'You're a rapist': Comedian Hannibal Buress calls out Bill Cosby over sex assault allegations
By RYAN GORMAN
A stand-up comedian called Bill Cosby a rapist last week and insisted there is plenty of proof -- he might be right.
Hannibal Buress insisted during a Thursday appearance at the Trocadero, in Philadelphia, that Cosby's real-life antics betray his "public Teflon image." The "Cosby Show" star was previously accused of sexually assaulting more than a dozen women.
"Bill Cosby has the f******g smuggest old black man public persona that I hate," said Buress. "He gets on TV, '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 rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches," an infuriated Buress ranted. "'I don't curse onstage.' Well, yeah, you're rapist, so I'll take you saying lots of motherf*****s on Bill Cosby: Himself, if you weren't a rapist."
The 77-year-old Cosby is from Philadelphia. Buress, also an African-American, knew what he was doing by ranting in the actor/comedian's hometown.
"I don't know what I'm doing by telling you, I guess I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns," Buress continued. "Dude's image, for the most part, it's f*****g public Teflon image.
"I've done this bit on stage and people think I'm making it up....That sh*t is upsetting. If you didn't know about it trust me. When you leave here, Google 'Bill Cosby rape.' It's not funny.
"That s**t has more results than 'Hannibal Buress."
An AOL News search of the internet easily found several claims of sexual assault against the septuagenarian, including a timeline of the accusations published by Vulture.
Temple University staffer Andrea Constand claimed that Cosby drugged her with "herbal pills" in 2004 at his suburban Philly mansion, "touched her breasts and vaginal area, rubbed his penis against her hand, and digitally penetrated" her.
She first made the allegations in January 2005, but an ABC News report only weeks later doubted her claims, and even argued the encounter was likely consensual.
Only one month later, California lawyer Tamara Green told the "Today Show" that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in the 1970s.
The details were eerily similar: Cosby gave her pills before "groping me and kissing me and touching me and handling me and ... taking off my clothes," she claimed.
Green said awoke to find two $100 bills on her coffee table.
Cosby's lawyer dismissed both women's claims. No criminal charges were ever brought against the aging star.
Constand responded by filing a five-count civil suit, and 13 women backed her claims with accusations of their own.
One of those women, Beth Ferrier, claims to the Philadelphia Daily News that a relationship with Cosby in the mid-1980s came crashing to a halt when he drugged her.
"My clothes were a mess. My bra was undone. My top was untucked," she recalled. "I'm sitting there going, 'Oh my God. Where am I?' What's going on? I was so out of it.
"It was just awful."
He told her: "You just had too much to drink."
Cosby settled out of court with Constand in November 2006 only days before another woman, Barbara Bowman, came forward saying he assaulted her multiple times.
Bowman told Philadelphia magazine, according to Vulture, that he threw her on a bed, held her down and tried taking off both his and her clothes.
"I can still remember him messing with his belt. And I was screaming and crying and yelling and begging him to stop," she said, according to Vulture.
Bowman then claimed to People magazine that she and Cosby were in a Reno hotel when he made his move. He masturbated with his hand over hers, she claimed. She kept quiet out of fear.
"Who's gonna believe this? He was a powerful man. He was like the president," Bowman told the magazine. Her reluctance only further emboldened the comedian to attack her again, she insisted.
Cosby again drugged her, she claimed, this time in his Manhattan townhouse.
"The next thing I know, I'm sick and I'm nauseous and I'm delusional and I'm limp and ... I can't think straight," she told People. "And I just came to, and I'm wearing a [men's] T-shirt that wasn't mine, and he was in a white robe.'"
Other women claimed to have taken hush money from Cosby for years while some even entered consensual relationships with him, according to People.
Green told Newsweek of a time she ran into Cosby in Las Vegas.
"Rapist! Liar! A** Hole!" She shouted.
The original "Cosby Show" ruled the airwaves on NBC from 1984 to 1992.
Cosby is slated to star next year in a new NBC sitcom. The network did not immediately respond to an AOL News request for comment.
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