NORRISTOWN, Pa. (CN) – Grilling Bill Cosby’s sexual-assault accuser in her second day on the stand, defense counsel worked Wednesday to undermine Andrea Constand’s credibility.
“You knew from that night he was interested in you romantically,” attorney Angela Agrusa said, referring to a dinner party at Cosby’s home, months before the alleged assault, where Constand says the comedian touched her suggestively.
“No, ma’am, I did not,” replied Constand, wearing a white blazer over a blue cardigan. “He made a pass at me.”
Constand testified Tuesday under direct examination that she had left the dinner abruptly when Cosby put his hand on her waist and tried to unbutton her pants.
"You allowed him to touch you?" Agrusa asked this morning.
"No," Constand fired back. "I didn't allow him, it was his own volition."
The only one of Cosby’s dozens of assault accusers whose claims are not too old to prosecute, Constand says Cosby drugged and assaulted her at his Cheltenham home in 2004. Constand, who is gay, met the comedian 16 months earlier through her job as director of basketball operations at Temple University, a Philadelphia area school where Cosby was a trustee.
In her first day on the stand, prosecutors walked Constand through a series of dinners and getaways she took with the comedian before he allegedly attacked her.
Agrusa zeroed in Wednesday on the night in 2003 when Constand says she lay down beside Cosby in his hotel room at the Fox Woods casino in Connecticut.
Constand disagreed with the attorney’s suggestion that they were in bed together. "I was reclined on my elbow with my feet off the bed, watching Mr. Cosby sleep," she said.
After returning to her room, Constand said she called Sherri Williams.
"I spoke to her at all hours,” Constand said. “Morning, noon and night.”
Though the trial has not touched on Constand’s sexual orientation, her attorneys noted in 2015 filings that Constand was dating a woman at the time Cosby assaulted her.
It is unclear at this point if Williams and Constand were dating. When Cosby was being deposed for the civil case with Constand in 2005, he testified that he only learned Constand was gay when police informed him that year.
Jumping from the night in Connecticut to the night of the alleged assault, Agrusa had Constand admit that she told Cosby she was "stressed" and "not sleeping."
Agrusa asked why Constand took the blue pills Cosby offered her, and Constand said she wanted to "relax."
"He had never disclosed to me that he had affection for me,” Constand added.