Janice Dickinson is still battling Bill Cosby after coming forward last November with claims he sexually assaulted her in 1982. The supermodel is now filing a lawsuit against the Cosby Show star for defamation, her attorney Lisa Bloom confirms to Us Weekly.
In an exclusive interview with Entertainment Tonight, Dickinson explains: “I’m suing Bill Cosby for justice and vindication…I was drugged and raped by Bill Cosby. And the fact that he and his spokespeople have called me a liar…referring to remarks that I’ve made…it’s not correct. I want to fight. I want to fight this and let everyone know that I’m not being paid anything monetarily to do this. It’s just the right thing to do.”
Dickinson, who was one of the first of now over 30 women to come forward with accusations against the actor, added: “I could not let myself be silent when…the other women had come forth. I am sober today and I’m in a program of vigorous honesty. I want to protect all those women that haven’t come forward and show them the love and support worldwide that what happened to me will not happen to another woman.”
“I’m mad,” the model continued. “I’m really mad…I’m afraid of any organization that involves themselves, any woman walking around in the near vicinity of this man. I’m afraid for women’s rights.”
Dickinson alleged during an emotional interview with ET last November that Cosby drugged and raped her in 1982. Dickinson claimed that at the time Cosby gave her a drink and a pill which she thought was for her menstrual cramps. "The next morning I woke up, and I wasn't wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out thinking that I had been sexually assaulted by this man," she recalled. "Before I woke up in the morning, the last thing I remember was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me. And I remember a lot of pain. The next morning I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.”
Dickinson said that when she first tried to come forward about Cosby in her 2002 autobiography, No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel, his lawyers pressured her not to.
“We're asking for money damages to compensate her for the damage to her reputation and for the emotional distress, the very serious emotional distress that's been very real for Janice that she's been going through,” her lawyer Bloom added of their civil lawsuit to ET's Brooke Anderson. “That's all that we can ask for. That's the only justice we can get at that point.”
