What's The Verdict?

    By yesterday two more  women, journalist Joan Tarshis and model Janice Dickinson, had stepped forward to accuse Bill Cosby of drugging and raping them when they were in their teens or twenties. 
    Their stories are similar to the stories of the 13 other women who've accused Cosby of sexual assault. 
    In 2006 one of Cosby's alleged victims,  Andrea Constand, director of Women's basketball at Temple University, sued Cosby for drugging and raping her when she was a grad student and the case was settled out of court.    But there has been no legal action taken against Cosby by any of the other women who claim to have been his victims. 
    But now these women are starting to come forward.  They appear not to be seeking any kind of  criminal prosecution or monetary gain, but simply want their stories told; they want to let the world know what they claim Bill Cosby did to them back when they were too young, afraid, ashamed and insecure to seek justice for the violence committed against them.
   So now they are seeking justice in the court of public opinion.
   But when you think of it, are not all legally binding outcomes in our courts of law, in reality, determined by public opinion?  That is, the opinion of twelve people, or sometimes a single person -a judge - who've considered  the evidence and come to a conclusion that the rest of society has agreed to accept?  In fact are not all the laws of our  country - and of all democratic countries - the opinions of people whom the public has elected to come up with tenets of right and wrong according to the accepted opinions of society as a whole?
    Bill Cosby's lawyer, meanwhile, has once again  denied the allegations against his client,  stating that, "Mr. Cosby does not intend to dignify these allegations with any comment."   
    Which course of action he is free to take in the court of public opinion.
    But it won't stop the trial  from proceeding, especially with more women testifying every day.
    But if 77-year-old Bill Cosby is in fact innocent then he ought to mount a defense, just as 79-year-old Woody Allen did last February when his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow accused him of molesting her decades earlier.
    Woody Allen presented his defense in a February 7, 2014 Op-ed piece in the New York Times (See my post from Feb 18,  2014) in which he laid out the convincing facts that ended up exonerating him in the court of public opinion.
    Bill Cosby should do the same.  He should give us facts, convince us, his public jury,  that his reason for taking a 17-year-old girl on trips around the country and then setting her up in an apartment in New York had nothing to do with the expectation of getting sex from her.  He should explain what his legitimate business was with each of the 15 women who say he drugged and raped them.  He should clear his name.  If he can.
    But, of course, Bill Cosby isn't going to do that.  Perhaps because stonewalling serves him better.
    And so, what I believe his accusers should now do is take their case out of the court of public opinion and bring it to a court of law.  They should file a collective assault and battery lawsuit against Bill Cosby just as Andrea Constand did.  However, they should refuse to settle; let the defendant and plaintiffs, as well as all the agents, handlers, staff, friends and peripheral actors in this drama be called to testify under oath. 
    And then maybe someone would tell the truth, the whole truth, ad nothing but the truth.