Readers React: What makes the Bill Cosby case even more disturbing than the underlying sexual assault

To the editor: I am delighted that Bill Cosby has been found guilty in a court of law of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand after, according to his accusers, decades of similar behavior towards dozens of other women.

What I find most interesting is that no one is examining the “drugging” part of this equation.

We all know that rich, famous men can easily find women who will willingly have sex with them — but that was not Cosby’s M.O. Did he have a paraphilic compulsion that caused him to be excited by a comatose sexual partner, or did he believe that drugging a woman before assaulting her made her an unconvincing plaintiff? If it’s the latter, that would make him truly diabolical.

Whichever, I applaud the prosecutor, the jury, Constand and the brave women who came forward to make public the most shameful secret in their lives — not, as Cosby’s defense claimed, for fame or money, but to finally bring this man to justice.

Wendy Dytman, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Cosby was compared by his publicist to Emmett Till, the black lad who, in 1955, was said to have whistled at a woman in Mississippi, an act for which the 14-year-old was tortured, mutilated and shot to death by white men.

The comparison seems more to underscore Cosby’s appropriate conviction than help him.

If there have been serious flaws in Cosby’s trial, he will be granted an appeal. But this ridiculous comparison has nothing to do with Cosby’s case, and it certainly does him no favor.

William Josephs, Los Angeles

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