Sexual assault: Cosby becomes 86th oldest inmate
Popular actor, Bill Cosby, becomes the 86th inmates over age 80 held by Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections, following his prison sentence for sexual assault by a Montgomery County Court, on Tuesday.
Judge Steven O’Neill branded Cosby a “predator” and sentenced him to between three and 10 years in prison for sexual assault, capping the downfall of the once-beloved comedian known as “America’s Dad.”
Cosby, 81, was found guilty in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for the drugging and sexual assault of his one-time friend Andrea Constand, a former Temple University administrator, at his Philadelphia home in 2004.
According to the court verdict, Cosby must spend at least three years in a Pennsylvania prison before he becomes eligible for supervised release, though he could end up behind bars for up to a decade.
“I wanted 30 years, but I’m very happy to know Mr. Cosby will do time in prison,” said Chelan Lasha, who gave tearful testimony in court about the time she says Cosby drugged and groped her in the 1980s.
O’Neill also fined Cosby $25,000 and ordered him to pay the costs of the prosecution.
“Equal justice under the law does not allow different treatment because of who he is or who he was,” O’Neill said.
Constand said in a written statement submitted to the court on Monday that the attack had turned her into a woman who was “stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward.”
“Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it,” she wrote.
Cosby’s first trial in 2017 ended in a mistrial when jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict.
Prison officials will process Cosby at the nearby state prison in Schwenksville before determining in which of Pennsylvania’s 22 male prisons he will serve his sentence, prison spokeswoman Amy Worden wrote in an email.
