I'm torn on this. I totally get that many victims do not press charges and wait a long time - that's not what makes me confused. I'm surprised that if he was so predatory he didn't get caught more publicly - it seems like that behavior would escalate and it shows such extreme risk and entitlement. Drugging someone like that is such awful behavior, and I do think Cosby is very arrogant and his fame isolated him from questioning, but it seems like that could easily have resulted in some bigger issue. I would have expected him to have incidents of out of control behavior that did get out to some extent. But he could just be a very effective predator.
Then there's the issue that a lot of these women accepted pills - that doesn't mean they weren't raped, but I do wonder what they thought they were taking.* Some say benadryl, some say herbal meds, or something, and probably some used drugs and that was normal. Sometimes I know it was in their drink so they wouldn't know. But I'm a little suspicious because drug users generally know what certain pills look like - it's a little weird that they just took them.
Then you've got the whole settlement thing. I tend to believe the allegations are at least in part true due to the number of women involved and the fact that there's nothing outwardly implausible about it, but I do hate the idea that someone's reputation can be smeared so easily by a sex crime allegation. I too have the default position that a woman who claims she was raped was, but I certainly know that is not always true. How did all these women find each other for the suit?** And since he knew some of these women very well, there could be a personal motive, which makes more sense than money, or in addition to money.
