Bill Cosby retrial, Day 4: 5th and final additional accuser testifies she trusted 'America's Dad'

The prosecution presented a string of Bill Cosby accusers on the witness stand Thursday in the fourth day of the comedian’s sexual-assault retrial in suburban Philadelphia. Among them was former model Janice Dickinson, who recounted her alleged rape by Cosby, and another former model, Lise-Lotte Lublin, who took the stand late Thursday.

The jury has already heard from Heidi Thomas, Chelan Lasha and Janice Baker-Kinney. They each shared their run-ins with Cosby from the 1980s, all involving the comedian giving them drugs that rendered them either unconscious or unable to move while the comedian molested or raped them.

Here are the latest developments from the courtroom:

Fifth Cosby accuser takes the stand

The fifth and final “other” accuser to testify at Cosby’s retrial said she trusted him because he was “America’s Dad.”

Lise-Lotte Lublin was a 23-year-old model and aspiring actress invited to Cosby’s Las Vegas hotel suite to practice acting improvisation. When he prodded her to drink two shots to relax, she complied.

She told the jury that Cosby had her sit between his knees and he started stroking her hair. She said she lost consciousness and doesn’t remember anything else about that night in 1989 until she woke up two days later. She believes she was sexually assaulted, she testified.

Cosby’s lawyers have argued that Lublin only assumes she is a victim because of other media accounts, even though she can only remember Cosby stroking her hair.

Dickinson tells the jury that Cosby raped her

Taking the stand Thursday, Dickinson alleged that Cosby raped her when she was 27, after giving her a pill he claimed would help her with menstrual cramps. She told jurors that she was “rendered motionless” by the pill as Cosby got on top of her in his hotel room in Lake Tahoe, Calif. After waking up the next day, Dickinson says she noticed semen between her legs.

“I didn’t consent to this. Here was ‘America’s Dad,’ on top of me,” she said recalling the 1982 incident. “A married man, father of five kids, on top of me. I was thinking how wrong it was. How very wrong it was.”

Dickinson testified she felt vaginal pain and, after waking up the next morning, noticed semen between her legs. She said Cosby looked at her “like I was crazy” when she confronted him about what had happened.

“I wanted to hit him. I wanted to punch him in the face,” she said.

Cosby’s defense attorney, Tom Mesereau, challenged Dickinson on her claims, citing discrepancies between her testimony and her 2002 autobiography, No Lifeguard on Duty, about the encounter with Cosby.

Dickinson rebutted that she “wasn’t under oath” when she wrote No Lifeguard. She added that Cosby and his lawyers pressured her and her publisher to remove details about the assault in the book, and she went along because she needed the money.

“It’s all a fabrication there,” she noted. “It was written by ghostwriters. I wanted a paycheck.”

Dickinson, 63, is the fourth accuser to testify at Cosby’s sexual-assault retrial. She is among the five dozen women who have accused Cosby of rape or molestation since October 2014.

An outspoken reality-TV host who claims to have invented the term “supermodel,” she described Cosby in profane terms in a December 2014 TV interview, calling him a “tacky rapist,” while alternately weeping and shouting.

When she came forward to join other Cosby accusers, she said she wanted an apology from Cosby; she has since sued him for defamation, a civil case that is pending in California.

Baker-Kinney stares down Cosby lawyer Mesereau during cross-examination

Janice Baker-Kinney, who accused Cosby of drugging and raping her in 1982, returned to the stand Thursday for cross-examination. Mesereau suggested she was motivated to distort the facts of a fun evening when she heard about a possible $100 million windfall from Cosby.

Mesereau is trying to raise doubts about the woman’s allegation that he knocked her out with pills and raped her in 1982.

Baker-Kinney was unflappable on the stand Wednesday, freely admitting her past experimentation with LSD and battle with alcoholism. She even called out Mesereau for rolling his eyes at her, and chided the veteran defense attorney after she said he attempted to twist what she said about being assaulted.

“It still takes me everything within my being to say the words, ‘I was raped,’” she testified.

Cosby rep: Accusers represent “prosecution by distraction”

As Cosby spokesman’s Andrew Wyatt entered the courthouse Thursday, he described Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele’s case so far as “prosecution by distraction.” He also called the women the “supporting cast” for chief accuser Andrea Constand, who says he drugged and molested her at his home in suburban Philadelphia in 2004. Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Judge O’Neill allowed only one other accuser, Kelly Johnson, to testify in Cosby’s first trial last year, and her testimony was partially undermined by her imprecision about when her alleged encounter with Cosby happened. She is not testifying at the retrial.

The first trial ended in a mistrial after jurors failed to agree on a verdict following five days of deliberations.

Five of the six accusers offering testimony at either Cosby’s first or second trial are represented by women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred or her daughter Lisa Bloom.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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