Bill Cosby admitted in a 2005 deposition that he purchased Quaaludes with the purpose of drugging young women he wanted to have sex with, according to newly released court documents involving a lawsuit with a former Temple University employee.
The bombshell revelation from the 10-year-old deposition appears to give some credence to the allegations made by dozens of women since last October, all of them claiming that the comedian drugged and sexually assaulted them in a scandal that has tarnished his once squeaky clean image.
The documents from the deposition were first made public after The Associated Press appealed in
court for their release, Entertainment Weekly reported. Cosby testified that he gave the woman named in the suit three half-pills of Benadryl, noted the magazine.
According to the deposition, Cosby told attorneys Dolores Troiani and Bebe Kivitz at the time that he obtained seven prescriptions for Quaaludes and admitted he acquired them to give them to young women, according to EW.
When one attorney asked in the deposition if he tried to give the women the drugs without their knowledge, Cosby's attorney Patrick O'Connor objected and the comedian stated that he misunderstood the question.
Cosby settled the case in 2006 for an undisclosed sum, EW noted.
Cosby's representatives issued a statement to ABC News saying that the entertainer did so to protect his family.
"The only reason Mr. Cosby settled was because it would have been embarrassing in those days to put all those women on the stand and his family had no clue," the statement read. "That would have been very hurtful."
Some of the women who have accused
Cosby of drugging and abusing them told CNN that the deposition vindicated their stories about the comedian.
"It's huge," Barbara Bowman, who claims that the entertainer assaulted her in the late 1980s, told CNN. "It was like everything turned a 180 in a matter of a minute."
Accuser Joan Tarshis told CNN that Cosby raped her when she was 19.
"First of all, I kept it a secret because I was afraid to talk about it, because of Mr. Cosby's power," Tarshis said to the news network. "Then, when we came out, and lots of other women started to come out, we were called liars. And now that the truth has come out — that he has bought drugs in order to drug women to have sex with him — I'm just so relieved that the truth has come out."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.