Bill Cosby Scandal: Florida Nurse Claims Star Drugged, Raped Her

Therese Serignese accuses the comedian of sexually assaulting her in 1976

Bill Cosby, Therese Serignese
Getty Images/CBS Miami

Another woman has come forward accusing Bill Cosby of sexual assault.

Therese Serignese has told multiple media outlets the iconic comedian drugged her and then raped her back in 1976, when she was just 19. The registered nurse is one of several women who have recently accused Cosby of assault.

“The next memory I have was I was in a bathroom and I was kind of bending forward and he was behind me having sex with me,” she told the HuffingtonPost on Thursday. “I was just there, thinking ‘I’m on drugs, I’m drugged.’ I felt drugged and I was being raped and it was kind of surreal. My frame of mind was that it would be over soon and I could just get out of there.”

Serignese said she told her mother about being raped and drugged, but she says her mom advised her to reach back out to Cosby. She followed her mother’s advice, contacted the comedian and he put her up in the penthouse of a nearby Hilton hotel for about three weeks. Serignese claims all that changed when she had a pregnancy scare, which led to Cosby kicking her out.

She claims the two of them kept in touch for over 20 years, which included another sexual encounter around 1985.

“I just tried to forget it. I tried to block it out,” she said. “It doesn’t go away but you can make it silent. You can bury it. But all of these times when this stuff comes up, it does make me angry.”

Former actress, publicist and journalist Joan Tarshis also recently came forward with allegations of sexual assault at the hands of the television icon. She too was 19 when the crimes allegedly took place.

She told TheWrap she was speaking out now in part because she wanted “to help the public understand that he’s not Mr. Clean,” and also “because of the other women who were courageous enough before me to venture out and say what was going on.”

This follows alleged victim Barbara Bowman’s Washington Post essay asking why it took a viral video from comedian Hannibal Buress about this issue for it to resonate with the public.

Cosby had projects in the works with Netflix and NBC when the first of these allegations resurfaced, but both have now been canceled. Reruns of “The Cosby Show” have also been pulled from TV Land’s programming lineup.

Cosby was recently interviewed by both NPR and the Associated Press, but he side-stepped questions regarding allegations of rape, drugging women, and sexual assault.

Serignese shared her story on camera Wednesday with CBS Miami affiliate, WFOR-TV.

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