Bill Cosby: The rise of fall of America's favourite television 'family man'

The entertainer is America's fallen hero

From 1984 to 1992, Bill Cosby was known as Dr Cliff Huxtable: the sweater-wearing, well of wisdom from The Cosby Show. Even before his top-ranked series, the entertainer was the first black actor to star in a network show with I Spy during the ‘60s. To the public, he was America's dad: the public laughed with him for decades and grieved with him when his son Ennis was murdered in 1997. But the truth is he was nothing like the beloved character he portrayed or his perceived public image, and today's guilty verdict proves it.

As accusations flooded in over the past two years, longtime fans of Cosby and his career saw the allegations as an attack on black men, a witch hunt and the fall of their revered hero. The allegations came in well before #MeToo - the movement against sexual misconduct - where powerful men in Hollywood like Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey and Senator Al Franken were taken down by their actions. But Cosby’s retrial came in right in the midst of its rise - something that may have contributed to justice being served.

Over the years he became a divisive, public moralist when it came to social dynamics in poor black communities and young people.

The release of a 2005 deposition involving Andrea Constand in July 2015 helped tarnish Cosby’s squeaky clean image and encouraged authorities to reopen a criminal investigation into the actor. It detailed a part of Constand’s lawsuit where Cosby confirmed he had acquired Quaaludes to give to women he wanted to be intimate with: a sedative that was a popular party drug that was banned by the US more than 30 years prior.

By December 2015, he was formally charged with three counts of aggravated assault by Constand. Now a director of operations for Temple University's women's basketball team, Constand claimed he sexually assaulted her in 2004 when she was a Canadian basketball player looking for a mentor in the actor. During the first trial, Constand testified that Cosby slipped her three pills, dubbed “your friends,” she believed were herbal supplements to help with stress, but instead they caused her to fall asleep. However Cosby maintained that he gave her Benadryl and that she consented to sexual relations with the actor. The case was ruled as a mistrial one year ago, but prosecutors retried the case earlier this month. During the trial, it was revealed how much Cosby paid Constand in a civil lawsuit regarding the case in 2006, and Constand’s testimony held even more weight from five other accusers who testified during the trial.

Finally 14 years after the incident, Cosby was found guilty on all three counts of assault. It was impossible to deny that nothing happened with Constand. Since 1965, there have been 62 alleged victims of sexual assault at the hands of Cosby with women claiming the actor sexually assaulted them as recently as 2008. But Constand was the only publicly-identified victim whose allegations fell within the statute of limitations.

It's difficult to accept that the heroes are sometimes the villains, and in this case, Cosby has become the latter. While the other accusers may never get their day in court like Constand, the #MeToo movement has spoken.