In Cosby case, questions of credibility, consistency

In the weeks and months after Bill Cosby allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted her, Andrea Constand didn't cut ties.

She went back to his Cheltenham home and spoke to him by phone. She asked for tickets to one of his shows in Toronto - and brought her family, too.

Those details trickled out to police in multiple interviews a year after the alleged assault.

Cosby's defense team seized on that in Norristown on Tuesday in their bid to chip away at her credibility, and the charge against him of aggravated indecent assault.

Constand's three police statements were "riddled with numerous corrections and inconsistencies," said lawyer Brian J. McMonagle.

Though they lost a bid to derail the case - a judge ordered Cosby to stand trial - the questioning offered a glimpse of the strategy they are likely to use:

Her story shifted.

She maintained contact with her alleged abuser.

She's not credible.

Constand's delay in reporting the crime and her continued contact with the alleged assailant are not unusual behaviors for victims of sex assault, said Kristen Houser, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape.

"These are things that people who work in rape crisis centers know to be true," Houser said Wednesday. "It is very common that victims are slow to name it as a sexual assault. It's sort of this surreal experience, it's very confusing. . . . And people do reinitiate contact."

Attacking credibility is also a typical defense strategy in such cases, she said.

Constand's credibility was an element District Judge Elizabeth McHugh was not permitted to consider Tuesday. In preliminary hearings, judges need only to decide that enough evidence exists to take the case to a jury.

But the ultimate determination of guilt or innocence - based on the word of a 78-year-old world-renowned celebrity vs. that of a 43-year-old massage therapist - will be left to a jury.

Opting not to call Constand to testify this week, prosecutors made their case with excerpts of statements Constand and Cosby gave police more than a decade ago.

Constand, a former Temple University employee who had moved to Toronto, first reported the alleged assault in January 2005, a year after it occurred, by contacting police in Canada.

She was referred to the Cheltenham Police Department, and spoke with Detective Richard Schaffer by phone, testimony showed.

Cosby's lawyer said Schaffer's notes from that phone call indicated Constand said she and Cosby had only "business-related" visits before the alleged assault.

But in an interview with two detectives days later, Constand's recollection of their interaction before the incident changed, McMonagle said.

She told detectives she remembered eating a meal and sipping brandy in front of the fireplace at Cosby's home. She said he had put his hand on her inner thigh.

And months before he allegedly assaulted her, the statement said, they were together at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. Constand told police she and Cosby laid next to each other in a hotel bed there, though she said it was "nothing sexual."

In a later interview with Schaffer - after the detective had interviewed Cosby, and reviewed phone records documenting calls between him and Constand - Constand arrived with a lawyer, McMonagle said. In that interview, she also gave police more details about her relationship with Cosby, he said.

"Did you know she was lying?" the defense lawyer asked the detective Tuesday, pointing to what he said had been Constand's expanding and conflicting statements.

Prosecutors objected, and McMonagle moved on.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele later argued to the judge that Constand's interactions with Cosby before and after the alleged assault were irrelevant to the charge against Cosby - that he assaulted her that one night in his mansion.

Prosecutors say Cosby gave Constand drugs and wine that impaired her before putting his hands down her pants and forcing her to touch him.

"When you do that to a person, they are not able to consent," Steele said, "and that is a crime."

lmccrystal@phillynews.com

610-313-8116 @Lmccrystal