Bill Cosby given 3 to 10 years in prison, must register as a “sexually violent predator”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bill Cosby has been sentenced to three to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting and drugging former Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004, and he must also register as a “sexually violent predator.” That means he will have to undergo monthly counseling and make regular reports to authorities for the rest of his life, and his name will also be included in the sex-offender registry. This comes almost exactly five months from when a jury in Pennsylvania initially found him guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, and THR says an unidentified woman “shot her fist into the air and whispered, ‘Yessss’” when the verdict was read.
Cosby’s lawyers had been arguing for him to simply get house arrest, as they say he’s legally blind and will be helpless in prison, but the judge mentioned that Cosby’s prison sentence will involve “total confinement”—meaning he’s not getting anything as favorable as house arrest. Part of the decision to send Cosby to prison may have had something to do with the victim-impact statement that Constand submitted to the court, as it reiterated the details of her assault and mentioned that she’s “been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward” since Cosby drugged her.
She also noted, “We may never know the full extent of [Cosby’s] double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over.”