Prosecutors have accused Bill Cosby of “victim shaming” at his sexual assault trial after his lawyers tried to introduce his alleged victim’s sexual history into evidence.
According to TMZ, Cosby’s lawyers wanted the jury to hear arguments that Andrea Constand “deceived” the comedian by keeping her purported interest in women from him.
The judge reportedly sided with the prosecution, which argued that the attorneys would have been violating a state shield law that prohibits a victim’s sexual past from being entered into evidence during a trial.
According to NBC, Constand said in a 2005 interview that she was gay, though she had reportedly been involved with men occasionally when she was younger.
Cosby’s prosecutors reportedly tried to establish that the alleged victim was guilty of “conceal[ment] and deceit” for not revealing the full extent of her sexual preferences to the person accused to drugging and assaulting her.
“Defendant seems to desire that those with a sexual orientation different from his should readily identify themselves — perhaps with a scarlet letter — at their first encounter with another person,” the prosecution wrote in a filing obtained by NBC News.
“Defendant puts a new twist on an old argument: that because Ms. Constand did not reveal this most personal detail about her life she must have been asking for defendant to drug and sexually assault her.”
Photo: Associated Press