Why No One Should Be Surprised By the Bill Cosby Rape Allegations: A Timeline of His Bad Behavior

While companies rush to cut ties with Bill Cosby in the wake of mounting rape allegations, the truth is they shouldn't have made such partnerships to begin with. Thirteen women accused Cosby of sexual assault nearly 10 years ago, when the first official charge against him was made in 2005. But it wasn't until a video of (male) comedian Hannibal Buress calling Cosby a rapist during an October stand-up set went viral that people began to care. Since then, even more women have come forward with horrific allegations about Cosby dating back decades.
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There are many who are expressing shock that the imagined family man was capable of sexual assault, despite the fact that evidence and stories of Cosby's megalomania, intimidation and control tactics have been public knowledge since the height of his fame during The Cosby Show.
Here is a timeline of Cosby's bad behavior and abuse charges.
1965: Kristina Ruehli, then a secretary at Artists Agency Corp., says Cosby drugged her and tried to force her to perform oral sex at a party in his home. "I pushed myself away and ran to the bathroom and threw up. I was feeling really ill," she says. "I left the bathroom and he wasn't there. I don't know where he went. But I left right away."
1967: Carla Green, a Playboy Bunny working at The Playboy Club in Los Angeles, goes on a date with a friend of Cosby's who takes her to the comedian's house. Towards the end of the evening, when she and Cosby are alone playing pool, she says he attacks her. He "grabbed me in such a powerful way. Grabbing me," she says. "He was much bigger than me. Much bigger and he pulled me so hard and so rough. ... And then kissed me so hard, right in the mouth." She is able to push Cosby away and leaves immediately.
1969: Joan Tarshis, a 19-year-old aspiring comedy writer, says Cosby fixes her a "redeye," a Bloody Mary topped with beer, in his bungalow while they work on material for The Bill Cosby Show. "The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed. Through the haze I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an infection and he would catch it and his wife would know he had sex with someone. But he just found another orifice to use," she says. Tarshis later attends a Cosby stand-up set and has another redeye. "I remember feeling very, very stoned and asking his chauffeur to take me back to the car," she says. "The next thing I remember was waking up in his bed back at the [hotel], naked. I remember thinking 'You old sh--, I guess you got me this time, but it's the last time you'll ever see me.'"
Early 1970s: Linda Joy Traitz, a 19-year-old waitress at Café Figaro, a restaurant Cosby partially owns, accepts a ride home from the comedian. Instead of taking her home, however, "he drove out to the beach and opened a briefcase filled with assorted drugs and kept offering me pills 'to relax,' which I declined," she says. "He began to get sexually aggressive and wouldn't take 'No' for an answer. I freaked out and demanded to be taken home."
1970: Tamara Lucier, a model, alleges that she met Cosby for lunch in Los Angeles. She was suffering from the flu, and Cosby gives her two capsules of what he said was the cold medicine Contact. The medicine makes Lucier "stoned," and Cosby offers her to drive her home. Once at her home, Cosby allegedly begins to grope and kiss her as he takes her clothes off. Lucier says she began throwing things and threatened to Cosby that things were "going to go very badly" if he tried to rape her. She says Cosby left soon after, but also left two $100 bills on Lucier's nightstand.
1971: Cosby allegedly forces Louisa Mortiz, an actress, to perform oral sex on him in a Tonight Show greenroom. "He took his hands and put them on the back of my head and forced his penis in my mouth, saying, 'Have a taste of this. It will do you good in so many ways,'" she says.
1976: Cosby is at a party at the Playboy Mansion when Tommy Smothers congratulates the comedian on his latest TV show, not knowing it had been canceled a day prior. "He just looked at me [as if to say] 'F--- you,' and I said, 'Well, f--- you,' ... and walked away," Smothers recalls. Cosby then "sucker-punched" Smothers and stood over him for "a minute or two ... screaming at me, 'C'mon, I'll kick your ass,' stuff like that," he says.
1982: Janice Dickinson, then an up-and-coming actress and singer, meets with Cosby in Lake Tahoe to discuss a possible job offer. After having dinner together, she says he gives her a glass of red wine and a pill to help ease menstrual cramps. "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," she says. "And I remember a lot of pain."
1984: Beth Ferrier, a model, begins a six-month-long affair with Cosby. He ends it abruptly, but then invites her to a club in Denver, where she lives, to see him perform. Ferrier says Cosby gave her what he called her "favorite coffee, something I made, to relax you," and she begins to feel woozy. Several hours later, she says she woke up unaware of what had happened. "I was in the back of my car all alone," she claims. "My clothes were a mess. My bra was undone. My top was untucked." Ferrier says she later confronted Cosby at his hotel and he told she had had too much to drink.
1984: TV Guide Magazine publishes a profile of Cosby, in which he is described as "combative, defensive, challenging, threatening and hostile. The most innocuous line of questioning could set him off." The article also details his propensity for holding grudges against anyone who digs too much into his personal life. "For example, TV Guide published an article 15 years ago that told how many cars he owned," the writer says. "He mentioned it to me at least twice, in anger."
1986: Barbara Bowman, Cosby's then-protégé, alleges he forced her to masturbate him in a Reno, Nev., hotel room. In a later incident at his Manhattan townhouse, she says she woke up nauseous in a men's T-shirt after a glass of red wine. After a similar incident in Atlantic City, she says Cosby summons her to his room, where he "threw me on the bed and braced his arm under my neck so I couldn't move my head, and he started trying to take his clothes off. I remember all the clinking of his belt buckle. And he was trying to take my pants down, and I was trying to keep them on." After she resists his advances, he cuts off contact and has an escort take her to the airport for a flight home. She later sees a lawyer who "wouldn't take it seriously," according to a friend who went with her to the appointment.
1987: When Lisa Bonet takes a role in Angel Heart while appearing on The Cosby Show, Cosby tells her: "Lisa, this is called The Cosby Show, and I know how this business works. I know that you kids can be erased just like that. I've been in this business long enough to know that. And there's no reason why you shouldn't be working. And get out of my dressing room."
1989: Cosby's daughter Erinn, who was a coke addict, accuses Mike Tyson of sexual assault. Cosby forces her to seek treatment and says she wouldn't be allowed into the family until she fixed her life. She remains estranged from her family for nearly a decade until she attends her brother Ennis' funeral.
May 1989: While addressing graduates at Notre Dame, Cosby singles out and publicly criticizes student Dean Brown, a star football player, for his 2.5 grade point average. "That's nothing," Cosby says. Brown cries and Cosby brings him on stage, where Brown attempts to explain how he struggled balancing schoolwork and football. Brown, who died in 2012 of a blood clot, felt like a failure for years afterward because of Cosby's comments, according to Jerry Barca, who wrote a book about Notre Dame's unbeaten 1988 season.
February 1992: Cosby tells an Associated Press reporter during an interview: "Tell me what you want to ask and we'll see how it goes. If it doesn't go well, I'll give you a piece of fruit. I'll give you an apple or pear and you can be on your way." He then allows the interview to continue, but less than a week after the article is published, Cosby sends the reporter a package that contains a sheet of paper that says, "Here's your apple," signed by Cosby, and a shriveled apple.
April 30, 1992: Cosby appears on NBC to try to end the Rodney King Riots by asking everyone to watch the Cosby Show series finale instead that night.

1992: After Angela Leslie, an aspiring model and actress, sends Cosby a photograph and letter, she meets him in Las Vegas. She says she is summoned to his room, where Cosby makes her a stiff drink and tells her to act drunk. "I tasted it and put it down. Then he asked me to go into the bathroom and wet my hair. . . . I walked back out, and he had removed his clothing and gotten into bed," she says. Then, she says, he began rubbing against her before pouring lotion into her palm and pulling her hand under the blankets. "With his hand on top of mine, he had me massage his penis," she says. "He masturbated with my hand." 

1993: After Malcolm-Jamal Warner's sitcom Here and Now, which Cosby produced, fails, Cosby blames the writers, the bad timeslot, the network and, basically, the lack of power and control he had. To remedy this, Cosby repeatedly attempts to buy NBC.

Mid-1990s: Cosby visits the Philadelphia projects he lived in as a kid and confronts an apparent drug addict living there about why he doesn't have a job. When the 21-year-old doesn't have answers, Cosby tells him that there is no excuse for his situation.
January 2004: Andrea Constand, director of operations for Temple University's women's basketball team, visits Cosby, whom she had met in 2002, at his Pennsylvania home to discuss career advice. After allegedly giving her herbal pills to help her with her anxiety, Constand says Cosby "touched her breasts and vagina area, rubbed his penis against her hand, and digitally penetrated" her.
March 2004: Cosby gives a speech at the Year of Child production at a Philadelphia church, during which he attacks the modern parenting styles to an audience of young children and their parents. A Philadelphia Inquirer columnist runs an article stating he chose the wrong place and time for such a lecture, and an angry Cosby calls the author a few days later demanding that she issue a retraction in print because she was wrong and the audience did need to hear his message. She refuses, and Cosby eventually writes a letter to the Inquirer, which is printed, and has his lawyers threaten the paper with legal action.
May 2004: While receiving a philanthropy award in Washington, D.C., Cosby says the poor are "not holding up their end of the deal" and that it is the parents' fault when their children end up in prison. He goes on to attack black youths for their style choices and parents for naming their children "Shaniqua, Taliqua and Muhammand and all that crap."
Jan. 13, 2005:  Constand, now living near Toronto, accuses Cosby of "inappropriate touching" to Canadian authorities. Cosby's lawyer dismisses her claim as "utterly preposterous" and "plainly bizarre."
Feb. 10, 2005: After hearing Constand's claims, Lucier, now named Tamara Green, goes on the Today show and becomes the second woman to publicly accuse Cosby of sexual abuse. After her interview with Matt Lauer, Cosby's lawyer calls Green's allegations "absolutely false. Mr. Cosby does not know the name Tamara Green or Tamara Lucier, and the incident she describes did not happen."
March 8, 2005: A month after the Montgomery County, Pa., district attorney announces he will not press charges against Cosby based on Constand's claims because of lack of evidence, she files a civil suit against Cosby, with charges of assault and battery. She asks for at least $150,000 in damages. Thirteen other women who claim they had similar experiences with Cosby, one being Green, are mentioned in the suit, but are kept anonymous.
April 1, 2006: Cosby speaks at a march to rally support from New Orleans residents who have been disenfranchised and relocated after Hurricane Katrina. The comedian, however, focuses on the problems facing these citizens before Katrina hit — issues with teenage pregnancy, high murder rates, etc., that, in Cosby's mind, aren't symptoms of institutionalized racism, but are caused by these Katrina victims.

That same month, Cosby tells Michael Eric Dyson that he won't appear on his radio show because Cosby is convinced Dyson was wasn't telling his own life story properly by focusing on institutional issues rather than personal responsibility and being self-made. "Until you gain clarity, I will not come on your show," Cosby repeatedly says.
June 2005: One of the anonymous witnesses, Ferrier, goes public.
June 9, 2006: Another witness, Bowman, goes public in an interview with Philadelphia magazine.
Nov. 8, 2006: Cosby settles with Constand and none of the 13 other women testify.
Dec. 18, 2006: People publishes the claims of Constand, Green, Ferrier and Bowman. The magazine also reports that three of the anonymous witnesses from Constand's suit accepted cash from Cosby for years, and two others began consensual sexual relationships with Cosby.
Feb. 7, 2014: Newsweekinterviews Green and Bowman again about the alleged assaults, the former of which recalls running into Cosby in Las Vegas and screaming at him words like "liar" and "rapist." Cosby's lawyer doesn't address Bowman's claims, but calls Green's claim "a 10-year-old, discredited accusation that proved to be nothing at the time, and is still nothing."
Oct. 16, 2014: Hannibal Buress reignites the controversy surrounding the rape allegations during a stand-up set in Philadelphia. "Bill Cosby has the f---ing smuggest old black man public persona that I hate. Pull your pants up, black people. 'I was on TV in the '80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.' Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. So, [that] brings you down a couple notches," Buress says. "I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns. ... I've done this bit on stage, and people don't believe. People think I'm making it up. ...That sh-- is upsetting. If you didn't know about it, trust me. You leave here and Google 'Bill Cosby rape.' It's not funny. That sh-- has more results than 'Hannibal Buress.'"
Nov. 6, 2014: An Associated Press reporter asks Cosby to comment on the rape allegations. Cosby responds, but as soon as the interview wraps, he begins bullying the reporter to promise the footage won't be shown if he has any "integrity." The reporter makes no such promise and footage of the exchange is released two weeks later in the wake of new allegations.
Nov. 13, 2014: Bowman writes an op-ed in the Washington Post titled, "Bill Cosby raped me. Why did it take 30 years for people to believe my story?" She notes that "only after a man" called Cosby out did the public begin to take the allegations seriously.
Nov. 15, 2014: When asked about the claims on NPR's "Weekend Edition," Cosby stays completely silent and merely shakes his head. His lawyer later releases a statement saying the comedian "won't dignify these allegations with any response."
Nov. 16, 2014: Tarshis comes forward in an essay for Hollywood Elsewhere.
Nov. 17, 2014: Traitz posts a lengthy Facebook post detailing her encounter with Cosby.
Nov. 18, 2014: Dickinson publicly accuses Cosby of raping her in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. She says she tried to include the assault in her 2002 autobiography No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel, but Cosby's legal team pressured her and publisher Harper Collins to remove it from the book. "Stuffing feelings of rape and my unresolved issue with this incident has drove me into a life of trying to hurt myself because I didn't have counsel and I was afraid," she says.

Late that night, Netflix indefinitely postpones Cosby's stand-up special Bill Cosby 77 that had been scheduled for Thanksgiving week.
Nov. 19, 2014: TV Land pulls all Cosby Show reruns and NBC drops the sitcom it had been developing with him.
Nov. 20, 2014: Three more women come forward with allegations Cosby sexually assaulted them. Moritz and Green, now Carla Ferrigno, each come forward, the latter despite alleged pleas from her actor husband not to. One of the anonymous witnesses from Cortstand's 2005 court case also comes forward as Theresa Serignese. Cosby's lawyer responds to the newest accusations. "We've reached a point of absurdity. The stories are getting more ridiculous," he says. "Mortiz is a lawyer who was disciplined by the California State Bar and ordered not to practice." We pulled the documents -- she can't practice because she didn't report certain quarterly reports ... the nature of the reports is unclear from the documents."

Meanwhile, Renita Chaney Hill tells Pittsburgh's KDKA that when she was an aspiring 15-year-old actress and model, she began a four-year, on-again, off-again relationship with Cosby in which she believes he gave her drugged drinks Although the majority of the time she woke up in her bed unable to recall how she got there, she does remember him kissing and touching her as she passed out once. On social media, SVU actress Michelle Hurd reportedly posts to Facebook about her time as a stand-in on The Cosby Show, when the star would allegedly touch her inappropriately during "acting exercises."

Amidst all of these accusations, the producers of The Cosby Show release the following statement: "The Bill we know was a brilliant and wonderful collaborator on a show that changed the landscape of television. These recent news reports are beyond our knowledge or comprehension."
That night, Cosby performs a sold-out stand-up show in the Bahamas that he dedicates to his wife, Camille.
Nov. 21, 2014: Leslie comes forward in an interview with the New York Daily News, as does Ruehli in Philadelphia magazine.
Before his Florida stand-up show that night, Cosby tells Florida Today that he won't address the allegations. "I know people are tired of me not saying anything, but a guy doesn't have to answer to innuendos. People should fact check. People shouldn't have to go through that and shouldn't answer to innuendos."

Nov. 22, 2014: In a Washington Post report on Cosby, former Playboy Playmate Victoria Valentino says that in 1970, the comedian had sexually assaulted her after drugging her and her roommate.

Nov. 23, 2014: Former NBC employee Frank Scotti tells the New York Daily News that during The Cosby Show era, he covered up for the comedian: standing guard outside the comedian’s dressing room while he brought young models in, paying off women in exchange for their silence, and even securing a second apartment for Cosby's exploits.

Nov. 24, 2014: Moritz tells TMZ of her plans to file a class action lawsuit against Bill Cosby and hopes at least nine other accusers will join her to present a united front. Meanwhile, yet another alleged victim speaks up. Ex-model Jewell Allison tells the NY Daily News about her abuse by Cosby in the 1980s.

CBS News also reports that yet another two of Cosby's concert dates in Connecticut and Washington have been postponed.

Dec. 1, 2014: Cosby stepped down from the board of trustees of Temple University, of which he had been a member for 32 years. The university had been under pressure, even from some of its own alums, to distance itself from the embattled comedian.

Dec. 2, 2014: In a CNN interview, Dickinson went into further detail about her alleged rape by Cosby in Nevada. With all the accusations levied against the comedian, Dickinson challenged him to "come out and at least acknowledge that he is a pig, that he is a monster and that he raped me."

Dec. 3, 2014: Judy Huth filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby, alleging that he had sexually molested her back in 1974 when she was only 15.

Dec. 4, 2014: According to People, Beth Ferrier and two other accusers, represented by famed civil-rights attorney Gloria Allred, filed sexual assault complaints against Cosby.

Dec. 5, 2014: Cosby countersued Huth and claimed that she attempted to extort money from Cosby and sell her story before filing suit.

Dec. 11, 2014: In a column for Vanity Fair, former supermodel Beverly Johnson says Cosby attempted to assault her after she auditioned to be an extra on <i>The Cosby Show</i> in the 1980s.