How Bill Cosby trial and row over Brett Kavanaugh reshaped America

They were born just a couple of hundred miles from each other, but these two men may as well be from different worlds.

One is white, the other black.

One went to prestigious Yale University and rose to become a US Court of Appeal judge.

The other quit college for the Navy, and went on to become America’s biggest TV star. Yet today, the paths of Brett Kavanaugh and Bill Cosby cross on the quicksand of sexual assault allegations.

Cosby, 81, is already in it over his head. The comedian who became a household name in family TV sitcom The Cosby Show must now get used to being inmate number NN7687.

He will serve three to 10 years in a Philadelphia jail among serial child molesters and rapists after being convicted of drugging and molesting basketball player Andrea Constand in 2004 at his home.

Meanwhile, right-winger Kavanaugh, 53 – nominated by President Donald Trump to be a Supreme Court judge – is almost up to his neck in it after millions watched Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology in California, give powerful testimony to a Senate committee that he sexually assaulted her when they were high school teenagers in the 1980s.

His fate now hangs on an FBI probe into the allegation that could end his ascent to power as one of nine judges with a lifelong seat on the bench of the highest US court with the final say on law and the ability to challenge government policy.

But should the quicksand threaten to suck Kavanaugh under, he at least has a rope to cling to – thrown by Trump, who knows a thing or two about sexual assault claims himself.

Yesterday the President tweeted: “Just started, tonight, our 7th FBI investigation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He will someday be recognized as a truly great Justice of The United States Supreme Court!”

Critics say Trump’s confidence can be explained by the fact that, having ordered the FBI to reopen Kavanaugh’s file, he’s given the bureau just
a week complete its probe.

The White House itself is setting parameters for the investigation, deciding whether FBI agents can interview two other women who have accused Kavanaugh of misconduct. Ford’s moving TV testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week even forced Trump to admit it was “very compelling”.

It was also seen as a powerful blow on behalf of the #MeToo movement – born from the hashtag that went viral on Twitter last year shortly after sex allegations emerged against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

The 51-year-old professor moved millions as she tearfully told how the future lawyer forced her down on a bed at a high school house party in front of a friend, “groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He began grinding his hips into me. They were laughing with each other.”

Then she says he clamped his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream before she was able to escape.

“I believed he was going to rape me,” she said. She claimed the assault “drastically altered my life,” filling her with shame and fear and causing “panic attacks and anxiety”.

And she said her motive for giving evidence was not political, but to do her “civic duty”.

Ford said: “I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified.”

Kavanaugh – a former aide to President George W Bush – told the committee her accusations were “radically inconsistent” with his character, adding: “The truth is that I have never sexually assaulted anyone.”

Then at one point in the proceedings, committee member Lindsey Graham, a Kavanaugh supporter, said his friend was “not a Bill Cosby” – a moment not lost on viewers. The country is still reeling from the jailing of a man who rose to TV fame playing the father in a well-off African-American family. Reportedly paid more than £1million an episode, his estimated wealth three years ago was nearly £400million.

Last week, moments after Cosby was sentenced, his publicist Andrew Wyatt claimed he and Kavanaugh were victims of a “sex war” – enraging #MeToo supporters and winning applause from critics who think the campaign has gone too far.

After insisting the star was “innocent” and had been “framed”, Wyatt bragged his boss has been enjoying his early days behind bars in Pennsylvania State prison. He said: “After the sentencing he called his wife Camille from the penitentiary. They spoke and he was just making jokes and being humorous as always.

“He said the people are treating him really nice. Camille is fighting for him. She knows he is innocent.”

His victim Constand, 44, has – like Ford – boosted the cause of thousands of women who came forward after Weinstein, claiming to have been victims of sex offences at the hands of men in power.

In harrowing trial testimony, she described how Cosby gave her four blue pills then molested her as she lay helpless at his home in 2004. And in a moving statement, she later said: “I was a young woman brimming with confidence and looking forward to a future bright with possibilities.

"Now, almost 15 years later I’m a middle-aged woman who has been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward. Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it.”

As many as 60 of his alleged victims will never get their day in court. Many accusations against him date back to the 60s and 70s and the American Statute of Limitations – essentially an expiry date for convictions – is typically 10 years.

But in Pennsylvania, where Cosby lives, the limitation for rape and sex offences is 12 years, and Constand first reported hers in 2005.

#MeToo supporters will be hoping the comic does his full 10-year stretch as the movement battles on after gathering momentum through celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, Jennifer Lawrence and Uma Thurman who all made a stand to show the extent of sexual harassment in Hollywood.

His jailing is a watershed moment. Cosby’s first trial in mid-2017 pre-dated the social media revolution and ended with a hung jury.

By the time of the retrial and conviction, it had exploded into a bold display of feminist power. Now it is suffering a backlash from men who say they’re afraid to approach women.

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But Rachel Krys, co-director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, says it is powerful men who are the problem.

“Sexual assault is about power, control, and perpetrators being confident their actions have no consequence because of their power,” she said. “Cosby was extremely powerful, but that power has waned. The same could be said of Weinstein. There is more of a willingness to believe their victims when they are less powerful.

“In the UK, Jimmy Savile had to die before people were able to start believing it. While they’re on the rise it seems like they are almost untouchable, and victims won’t be believed.

“Kavanaugh is about to be appointed to the most senior job in the judiciary – a lifetime appointment. He’s untouchable then.

“I think for a lot of women that will be unbearable, because of the power that position will give him for life.

“So these allegations must be taken seriously – and investigated properly.”

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