There is far too much smoke for there to not be a LOT of fire in this case.

I have had people mention to me that this is all some sort of grand conspiracy against Mr. Cosby. C'mon people.

Does anyone really believe that 30 women from different backgrounds, who now live in different areas of the country and who probably have never met or talked----somehow have conspired against him? That each and every one of these ladies got together and rehearsed the story with the drugs and waking up in compromising positions?

I am sure some of those ladies had a consensual rendezvous with Bill, but many did not.

I don't know why so many of them waited so long to go public with it, but my guess is that once a few went public with it, that it empowered the others to come forward. That does happen some times.

Sometimes people in our situation want to believe that many accusations are false and that many of the victims' accounts never happened. That is certainly true in some cases, but the majority of accusations are truthful and valid.

Now before I am blasted here, I know there are many false accusations and convictions. I know better than anyone else, but most accusations and convictions are valid.

But yeah, Mr. Cosby was certainly involved in some dark behavior.

rewdiazepam

I may have the unpopular opinion here but personally I think the fire may not be what it seems to be - this is another case where the damage has been done with no evidence at all. Again just the word of these women.

I have had several discussion with several people about this and here are the talking points that come to mind ...

1. Cosby has been very outspoken politically and has made several political enemies and other other organizations that would like nothing more than to shut him up. These stories have accomplished that already because everyone has convicted him any real evidence has been presented.

2. No matter the time frame or cultural norms it seems highly unlikely to me that for decades ALL of these women were so victimized that they ALL kept their mouths shut - I do not buy it for a minute

3. It also seems highly unlikely to me that all of Cosby's entourage through the years including those along the way that separated from his employ also kept their mouths shut.

4. If you listen to the stories told the first group of women that came out said the were drugged and remembered nothing. The second group of women said the were drugged but had "fuzzy" memories. The third group of women said they actually woke up during the attack and remembered Cosby's face. After all of that and everyone saying well they are all out of the statute of limitations finally someone pops up that could be prosecuted. Funny how the pieces are getting filled in as the story goes a long.

5. Where did this drug come from? Is it prescribed by a doctor? If yes, who? If Cosby is buying it on the street where are the dealers? Would be perfect to make money on a story that you sold date rape drugs to Cosby

6. Why? Certainly someone like Cosby would not need to drug these women to have sex with them (not all of them at least) - promises of connections etc. can also be a powerful drug.

These are just a few of the things that have come to my mind in this story. There are more things but I just do not buy it - I certainly could be wrong but I strive to believe in innocence until proven guilty. One persons word or even 30 peoples word do not prove anything. As a matter of fact, the more women that have come forward make me disbelieve it more. If you have 30 witnesses to an accident and they all say the car was green - then ok I believe them but this is an entirely different scenario. There are also many women that have spent a great deal of alone time with Cosby throughout the years and have said he treated them with nothing but respect and friendship. I see this as a scenario where several of the involved groups have much to gain from this.

I disagree - I do not think all of these women got together and conspired against him - I think a much more powerful group may have orchestrated it. I have to say I am a little surprised that anyone on this forum would advocate convicting a person in the media. Remember so far we have absolutely no evidence except their word. The biggest read flag for me is the fact that supposedly throughout the years not one of these women every spoke out? That is almost impossible to believe

Advocate,

You said, "I have to say I am a little surprised that anyone on this forum would advocate convicting a person in the media."

I did not advocate convicting anyone. I only said that if 30 women have come forward, then common sense tells me that they are not ALL lying.

I don't doubt that some have embellished their story and maybe some have just lied, but not all of them. At least I don't think so. I am sure he had sex with many of those ladies, some may not have been truthful about what happened and some were.

But yes, I do believe there is some fire here and I still think that Mr. Cosby engaged in some questionable behavior.

I certainly do not think that all these women have concocted a story.

rewdiazepam

PS "The idea that 30 women would collectively gather to put themselves in the spotlight for rape accusations and be exposed to public shaming all to bring one man down is a disturbing one."

Mr. Cosby aside, here is my personal thoughts on false accusations and how it relates to the sex offender situations we face today.

If we ever hope to make some progress in our movement, we must have credibility. We cannot continue to make claims that 20 to 30% of the men in prison on sex crimes are the result of false accusations. That number is not correct, trust me.

We also cannot continue to attempt to tell people that a "vast majority" of the registry is made up of people with Romeo and Juliet crimes or people who pee in public. That is simply not true.

The general public knows better and when we make these accusations, we lose credibility. With the loss of credibility, we will no longer be believed for anything we say in the future.

I know it is only human to minimize every action on our part when the other side attempts to maximize and embellish all the reasons we need a sex offender registry, but we need to be cautious in how far we carry it.

I was in prison. I saw sex offenders that were much different than the ones represented here on this forum. The people on this forum are decent folk and their loved ones have just made a some stupid choices to become registrants, but that is not representative of many of offenders on the sex offender registry.

There are some really bad guys that are sex offenders. I saw them, I lived with them. Some are real perverts and predators in the truest sense.

Yes, it is true that the registry has far too many low level people on the registry and it is also true that there should not even be a registry. The laws need to be reformed through education.

And yes, due to the War on Sex Offenders, far too many people are being convicted of minor sex crimes----and many of those are represented on this board.

But we lose effectiveness in our fight if we overcompensate and attempt to make people believe that the great majority of the registrants are harmless. We have to get real here.

We have so much going in our favor against the registry and all these restrictions with registrants that we do not really need to embellish any figures on our behalf. The legal aspect, the fact that the registry has not been shown to be effective, the fact that the registry has become unmanageable all are factors that we need to concentrate on.

Sometimes we get so far into a situation that we "cannot see the forest for the trees." We need to step back and take a look at the image that we are presenting to our enemies.

Make no mistake, I am in this movement 1000%. Everyone that knows me knows this and I will continue to fight these laws, but sometimes we have to be careful at how we present ourselves to the general public.

rewdiazepam

I was at a bar and started talking to a guy there. Ends up he is the owner of a medium sized business in my area. Another person at the bar was talking about all of these conspiracy theories and the CEO was just laughing at him. He said I cannot get everyone on my company on the same page about little day to day stuff, how do you get thousands of people on the same page without hearing about any word of a cover up?

The guy's response, the bigger the lie, the easier it is to believe. Nothing else needed to be said because no amount of evidence would change that person's mind.

When it comes to us, there are people here who are innocent, but most of us, myself included are guilty of something. Where I see the problem is a lot of people feel almost a righteous indignation when it comes to the system. I don't believe in most of our cases that has to do with guilt or innocence. But more about how we are being punished. I think most people here that are members of people who admit guilt feel like themselves (if they did it) or their loved ones deserve punishment. The system we have in place for punishment of RSOs has no end. It is continual and lifelong punishment in a lot of situations. No light at the end of the tunnel, no way for redemption. What's even worse is the laws are not based on what is best for society, it's based on emotion. An eye for an eye leaves a lot of blind people. I often think it is amazing RSOs have as low as a recidivism rate as they do because society does almost everything in their power socially to make us pariahs, which actually makes it more NOT less likely for recidivism.

Just because I don't believe that statistics back up the innocence of a lot of sex offenders does not mean we are not being over punished to the detriment of us, our friends and families and society as a whole. I have been accused of having an agenda by people here before because I hold these beliefs. I don't have any agenda here other than hoping we get taken more seriously. I don't think that happens when we talk about urinating in public and R&J crimes.

Rew was saying society maximizes our crimes, and I know that to be correct first hand. If you heard the words the DA said to me and about me you would have thought I am the most evil person in the world. More evil than anyone known to man kind. These types of people hold up the bad RSOs who recidivate as proof that all RSOs recidivist. We know that is not true! To fight this thinking we hold up public urinators and R&J crimes? Why? It's the same silly thinking error our opponents are using. We are saying don't compare us to the most evil of RSOs, look over here to how silly the registry is, we are more like the public urinator and R&J RSOs! Both sides are holding up the top and bottom 5% of cases as proof for their point!

When we use this line of thinking the general public is lost. Who do you think they are going to believe the police, DA, politicians that say we are all dangerous, or RSOs and those loved ones?

Advocate, I agree. IMO where there's smoke...look for the mirrors. Seems like there's a lot of people who stand to gain from all this

That's not to say, he didn't sleep with some of them and maybe they even imbibed a bit too much...laws and social norms were different then...but I highly doubt it's what it's been made out to be.
AS for why would a woman open themselves to humiliation....umm...pity. Some people crave attention and like to play the victim and besides, many of us have never heard of these women names before cos they're washed up has beens...now they're back in the spotlight

Exact;y - I am not saying they are false accusations - I am not saying that at all - what I am saying is that just taking one or thirty people word for it with absolutely no evidence being presented yet is convicting him already - I see too much of guilty before being proven innocent lately and it really ticks me off - I stick with my original opinion - if it is true I need some evidence more than just there word. Isn't that what we all would want?

Sorry for the the typos - dumb auto correct! lol

The problem with cases like this is people can have a financial motive. I think it is way more plausible that Cosby said that he would help some of these women get rich and famous, when he just wanted them for sex. They felt used and now are looking to hurt him. Then as it comes forward, women reading the reports can easily say that The Cos also abused them, of course their version sounds similar, they read it in the paper.
If someone came forward tomorrow and accused you of raping them on July 15th 1995, how would you prove that you didn't do it? If you had $300 million and they asked you for $1 million to go away, would you pay it or stand by your principles?

Just talking odds here, you think it's more likely that 30 women are trying to profit off of Cosby and are lying than Cosby lying? I understand we don't want to convict him in the court of public opinion before seeing all the evidence. But 30 people lying?

If it was like you said hank, that they tried to blackmail him don't you think his side would've already shown evidence of that to the media a? Why would you sit on something like that? It's the smoking gun that could turn the tide of public opinion to his side and they don't release it?

Were any of these "average women", from what I have read, they were Hollywood groupie types looking to get ahead, at the time of the alleged acts. If some beautiful wannabe famous starlet with stars in her eyes believed Cosby was gonna make them a famous actress by using his influence, and then he didn't I could understand them feeling used.
He has in the past been blackmailed, maybe they feel he is an easy target. When there is a he said/ she said case. With neither side having ANY evidence, I am always going to side with the accused.
I do have a problem with the financial benefit. If a women gets raped by a homeless person, she is not getting any money. If you say Jerry Sandusky raped you you get millions. Just say you are John Doe #14 and pick up your check.
I also hate when people say all of the women's stories sound the same...yeah it has been in the news for 6 months. That's like believing in Aliens because all of the abduction stories are similar.
You see people accused of hiring hitmen to kill relatives in order to collect insurance money. Why would it be inconceivable that a person would read a newspaper article and then say "yeah he did that to me also"?

I don't think any of the registrants represented here are bad people, predators, or perverts. I just don't. Those represented here are decent people who just did something very stupid, as we all do sometimes.

I also don't care if anyone was guilty or innocent, as it really does not matter. We are all on the registry anyway and dealing with this mess.

I just think we have to realize that there are real predators on the registry and we cannot claim that the vast majority of the people on the registry are harmless. That is just not true.

Many have harmed nobody but themselves, but they do not make up the majority of those of the registry.

rewdiazepam

Rew - I agree and disagree with your last post. I think that in the past it is probably true that the vast majority of people on the registry were probably dangerous. I do not however think that is true anymore. We also have to clarify the definition of "dangerous." If we are using that definition to describe folks on the registry that are dangerous to the general public I would have to disagree with you. I would be willing to go out on a limb (without the statistics available) and say that the vast majority of people on the registry are not dangerous to the general public. The reason I feel comfortable with that statement is becasue research shows that recidivism rates are very low - in addition to that stranger danger is a myth (if my memory serves me correctly the last time I read something about it the rate was something like .1 percent of all sexual crimes?) To me the real predators you speak of are those that the general public has in their minds as the "real predators."

If we are describing harmful to their victims then I have to agree with you. The whole premise for the registry and sex crimes is that there is a victim some where no matter how far removed. I do not think that the majority of people on the registry are innocent of the crime they were accused of but I do think there are many. However, statistics show that the vast majority of them that did commit contact crimes did so to a family member or some other acquaintance known to them. They did not go out into the general public to commit the crime. Those are the facts and empirical evidence that the RSO laws SHOULD be based on but they are not becasue the general public believes that there is a monster living down the street. For me, as I said before it is about Cosby and others like him are convicted before the day is over in the media. Evidence of that is when companies immediately started dropping him.

Look at the incident with Prince Andrew of England - I do not know whether he had sex with that girl or not and frankly it is not about that for me. The story broke and one of the first things that came out about it was the Prince with his arm around the young woman in question as though posing for a picture with a young person means you abused that person! What the heck?

I do not know if these men are guilty as charged or not but what I do know is that so far I have not heard anything that shows me these accusations are true. For some of you the number of accusations gives it validity but for me it does just the opposite. I still say I find it hard to believe that out of that many women not one of them was ever strong enough to speak out. Remember this - if what they say is true most of them really do not have a clear memory of the abuse and in the last few decades exposing and accusing famous people has become the norm so I do not think that just the fact that he was so famous would be a determining factor.

I do hear what you are saying that you do not think that many woman from different parts of the country could all come up with the same story etc. In reality, they did not have to - the first woman that accused him told the story in a magazine or an interview I believe? It was right there for the whole world to see. Moreover I do not have any problem believing that a more powerful group could have used that knowledge to spread the crap to discredit Cosby.