Groundbreaking comedian Bill Cosby was sentenced Tuesday to three to ten years in prison for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his Philadelphia home in 2004.
Constand, the women’s basketball administrator at Temple University, told the court that the attack took her “beautiful, young spirit and crushed it.”
The criminal charge against the once-beloved star of The Cosby Show is the only one to arise out of from over 60 accusations of sexual assault against him since Constand first reported her attack in 2005.
“When the sexual assault happened, I was a young woman brimming with confidence and looking forward to a future bright with possibilities,” read a statement from Constand, 45, who lives alone with her two dogs. “Now, almost 15 years later, I’m a middle-aged woman who’s been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward.”
“We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over,” she added of her assaulter.
The first trial on the Constand charges, held last year, resulted in a hung jury. Five women testified against Cosby at the retrial, including television star and model Janice Dickinson, who alleged he drugged and sexually assaulted her when she was 27.
“It is time for justice. Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The time has come,” said Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill, who designated Cosby a “sexually violent predator.”