'I had to ask': CNN presenter Don
Lemon presses Bill Crosby rape-accuser Joan Tarshis on why she did not
bite the comedian when she was allegedly forced to perform oral sex him
A TV presenter has sparked outrage after pressing a woman who claims she was raped by Bill Cosby on why she didn't use her teeth to avoid performing oral sex on the comedian.
Joan Tarshis was just 19 years old when she was allegedly twice drugged and raped by the TV actor in Hollywood in 1969.
In
an interview with CNN, TV anchor Don Lemon told her there were methods
victims could use to prevent them having to perform certain sex acts on
attackers.
He said: 'You know, there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn't want to do it.'
Twitter backlash: Critics took to social media to take issue with CNN host Don Lemon's line of questioning
Ms Tarshis: 'I was kind of stoned at the time and, quite honestly, that didn't even enter my mind. Now I wish it would have.'
Lemon said: 'Meaning the using of the teeth as a weapon, right?' - to which Ms Tarshis responded 'yes'.
Not content that he had pushed the point home, Lemon continues crudely: 'Biting'.
A very uncomfortable Ms Tarshis replies 'ouch' before Lemon finishes with: 'Yes. I had to ask.'
The sequence provoked a backlash on Twitter over Lemon's suggestion that an alleged rape victim could have avoided the attack.
Timothy Simons said: '@donlemon you deserve every minute of the bad day you are going to have tomorrow.'
Erin
Gloria tweeted: 'You can stop bad things from going into your mouth!
@donlemon, a man who cannot stop bad things from coming out of his
mouth'
The
Black Madonna added: 'Don Lemon blaming protesters for police brutality
in Ferguson and blaming rape victims for being raped. A big
pro-oppression stance, I see.'
Joan
Tarshis, pictured on Tuesday in Saugerties, New York, told MailOnline
that she suffered decades of misplaced guilt following the alleged rapes
by TV star Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby has
been accused of rape by a third woman, Joan Tarshis, who said he
attacked her twice in 1969 when she was just 19 years old
It comes as another woman came forward yesterday with claims Cosby drugged and raped her.
Supermodel
Janice Dickinson claims that Cosby invited her to dinner to discuss a
role on The Cosby Show, offering her a glass of wine and a pill she
thought was for her cramps.
That is one of the last things she remembers of the evening.
'The
next morning I woke up, and I wasn't wearing my pyjamas, and I remember
before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man,'
she told Entertainment Tonight.
'I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.'
Dickinson
says her last memory of the night was of Cosby taking off his robe and
climbing on top of her, and that the next morning she remembers 'a lot
of pain.'
The supermodel claims the incident occurred in Lake Tahoe, California in 1982.
However, Cosby's attorney, Marty Singer, branded the allegation a 'complete lie.'
Silence: Bill Cosby, pictured with his
wife Camille on November 6, refused to answer questions about the
allegations when the couple were being interviewed by NPR this weekend
Yesterday,
Ms Tarshis revealed to MailOnline the decades of misplaced guilt she
suffered at being unable to prevent the alleged attacks 45 years ago.
She
is the third woman to accuse Cosby of raping her as a teenager and has
urged him not to take the allegations 'to the grave' and insists he is a
'very, very sick man who needs help'.
The 66-year-old former music publicist has urged other rape victims not to feel responsible for attacks they suffered.
Ms Tarshis told MailOnline: ‘It was a burden that you are carrying inside of your gut that you can't let out.
‘It's like having an upset stomach that will never go away. Victim guilt is very common. I suffered from it.
‘I
felt guilty. I felt that I should have known better - that I should
have picked up something instinctively that there was something wrong
with this man.
‘But I didn't. He has a good act. And I have had to carry that guilt around for many, many years.
‘It was depressing. It was a creepy feeling keeping the secret inside. I can't explain it any other way.’
Ms Tarshis did not contact the police as she feared she would not be believed but suffered in silence for decades.
She told MailOnline: ‘The main repercussion [of the sexual assaults] was having to keep a secret.
‘Every time I saw him get accolades - one after another after another, it turned my stomach, turned it into knots.
‘People were singing his praises - that he was such a good guy, a wonderful man, the world's most ideal father and husband.
‘It made me ill and there was nothing I could do about it.’
Ms Tarshis said she has wanted to come forward for a long time and felt the time was finally right.
She
said: ‘I have wanted to come out and talk about it before. I just
didn't know how. And now with this second wave [of allegations of sexual
abuse against Cosby] I thought this is my chance to talk.
Now Ms Tarshis hopes her revelations will encourage other women who may have been raped by Cosby to come forward.
She told MailOnline: ‘I hope that many more people will come forward. He was popular during I Spy [TV show].
'That was before 1969 and he has been popular even after the 'settlement'. I don't see him stopping.
‘So hopefully women like me who have come forward may prevent other women falling into the same trap I fell into.
‘Also women who are raped by someone who is not a celebrity should not feel guilty about it, certainly not.’
Ms Tarshis, who suffered from alcoholism as a young person, does not blame the addiction on Cosby.
Speaking
close to her home in Saugerties in New York state, she told MailOnline:
‘I was leaning on [the crutch of alcohol] long before [the Cosby sex
attack]. I have been in recovery now since 1988.’
And she added she felt lucky that her violent encounters with Cosby did not affect her ability to form close relationships.
Ms
Tarshis added: ‘Luckily for me I don't think it affected my
relationships with men or women at all - romantic or platonic. I'm very
fortunate that it did not.'
Ms Tarshis, wrote an essay for Hollywood Elsewhere on
Sunday where she revealed that when she was invited onto the set of the
Cosby Show, she would be introduced to stars including Sidney Poitier
as 'Midget' - because she is only 5ft 3in.
Speaking to Inside Edition, she referred to Cosby as a 'serial rapist' and needed to seek help.
'Don't
go to your grave with this, get some help. Admit you were wrong. But
mostly get some help for himself. He's a very, very, very sick man.'
In another interview with CNN,
she said that after one of the alleged attacks she initially blamed
herself, suggesting her emotions had overtaken her intelligence and she
felt a lot of guilt.
She also claimed that after he abused her, he paid her '$20 or $10 to get a cab home'.
'I thought to myself 'you [Cosby] are such a perverted creep.'
Accusations: Last month, Barbara
Bowman, who is pictured with an image of her teenage self, told
MailOnline how she had been attacked by Cosby
Tarshis
said that after it happened, she felt she couldn't speak out because of
how others idolized him but that she is now stepping forward in light
of accusations made by other women.
'I thought nobody would believe me because of his image, you know, whiter than snow,' she told The Wrap.
In
the piece for Hollywood Elsewhere, she explained that she had been in
Los Angeles to write for comedian Godfrey Cambridge and she was
introduced to Cosby by two women she was staying with.
He invited her to have lunch with him at Universal Studios and 'seemed to take a liking' to her, she said.
He invited her back a few times and always poured her strong drinks, she wrote.
One
day, he asked her to work on some material with him so she went to his
bungalow, where he poured her a drink and she started talking about her
ideas, she said.
'The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed,' she wrote.
'Through
the haze I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an
infection and he would catch it and his wife would know he had sex with
someone.
'But
he just found another orifice to use. I was sickened by what was
happening to me and shocked that this man I had idolized was now raping
me. Of course I told no one.'
Her
mother was proud of her daughter's new connection and so when Cosby
called to invite Tarshis to a theater production, she felt as if she had
to go to the show, she said.
She
met him at his hotel, where she says his shaving kit was filled with
bottles of pills, and then they went to the show together. In the car,
he gave her a drink, she said.
After the show, she was having difficulties standing up and asked the chauffeur to take her back home, she said.
'The
next thing I remember was waking up in his bed back at the Sherry,
naked,' she wrote. 'I remember thinking 'You old s***, I guess you got
me this time, but it's the last time you'll ever see me'.'
Afterwards, she said nothing for 20 years.
'During
those years as I grew into adulthood, I watched Cosby be praised by
everyone from Presidents to Oprah to the Jello Corporation,' she wrote.
'It all made me ill.'
Speaking to Inside Edition, she explained she felt helpless.
'He's
too powerful,' she said. 'How can you stop him? I'm just a little
person. What am I going to say? 'He raped me?' Who is going to believe
that?'
Speaking
to The Wrap after she wrote the piece, she said that she decided to
speak out after other women came forward. MailOnline exclusively shared
Barbara Bowman's story last month.
'All
through the years, before I mentioned it, before anything else came
out, I knew I wasn't the only person,' she said. 'That it wasn't just
me... I knew that he was a serial rapist.'
She said she hopes her claims go some way to affecting the public's view of him.
She
also said she waited until now because she didn't want her parents to
find out. Both are now in their 90s and the news won't reach them, she
said.
'They would have really, really been damaged by me telling them something, or finding out something like this,' she said.
Support: Legendary saxophonist Tony
Williams, pictured front with Cosby, has stood up for his long-time
friend, saying that he believes that the alleged victims are going after
the comedian's fame and fortune
Today, she continues to blame herself, she said.
'It
still kind of feels that way, that I should have known better,' she
said. 'I know intellectually that's incorrect, but that's still a
feeling that I have.'
Tarshis,
who lives in upstate New York, became a music publicist in the 1980s
and represented Bob Marley and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others.
She later worked as a journalist and is now getting a master's in mental
health counseling, the Wrap reported.
The
renewed attention on Cosby's past began last month when comedian
Hannibal Buress assailed him during a stand-up performance in
Philadelphia, Cosby's hometown, calling him a 'rapist'.
His remarks were captured on video and posted online, gaining wide exposure.
Adding
to the growing firestorm: One of Cosby's accusers, Barbara Bowman,
leveled allegations of sexual assault against him - first speaking to
MailOnline last month and later in an online column for the Washington
Post.
She
explained that in 1985, she was 17 and an aspiring actress when Cosby
'brainwashed me into viewing him as a father figure, and then assaulted
me multiple times'.
Cosby,
who was never criminally charged in any case, settled a civil suit in
2006 with another woman over an alleged incident two years before.
On Sunday, Cosby's lawyer said he will not dignify 'decade-old, discredited' claims of sexual abuse with a response.
John P. Schmitt said the fact that the allegations are being repeated 'does not make them true.'
'He
would like to thank all his fans for the outpouring of support and
assure them that, at age 77, he is doing his best work,' Schmitt said.
Also at the weekend, Cosby stonewalled National Public Radio host Scott Simon during an interview with Cosby and his wife, Camille, about their African-American art collection.
Cosby fell silent when asked by Simon about 'serious allegations raised about you in recent days'.
'You're shaking your head, no,' the host said. 'Do you have any response to those charges? Shaking your head, no.'
Legendary
saxophonist, Tony Williams, has also defended his friend, saying he is
angry that the claims have resurfaced again and believes the women are
just after Cosby's fame and money.
'No, No. He don't have to rape anybody,' Williams told Fox Philly 29 in an interview on Sunday.
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