Bill Cosby's wife, Camille, issued a scathing statement on Thursday against his accusers, Pennsylvania prosecutors and the media — calling his sexual assault conviction "mob justice."
“In the case of Bill Cosby, unproven accusations evolved into lynch mobs,” Camille Cosby said in a statement Thursday morning sent by Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt.
One week ago, Bill Cosby, once the lovable father in an iconic sitcom, was found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault against one of his accusers, Andrea Constand. Although Cosby has faced dozens of sexual misconduct allegations spanning decades, he has been charged criminally only in the Constand case.
Cosby's wife went on to compare her husband’s case to that of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy who was kidnapped and lynched by white men in 1955 after being falsely accused of whistling at a white woman.
She said not all accusers are “truthful,” referring to the white woman who claimed Emmett had whistled at her and clasped her waist, using vulgar language. That woman confessed to a historian last year that the claims were not true.
Ebony Tucker, advocacy director for Raliance, a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to ending sexual violence, said that Cosby’s wife’s comments reinforced a culture of “blaming victims.” “We tend to not believe women and I think she is playing on that,” Tucker said.
Camille Cosby also lashed out at media coverage of her husband, saying “their frenzied, relentless demonization of him and unquestioning acceptance of accusers’ allegations without any attendant proof” violated her husband’s Constitutional right to a fair trial.
“Bill Cosby was labelled as guilty because the media and accusers said so ... period,” she said in the statement.
She also accused Constand of perjury during her husband’s trial. Constand, 45, a former employee at Temple University in Philadelphia, testified that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in his suburban Philadelphia home in January 2004.
Prosecutors called five additional women to the stand who said that the famed comedian had drugged and sexually assaulted them.
Camille Cosby also called for a criminal investigation into “the district attorney and his cohorts.”
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She labeled them as exploitative and "corrupt people, whose primary purpose is to advance themselves professionally and economically at the expense of Mr. Cosby’s life,” she said.
“This is mob justice, not real justice. This tragedy must be undone not just for Bill Cosby, but for the country,” she added.
A juror from the trial said Monday that it was Cosby's own words that led to to their decision.
"I think it was his deposition, really. Mr. Cosby admitted to giving these Quaaludes to women, young women, in order to have sex with them," Harrison Snyder said in an interview aired Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America, referring to a deposition that was part of a civil case brought by Constand.
Also on Thursday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to expel Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski from its membership.
The verdict against Cosby was one of the first major courtroom victories for the #MeToo movement, which has exposed sexual harassment and misconduct in entertainment, media, politics and beyond.
Cosby, who maintains his innocence, remains free on $1 million bail. A judge ordered last Friday that he must remain in his suburban Philadelphia home until he is sentenced.