** Cosby Did Same thing 30 Years Ago?? **

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Thread started 02/08/05 4:15am

MPLSRAINBOW

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** Cosby Did Same thing 30 Years Ago?? **

** Cosby Did Same thing 30 Years Ago?? **

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Here's the story of a former Bill Cosby employee who says that he drugged and assaulted her many years ago as well... Read on:

'He did exactly the same thing to me'

California lawyer, a former fashion model, says Bill Cosby drugged her, tried to force himself on her about 30 years ago.

By NICOLE WEISENSEE EGAN

weisenn@phillynews.com

ACALIFORNIA LAWYER says she has told Montgomery County investigators who are probing sex allegations against Bill Cosby that the entertainer drugged her and tried to force himself on her about 30 years ago.

Tamara Green, a longtime criminal and civil lawyer and former fashion model, said she decided to tell her story after Cosby's lawyer and the Montgomery County district attorney publicly cast doubt on a former Temple University women's basketball executive's allegations that Cosby drugged and groped her at his Elkins Park mansion last year.

"I realize that him doing it to me 30 years ago doesn't prove he did it to this girl today, but when I heard the circumstances, I felt compelled to call up and say, 'He did exactly the same thing to me,' " said Green, 57, in a phone interview from her Ventura, Calif., home.

"Do I want everybody to know that he had his dirty paws all over me? No," she said.

"But I don't think it's right that they're going to disregard this woman and her allegations. I feel like they should look into it more seriously than I thought they were going to."

The Daily News usually withholds the identity of alleged sexual assault victims, but Green said she wants her name used.

What she said convinced her to go public was not any desire for justice for herself or for money or even for publicity. She said she believes it was her "civic duty and moral obligation" to come forward after Cosby's lawyer denounced the Temple woman's claims as "bizarre and preposterous" and Montgomery County D.A. Bruce L. Castor Jr. characterized the case against Cosby as weak.

"I heard his lawyer said her claims were preposterous and basically I thought, 'My eye. He did exactly the same thing to me,' " said Green. "It set my teeth on edge and made my hair stand up.

"Then I heard a press release from the district attorney saying he thought the case was weak and why did she wait so long to come forward?" she said. "I worked in a D.A.'s office and that's D.A.-speak for 'We're not filing charges.' I felt compelled to come forward after I heard that."

Cosby's lawyer, Walter Phillips Jr., denied Green's allegations. He would not answer questions about her story.

"I've spoken with my client," Phillips said. "Mr. Cosby does not recognize the names Tamara Green or Tamara Lucier [her maiden name]. In any event, the incident you described did not happen in any way, shape or form."

Cosby has also denied the former Temple executive's allegations. She claims Cosby gave her some pills, then groped her while she was immobilized at his Montgomery County mansion in January 2004.

Castor has said his office would decide this week whether to charge Cosby "or anyone else" in the probe of the ex-Temple employee's complaint.

Green said she gave a statement by phone to a Montgomery County detective on Jan. 28 and told him she would testify if necessary. She also said she spoke to Risa Vetri Ferman, Castor's first assistant, yesterday . Green also spoke to lawyers who represent the former Temple employee.

Neither Castor nor Ferman would comment.

Dolores Troiani, the Devon lawyer who represents the former Temple employee, said she found Green "credible."

"She's an attorney and she seemed to still be angry after all of these years, which is only an indication of how much an attack like this affects somebody's life," Troiani said.

If Cosby is charged with sexually assaulting the former Temple worker, the testimony of someone making claims like Green's might be useful to prosecutors if a judge allows it into evidence, said Wendy Demchik-Alloy, a retired Montgomery County sex crimes prosecutor.

"It helps to fortify the prosecution because instead of just having one victim, in effect on an island, all by herself, with no other evidence, you have two," said Demchik-Alloy.

Green is a longtime criminal and civil lawyer. She said she is mostly retired now, handling only appeals. In 2002, she represented the elderly Lee Minnelli, Liza Minnelli's stepmother, in a lawsuit that accused Liza Minnelli of elder abuse and breach of contract after Liza tried to sell the house out from under her. Lee Minnelli eventually dropped the lawsuit after she was allowed to remain in her home.

Green said she has told her Cosby story to various friends through the years. But she said she never went to law enforcement because, soon after the encounter, Cosby showed up at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles where her 16-year-old brother, Marc Lucier, was dying from cystic fibrosis.

"My brother just thought it was the bee's knees that the great Bill Cosby was my friend and had come to the hospital to see him and made him a hero and made the other terminal kids happy," she said. "He gave autographs and 'Attaboys' and I just couldn't take that away from my brother."

Her brother died several months after that, she said, but she still didn't go to law enforcement.

"By then I'm in another relationship with a film director," she said. "And there was something in me that didn't want people to know that that man had his paws all over me."

Three friends, including an estranged second husband, confirmed that Green had told them about the alleged drugging and groping many times over the last 30 years. The husband, Ben Housouer, an attorney, said Green "is not a bulls----er" and wouldn't lie.

Before she became a lawyer, before her first marriage to Walon Green, an Academy Award and Emmy winning Hollywood writer and producer, she was Tamara Lucier.

Back in the early-1970s, she was a model and a starlet, doing television commercials for Coca-Cola, Pontiac and Maybelline, among others, she said, and met Cosby when she auditioned as a singer for his production company. She said Cosby hired her to help him open a club in Los Angeles.

"My function was going to be to go through Cosby's personal phone records and call everyone he knew to get memberships for the club," she said.

She'd had the job only about a week when, one day, she felt sick and called him at Figero, a restaurant in Los Angeles that she said Cosby owned, to tell him she was going home.

"I said, 'I can't work today. I am so sick. I think I've got the flu," she said. "He said, 'Come over to Figero's and have lunch. Maybe you'll feel better."

She said she drove to the restaurant and sat at a table with Cosby and six or eight others.

"I sat down and said, 'I really feel sick,' " she said. "Cosby said, 'Would you like some Contac?' I thought, 'Well, sure. Contac can't hurt.' "

Cosby disappeared into a restaurant office area and returned with two gray-and-red capsules, which he gave to her, she said. She took them.

"In about 20 minutes I felt like a million bucks," she said. "Well about 10 minutes after that, I'm face-down in my salad. I was really just stoned, I mean, smashed."

Cosby told her she must be sicker than she thought and said he'd drive her home in his car, she said. When they got to her apartment, she said he came inside and began trying to take off her clothes.

"I started fighting him and he's kissing on me, peeling off my clothes," she said. "I'm starting to freak and I'm telling him, 'You're going to have to kill me.' "

She said she screamed, picked up a lamp and threatened to throw it through her window to get somebody's attention. He finally let go of her, she said.

Cosby then dropped two $100 bills on her end table and left.

"That infuriated me," she said. "I put my clothes back on and ran out of my apartment. I fell off my own front porch and was all cut up and beat up. Then I staggered into the street and stopped a car."

She said she convinced the stranger to drive her back to Figero, where she thought she could confront Cosby. She said she was enraged and intended to "rip him up" if she saw him, but he and the other people at the lunch were gone.

The next day, she felt awful.

"I'm hungover from whatever he gave me. I feel terrible and I'm all beaten up from falling off my porch," she said. "And I'm sick because I'd been sick to begin with."

She went to the hospital to visit her brother either that day or the next and discovered that Cosby had been there, she said.

She never returned to her job working for Cosby. She said she saw him about a week later.

"You're lucky you went to see my brother," she said she told him. "I'm not going to make a fuss about this, but I'm going to tell everyone I know what you did to me."

Through the years, she said she told many people, "depending on the company I was in," she said.

She later married, had a child, got divorced and remarried. In 1987 she graduated from Santa Barbara College of Law.

Green said she realizes she'll be attacked for bringing up her story after so much time but said she feels strongly that she should support the former Temple employee.

"Even though she took a long time to do it, she still had to muster up the courage to take on the great Bill Cosby," Green said.

"I never came forward," she added. "It doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just means he went and bought me off - by going to the children's terminal ward."

... As I said after Cos' initial tirade, I agree with some of the statements he made (insulting Arabic names was utter stupidity, though), but I think he's a huge fucking hypocrite. Fuck Cosby!! Holla!!