sexual assault

Former Film Executive Says Bill Cosby Drugged and Raped Her in 1969

Photo: Gabriel Bouys/Getty Images

In an essay for the Huffington Post, film executive Cindra Ladd is the latest woman to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual abuse. Ladd says the alleged assault took place in 1969, when she was spending time with Cosby in New York City. One day, she says, he invited her to see a movie; he was married and had never hit on her before, so she didn’t think anything of it. “I had a terrible headache but didn’t want to cancel the evening,” she recalls. “He told me he had a miracle cure his doctor had given him that would get rid of the headache … I asked a couple of times what it was. Each time he reassured me, asking, ‘Don’t you trust me?’” After that, she says, the rest of the night was a blur. But the next morning, everything was clear: She was naked, in a strange bed, and Cosby was lounging in a bathrobe. “It was obvious to me that he had had sex with me,” she writes. Ladd says that she never considered going to the police, as the concept of “date rape” wasn’t as well-known as it is today. She only told her husband, film producer Alan Ladd Jr., after the first public accusations against Cosby came out in 2005. “So why speak out at all and why now?” she asks. “The simple answer is that it’s the right thing to do.”

Cindra Ladd Is the Latest Bill Cosby Accuser