Another woman accuses Cosby 
of rape after he gave her drugs

Therese Serignese, now 57 and a nurse in Boca Raton, said the TV star raped her in 1976 when she was 19 after a show in Las Vegas.

She said she went backstage and when the two were alone, Cosby gave her two pills and a glass of water, saying: “Take these.”

“My next memory is clearly feeling drugged, being without my clothes, standing up,” she said. “Bill Cosby was behind me, having sex with me.”

Cosby spokesman David Brokaw did not respond to a request for comment.

Cosby’s lawyer, in a statement released on Sunday, criticised previous “decade-old, discredited allegations”, stating that “the fact that they are being repeated does not make them true”.

Dozens of Cosby’s television and comedy colleagues have either refused to comment or not returned telephone calls.

The allegations by Ms Serignese and Barbara Bowman, an aspiring actress, would-be writer Joan Tarshis and actress and model Janice Dickinson are all similar in that they claim they woke up from a drugged state to find themselves naked and that Cosby was having sex with them. Cosby’s lawyer, Martin Singer, said Dickinson’s claims were “false and outlandish”.

In addition, Tamara Green wrote in Entertainment Tonight that in 2005 she was drugged and Cosby attempted to assault her.

Cosby’s lawyers have previously denied they knew each other.

An attempt by Cosby, 77, to make a career comeback has collapsed in recent days as the abuse allegations resurfaced. This week Netflix said it was postponing a comedy special it had planned with him to be shown later this month, NBC said it was halting development of a sitcom with him and TV Land axed re-runs of The Cosby Show.

Ms Serignese said she made a statement to Philadelphia police in January 2005 and said she had agreed to give evidence on behalf of Andrea Constand, a Pennsylvania woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Cosby and settled before it went to trial.