated,” said Cosby spokesperson Ebonee Benson. “A brush against the shoulder, anything at this point, can be considered sexual assault.” The plans were quickly met with pushback.
June 26, 2017
A juror from the Cosby mistrial said on “Good Morning America” that Cosby’s celebrity and a lack of “substantial evidence” led to the jurors being unable to reach an unanimous verdict over the 52 hours of deliberation. “I think if it was a regular Average Joe, it probably wouldn’t have taken that long,” juror Bobby Dugan said.
June 27, 2017
Cosby pushed back about “false” news reports about his tour. “The current propaganda that I am going to conduct a sexual assault tour is false. Any further information about public plans will be given at the appropriate time,” Cosby said in a statement.
June 27, 2017
A trial date of July 30, 2018, was set for Cosby’s California civil sexual assault case, in which he was accused of sexually assaulting Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion in 1974 when she was 15 years old.
Aug. 1, 2017
Bill Cosby’s defense attorney Brian McMonagle quits ahead of the comedian’s second sexual assault trial. No reason was given for McMonagle’s departure.
Jan. 18, 2018
Prosecutors in the Cosby case make a request for 19 of the actor’s accusers to testify in court. Prosecutors originally wanted 13 accusers to testify in the original trial, but only one was allowed, with the defense arguing that it would prejudice the jury.
Jan. 26, 2018
Lawyers for Cosby say that the prosecutors failed to disclose and later destroyed evidence related to the case of Temple University worker Andrea Constand, adding that the misconduct was serious enough to warrant a dismissal of the case.
March 12, 2018
Cosby’s former TV daughter on “The Cosby Show,” Lisa Bonet, says in an interview that though she didn’t know about the dozens of sexual misconduct allegations, she “always” sensed some darkness surrounding the comedian. There was just energy,” Bonet says. “And that type of sinister, shadow energy cannot be concealed.”
April 9, 2018
On the first day of Cosby’s scheduled retrial, a topless woman charges at Cosby as he enters the Norristown, Pennsylvania, courthouse. The woman was a protestor with “Woman’s Lives Matter,” and she came within a few feet of Cosby before she was intercepted by sheriff’s deputies.
April 10, 2018
Cosby’s defense attorney Tom Mesereau painted Cosby accuser Andrea Constand as a “con artist,” saying she wasn’t attracted to him physically but for his fame and money. The defense added that Constand had changed her story multiple times.
April 12, 2018
Supermodel Janice Dickinson testified that Cosby raped her in Lake Tahoe in 1982. “I wanted to punch him in the face,” Dickinson told the court.
April 18, 2018
Marguerite Jackson, a former fellow employee of Temple University alongside Bill Cosby’s accuser Andrea Constand, was permitted to testify for the defense on Wednesday during the comedian’s retrial, after her testimony was blocked from the original 2017 trial. Jackson claimed she shared a hotel room with Constand, asking her at the time, “‘Did this really happen to you?’ and [Constand] said ‘no, no it didn’t. But I could say it happened, get that money. I could quit my job, go back to school.’”
April 19, 2018
Cosby’s defense team made their fifth motion for a mistrial, with Judge Steven T. O’Neill striking down the motion as having “simply no grounds for a mistrial” and being raised too late.
April 25, 2018
Two hours into deliberations, the jury’s first question was for a legal definition of consent following an entire day of closing arguments.
April 26, 2018
Cosby is found guilty by the jury in his retrial over accusations made by former Temple University employee Andrea Constand. The jury found him guilty on all three counts of aggravated indecent assault, stemming from former Temple University employee Constand’s accusation that the comedian molested her in 2004 at his home outside of Philadelphia.
September 25, 2018
Cosby is sentenced to three to 10 years in a Pennsylvania prison and declared a “sexually violent predator” whose name will appear on a sex-offender registry sent to neighbors, schools and victims.
