American comedian defense attacks model's credibility

Bill Cosbys defense lawyer ferociously attacked Thursday the credibility of a celebrity model who says the disgraced megastar raped her in 1982, sent her roses in rehab and made her want to punch him.

The now frail and isolated 80-year-old Cosby could spend the rest of his life behind bars if convicted of drugging and molesting Andrea Constand, 45, at his Philadelphia home in 2004.

The case has besmirched the legacy of the actor once adored by millions as "America's Dad" for his role as lovable father and obstetrician Cliff Huxtable on the hit 1984-92 television series "The Cosby Show."

The admission of testimony from five other accusers presents the biggest challenge for the defense. On Thursday, Janice Dickinson became the fourth of those accusers to testify at Cosby's retrial.

Dickinson says that Cosby flew her first class from Bali, Indonesia, where she was modeling, to a ritzy ski resort in the Sierra Nevada for what she thought would be talks about her career.

Over dinner, he allegedly handed her a blue pill, which she thought would ease menstrual cramps, but left her dizzy and "out of it."

She says Cosby then raped her, leaving her "very, very sore... in shock and humiliated."

"I didn't fly to Tahoe to have sex with Mr Cosby," she testified.

"I remember the taste of his kiss, it smelt like cigars and espresso... Here's 'America's Dad' on top of me, a happily married man with five children... I remember thinking how very, very wrong it was.

"I wanted to hit him, I wanted to punch him in the face," she said.

Cosby's lawyer Tom Mesereau, famous for getting Michael Jackson acquitted of child molestation, has dismissed the accusers as "prosecution by distraction" and claims they are money grabbing.

'My true story'

He brandished Dickinson's memoir, "No Lifeguard On Duty" from 2002 that was ghost-written by the same writer who worked for O.J. Simpson. It makes no mention of the rape.

Instead, it says each went to their separate rooms, where she drank, took sedatives and went to sleep.

"You lied to get a paycheck?" Mesereau hectored.

"I don't lie, sir, don't call me a liar," Dickinson said. "You take poetic license in what you do. Today, I'm on a sworn Bible... to tell my true story."

Dickinson claimed she told her ghost writer the "entire horrific, catastrophic" experience to publish the truth, but was advised it "would never get past Cosby's legal team."

"He's a powerful guy and they told me he could ruin my career... I knew he could ruin my career if I ever came out and said something against him," she added.

"It's all a fabrication there because I wanted the paycheck from the book," Dickinson said, repeatedly calling the book "poetic license" done to feed and educate her children, under attack from the defense.

Mesereau then accused her of misleading Sylvester Stallone by telling him she was pregnant with his child while the couple dated, before trying to paint her as a serial user of cocaine and pills.

"I had sex with two men that month. He wasn't the only contender," Dickinson replied of Stallone. "I told him I was pregnant."

"He stayed with me throughout the entire pregnancy," she said. The DNA test confirmed he was not the father.

"Thank God," she said. "I told the father of the child he was the father of my daughter."

Cosby's first trial in Norristown, a Philadelphia suburb, ended in a hung jury in June, with a sequestered panel hopelessly deadlocked after six days of testimony and 52 hours of deliberations.