Mark Makela/Getty Images(NORRISTOWN, Penn.) — In a potentially major blow to the prosecution’s sexual assault case against Bill Cosby, former model and reality TV star Janice Dickinson admitted on the witness stand Thursday that she fabricated passages in a memoir — including a story of “rebuffing” the comedian’s advances.
The 63-year-old, called by the prosecution to testify in Cosby’s retrial on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, recounted a 1982 incident in a Lake Tahoe, California hotel room, in which she says she was drugged and raped by Cosby.
“Here was ‘America’s Dad’ on top of me — a happily married man with five children,” Dickinson testified in Montgomery County Court in Norristown. “And I remember thinking how wrong it was — how very, very wrong.”
Dickinson said she confronted Cosby the day after the alleged assault, but he did not acknowledge it occurred.
“I wanted to hit him,” she testified. “I wanted to punch him in the face.”
Under cross-examination, Cosby’s attorney, Tom Mesereau, challenged Dickinson’s testimony, pointing out her description of the Lake Tahoe encounter with Cosby differed wildly from the account in her 2002 ghostwritten memoir, No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel.
Dickinson acknowledged that she concocted stories in the book “because I wanted the paycheck for my kids,” adding that her ghostwriter took “poetic license” with her life story.
“So you made things up to get a paycheck?” Mesereau replied.
Appearing angry, Dickinson responded, “They weren’t there! And you weren’t there! And I’m telling the real story!” adding, “I put my hand on the Bible and I swore. I wasn’t under oath when I wrote the book.”
Earlier, during direct questioning, Dickinson testified that she decided to cut the story from her book after her publisher, Judith Regan, warned her it could ruin her career.
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