Janice Dickinson is one of more than 60 women who’ve come forward with accusations of sexual assault against disgraced comedian Bill Cosby, and now the supermodel and TV personality is celebrating the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Thursday announcement that it has expelled the former Cosby Show star from its membership.
“[We are] delighted at this news,” Dickinson tells EW in a statement issued through her attorney, Lisa Bloom. “Every time an organization expels this convicted felony sex offender or revokes an honorary degree, it is standing with brave women like Andrea Constand who fought so long for justice.”
Dickinson accused Cosby of raping her at his home in Lake Tahoe in 1982. She says Cosby offered her a glass of red wine in addition to a pill for menstrual cramps, but that her memory after that grew fuzzy.
“I remember more specifically waking up,” Dickinson has said of the reported incident, “and that he, there was a lot of pain downstairs. There was semen all over me and my pajama bottoms were off and the top was opened. At that point – fight-or-flight – I just packed up and I got the hell out of there.”
Cosby’s lawyer Martin Singer told PEOPLE in 2014 that Dickinson’s story is “a fabricated lie.”
“There is a glaring contradiction between what she is claiming now for the first time and what she wrote in her own book and what she told the media back in 2002,” Singer said. “Ms. Dickinson did an interview with the New York Observer in September 2002 entitled “Interview with a Vamp” completely contradicting her new story about Mr. Cosby. That interview a dozen years ago said ‘she didn’t want to go to bed with him and he blew her off.’ ”
He continued: “Her publisher Harper Collins can confirm that no attorney representing Mr. Cosby tried to kill the alleged rape story (since there was no such story) or tried to prevent her from saying whatever she wanted about Bill Cosby in her book. The only story she gave 12 years ago to the media and in her autobiography was that she refused to sleep with Mr. Cosby and he blew her off. Documentary proof and Ms. Dickinson s own words show that her new story about something she now claims happened back in 1982 is a fabricated lie.”
Cosby was convicted on April 26 of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand, a former Temple University employee, in January 2004. The 80-year-old was found guilty by a Pennsylvania court on three charges: aggravated indecent assault: penetration with lack of consent; penetration while unconscious; and penetration after administrating an intoxicant.
The Academy’s board of governors met Tuesday and voted to revoke not only Cosby’s membership, but also that of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski as a means to comply with “the organization’s Standards of Conduct.” The Academy statement on the matter reads: “The Board continues to encourage ethical standards that require members to uphold the Academy’s values of respect for human dignity.”
Polanski plead guilty to raping a then-13-year-old girl in 1977. The Chinatown director fled the United States in 1978 as a means to escape a potential decades-long sentence. He has since remained a fugitive.
In recent months, the Academy has also voted out producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused by dozens of women — including Lupita Nyong’o, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Mira Sorvino — of sexual misconduct, harassment, and/or assault throughout his career. Weinstein denied all accusations of non-consensual sex, though the accusations prompted the Academy to implement a new code of conduct in December, which permitted the board to “take any disciplinary action permitted by the Academy’s Bylaws, including suspension or expulsion” against those who breach it.
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