Sexual Abuse & Domestic Violence

Updated at 1:05 p.m. ET

The judge in the sexual assault case of comedian Bill Cosby has declared a mistrial. After several days of deliberations, the jury could not come to a unanimous agreement on whether Cosby drugged and molested Andrea Constand, a former employee of Temple University, at his home near Philadelphia in 2004.

But this does not mean an end to the high-profile case: Prosecutors immediately said they will retry the case.

DA Steele announces we will retry this case.

— Montgomery County DA (@MontcopaDA) June 17, 2017

Cosby, 79, remains charged with three second-degree felony counts of aggravated indecent assault, and each count carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison. All told, if found guilty, Cosby could spend the rest of his life in prison.

“I remind everyone that this is not vindication or victory,” Montgomery County Judge Steven T.O’Neill said Saturday. “A mistrial is merely the justice system at work.”

Nevertheless, Cosby’s legal and publicity team emerged onto the front steps of the courtroom triumphant.

“Justice is alive in Montgomery County,” Cosby’s attorney, Brian McMonagle, said with his client standing silently behind him. “We wanted an acquittal, but like the Rolling Stones song says, you can’t always get what you want; sometimes you get what you need.”

Statement From Mrs. Camille Cosby pic.twitter.com/nfBF92BpN1

— Bill Cosby (@BillCosby) June 17, 2017

And in a scathing statement read aloud by a representative, Cosby’s wife, Camille, called the district attorney “heinously and exploitatively ambitious” and the judge “overtly and arrogantly collaborating” with him — among other allegations.

Asked later whether he believes Saturday’s mistrial represents a victory for Cosby, spokesman Andrew Wyatt said: “I do. I think the DA — he has to say he’s going to retry. But why keep costing these citizens millions of dollars?”

Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt declares victory in the pouring rain, as Cosby sits in a black SUV behind him. #CosbyTrial pic.twitter.com/W0wh2C1SUB

— Bobby Allyn (@BobbyAllyn) June 17, 2017

Meanwhile, Constand’s attorneys are “confident that these proceedings have given a voice to the many victims who felt powerless and silenced,” they said in a statement.

“We commend those prosecutors,” they continued, “who raised awareness that one of the hallmarks of drug-related sexual assaults is the effect the drug has on the victim’s memory and ability to recall and were nonetheless willing to present this evidence to the jury.”

Andrea Constand is “entitled to a verdict in this case,” District Attorney Kevin Steele said at a news conference later Saturday. “We will push forward to try to get justice done.”

He says that legally, he has 365 days to retry the case but that he hopes to “push it along” sooner than that.

“You can’t put a price tag on justice,” Steele said when asked by reporters about the cost of the trial. “If you do, you’re saying if someone is wealthy or famous, they don’t deserve the same sort of justice as everybody else.”

How the case unfolded

Constand is not the only woman who says Cosby raped or sexually assaulted her. Dozens of women have come forward over the past several years, with stories that echo one another. But in most of those cases, the statute of limitations had expired by the time the women told their stories publicly. Constand’s case was the exception.

She reported the crime to police in 2005 and filed a civil suit against Cosby after prosecutors declined to press charges. A decade later, as more and more women stepped forward with accounts of assault, prosecutors took a second look at the allegations and this time, filed criminal charges.

Prosecutors argued that Cosby drugged Constand to incapacitate her so he could assault her. They cited Cosby’s own statements that he gave her pills and touched her sexually and called another accuser to the stand to make the case that Cosby had a pattern of drugging and assaulting women.

Cosby’s defense team questioned Constand’s credibility, pointing to inconsistencies in her accounts to the police, and argued that the 2004 encounter was consensual and “romantic.”

The prosecution took five days to present their case; the defense, less than a day. Cosby did not testify in his own defense.

Cosby’s wife, Camille, joined him in the courtroom as his defense team presented its case. Supporters and well-wishers also gathered outside the courthouse; at times during the trial, Cosby “appeared in good spirits” as he spoke to and saluted his fans, The Associated Press reports.

Jury deliberations started Monday afternoon. As the days passed, the jury repeatedly asked to rehear portions of the testimony.

On Thursday, after more than 30 hours of deliberations, the members of the jury told the judge they were deadlocked and could not reach a unanimous consensus. The judge ordered them to try again, giving them instructions meant to motivate an undecided jury to come to a conclusion.

By the time a mistrial was declared Saturday, the exhausted jurors had spent more than 50 hours in deliberations.

A growing wave of allegations

For decades, Cosby’s public image seemed not just untarnished, but untarnishable. He was the star of the wildly popular The Cosby Show and a successful stand-up comic. Genial, avuncular, beloved: He was America’s dad.

As NPR’s Gene Demby has written, Cosby was a black luminary who served not just as a racial and cultural ambassador to white America, but also as a financial backer of black America.

“Black colleges and prospective black college students were buoyed by his philanthropy, while his collections of black art graced important museums,” Gene writes. “Even before his late-career turn as black America’s moral scold, Cosby had spent decades leaning into his popular image as a paternal figure to bolster his influence as a paternalistic one.”

Cosby presented himself as a sort of moral leader and advocate for responsibility: His controversial “pound cake” speech excoriated poor black Americans for what he described as ignorance and poor parenting.

In Philadelphia, where he grew up, Cosby was a hometown hero. “Cosby gave money to the city, and whenever he could, his time,” Annette John-Hall reported for NPR. “In the early 2000s, he participated in ‘callback sessions’ with public housing residents in North Philadelphia, where they would talk about education, violence and teen pregnancy, among other issues.”

In short, Cosby’s name was synonymous with community leadership, black success, sitcom fatherhood, bold sweaters and Jell-O ads.

But a series of allegations of rape and molestation began swirling around the edge of that reputation. In 2000, a woman accused Cosby of groping her. Then Constand’s allegations drew attention in 2005.

Constand’s story led another woman to step forward, telling the Today show that Cosby drugged and assaulted her in the 1970s. Then another woman. Then another.

Cosby repeatedly and vehemently denied any wrongdoing. Almost a decade passed, and no criminal charges were filed. Cosby’s legacy and career survived — by early 2014, Gawker described the allegations as “effectively forgotten.”

Then, in the fall of 2014, comedian Hannibal Buress mentioned the allegations in a set. He said he was annoyed by Cosby’s “smug” persona: ” ‘Pull your pants up, black people. I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. … Brings you down a couple notches.”

“You leave here and Google ‘Bill Cosby rape,’ ” Buress told the audience. “It’s not funny. That s*** has more results than Hannibal Buress.”

The bit went viral, and suddenly Cosby’s alleged assaults were back in the news. As in 2005 and 2006, more women stepped forward with stories of assault.

But this time, the wave of allegations didn’t stop, and few people seemed inclined to forget and move on.

NPR’s Scott Simon asked Cosby to directly address the allegations in a November 2014 interview. Cosby responded with an attention-grabbing series of silences.

The Associated Press went to court to get access to a previously sealed deposition from Constand’s civil suit against Cosby. The wire service released the document — in which Cosby admitted that he obtained quaaludes, a sedative, with the intent of giving the drug to women he wanted to have sex with.

Then 35 women told their stories to New York magazine. Side by side, the stories showed the same themes again and again: Women who saw Cosby as a mentor, a father figure or an admired celebrity. A drink or a pill. Helplessness or fear or a night entirely lost to memory. Years of silence.

Cosby has continued, through his representatives, to deny that he committed any sexual assaults — admitting to infidelity but maintaining that all the sexual contact was consensual.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Young people who are homeless in Alaska are at high risk for human trafficking, but there are ways to prevent the problem.

Josh Louwerse is the youth engagement coordinator at Covenant House Alaska, Anchorage’s only homeless center for youth. He’s very aware and cautious of assumptions people make about where people are most at risk.

“I think far too often things get labeled…’Oh well, that just happens there,’ or ‘This happens there.’ But this is an issue that’s happening in the whole city and the state. Essentially what we see from a neighborhood or a street is the low hanging fruit,” people who it’s more obvious to find and identity, Louwerse said. “But there’s so much more that’s going on that’s much more sophisticated, that’s going on out of sight.”

Covenant House Alaska participated in Loyola University’s ten-city study on labor and sex trafficking among homeless youth. More than a quarter of the 65 young people who were interviewed in Anchorage were victims of trafficking. Louwerse said numbers are likely higher since they only spoke with people who were seeking services.

Human trafficking is when someone is exploited through force, fraud or coercion. It includes forcing a person to have sex in exchange for money or housing, or promising a high wage for a job then never paying up. A person can be trapped into unpaid servitude. In Anchorage, some victims were forced to sell drugs or do other criminal activity.

Louwerse drove around the city, past playgrounds, neighborhoods, gas stations, stores, cheap motels – all places that vulnerable young people might hang out. He explained they’re the same places that traffickers look.

“The recruiters who are trying to draw people into this lifestyle are looking for the easiest targets,” Louwerse said. “And our easiest targets are those who are homeless because they don’t have a place to go, they don’t have folks caring for them. If they disappear, few people will notice.”

77 percent of the young people in Anchorage who were trafficked for sex were homeless at the time. Louwerse said that often youth end up homeless because there are gaps in the system – they can’t find treatment for mental health problems or addictions. They don’t have support networks or housing options.

“At the end of the day, it’s a lack of community,” Louwerse said. “So who is there for them if we’re not? Traffickers.”

Debra Schilling Wolfe with the Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice, and Research was part of the national study on youth and human trafficking. The research shows that many people who were survivors of trafficking had aged out of foster care.

“Often when they turn the magic age of 18 or 21 if they are in extended care, they’re kind of dropped off the grid as it were, and have to support themselves without having the skills or resources to do so,” Wolfe said.

The study shows many trafficking victims had experienced sexual abuse or other trauma, which leads to increased vulnerability.

“One young woman had said, ‘I was sexually abused as a child, and I kind of learned from that that people could touch my body if they wanted to. I didn’t feel that I had control or ownership,’” Wolfe said, referencing an interview done on the East Coast.

Extensive social science research shows that one way to make young people less vulnerable to exploitation is to help them feel connected. Louwerse with Covenant House said youth need caring adults in their lives who support them and know them well enough to notice changes in behavior.

“Get involved with youth because if they’re supported and they have the people that they need in their lives, then they will not end up vulnerable to this issue,” Louwerse stated. “You know, I think if we want to be spectators and drive around our city and try to identify it, I think that’s very difficult. It really takes getting invested in people’s lives to understand and then discover that they are being exploited by something like this.”

Nationwide about 20 percent of homeless youth experienced trafficking.

Covenant House participated in the Barefoot Mile on Saturday in Anchorage’s Town Square Park. It’s an event to raise awareness about human trafficking in the state.

State Rep. David Eastman said some Alaskans are glad to become pregnant, so that they can have a Medicaid-funded trip to Anchorage or Seattle to have an abortion. Eastman didn’t provide evidence for this, but said he had been told this by friends and acquaintances.

Eastman said Medicaid funding for travel for health care provides an incentive to become pregnant and have an abortion.

“We’ve created an incentive structure where people are now incented to carry their pregnancy longer than they would otherwise and then take part in that when they wouldn’t otherwise be doing it,” he said.

When asked for evidence, Eastman said he “certainly knows of specific instances,” and declined to provide details.

“I can think of a case that was brought to our attention earlier this session where you had a family who was very glad to hear that their abortion had gone beyond a certain point, because they were going to be heading to Seattle,” he said.

The first-term Republican from Wasilla made similar comments to the Associated Press. He said many of his constituents want to eliminate Medicaid funding for abortion.

“You have individuals who are in villages and are glad to be pregnant, so that they can have an abortion because there’s a free trip to Anchorage involved,” Eastman said.

Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands spokeswoman Katie Rogers said Eastman’s comments were “ludicrous and despicable.”

Planned Parenthood has sued the state over restrictions that prevent second-trimester abortions from being performed in Alaska.

“The process for a woman to get to Seattle to access reproductive health care – a full range of reproductive health care – is incredibly challenging,” she said.

Rogers said Eastman would never know the difficulty of traveling for an abortion.

“To even suggest that women are benefiting off the very restrictions that the state has put in place as relates to second-trimester abortions is – it is a new low, even for Rep. Eastman,” she said.

Eastman also said some women who fly to Anchorage for abortions, but who change their minds, are unable to fly home because Medicaid won’t pay for it.

“Since they’re not going to complete the abortion at that point — they’ve decided not to — there really is no way for them to get home,” he said.

State Department of Health and Social Services Commissioner Valerie Davidson was traveling and couldn’t comment Wednesday on the issue.

Eastman made his remarks after working to amend a resolution to proclaim next April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Child Abuse Prevention Month. Eastman’s amendment inserted a statement that abortion is the “ultimate form of child abuse.”

It’s not clear whether the resolution, SCR2, will receive a vote in the House.

Indiana University will no longer allow prospective student-athletes with a history of sexual or domestic violence to compete.

In a statement, the school says that applicants who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty or no contest to “a felony involving sexual violence” or have “been found responsible for sexual violence” by disciplinary action at a former school, “shall not be eligible for athletically-related financial aid, practice or competition at Indiana University.”

The statement goes on to say that coaches also need to do their part to vet prospective athletes. Beyond mandatory criminal background checks and internet searches, “coaches should also talk to teachers, coaches, administrators, teammates and family members of prospective student-athletes.”

Indiana University Athletic Director Fred Glass came up with the policy, according to The Indianapolis Star, and the school’s Faculty Athletics Committee approved it earlier this month.

Glass tells the Star, “I think this will be an important policy to help protect members of the Indiana University community.”

The move comes after the Southeastern Conference banned member institutions from accepting transfer students with a history of serious misconduct in 2015, according to The Associated Press.

More attention being paid to incidents

Schools, professional leagues and fans have been grappling with a sports culture that is sometimes tied up in abusive behavior.

That controversy most recently has been showcased at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Longstanding accusations of sexual assault against numerous football players and accusations that the school tried to cover them up, forced out the head football coach, the athletic director and University President Ken Starr last year.

“The football program was a black hole into which reports of misconduct such as drug use, physical assault, domestic violence, brandishing of guns, indecent exposure and academic fraud disappeared,” according to a February court filing published via the Houston Chronicle. The filing is a response by three Baylor University regents to a defamation lawsuit by a former coach.

Indiana University is part of the Big Ten Conference, which has so far not made any ruling about accepting student athletes with violent pasts, leaving the decision up to individual institutions.

“I think it’s new ground,” Glass tells the Indianapolis Star. “My hope is that we’re leading in this area, and maybe others will follow with, maybe not the exact same policy, but one that fits their particular institutions.”

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The retrial of Christopher Strawn on murder and other charges related to the death of Brandon Cook will likely go ahead as planned in October. The judge in the case has rejected a motion filed by Strawn’s defense attorney to dismiss the indictment.

Online court records show Superior Court Judge Philip Pallenberg denied the motion on March 14.

Strawn faces a variety of charges including first- and second-degree murder for the shooting death of Cook at the Kodzoff Acres trailer park in October 2015. The prosecution was in the midst of making its case against Strawn during February’s trial when a key witness made an unsolicited and extremely prejudicial comment about domestic violence in a previous relationship with Strawn. The prosecution witness was initially called to the stand to testify about Strawn’s ownership of a firearm that could have been the weapon used to kill Cook. Judge Pallenberg granted a motion for a mistrial and the jury was sent home.

Strawn’s defense attorney, Eve Soutiere of the Office of Public Advocacy, immediately filed a motion to dismiss the indictment. In her filing, Soutiere argued that double jeopardy prevents re-prosecution of a case during instances of prosecutorial misconduct. Soutiere alleged that Assistant District Attorney Amy Paige, the case’s prosecuting attorney, was negligent when she failed to adequately prepare the witness for her testimony. Soutiere also alleged that Paige failed to ensure that the witness would not blurt out any prejudicial comments.

In her reply to Soutiere’s motion, Paige noted that they cautioned the witness twice about answering only the questions she was asked and not to volunteer any information about her relationship with Strawn. Paige also noted Judge Pallenberg had admonished the witness before she testified against volunteering any information. Paige wrote that they went to great lengths to avoid a mistrial and disputed the allegation that their conduct was negligent or reckless.

Soutiere also requested an evidentiary hearing to determine exactly how much time prosecutors spent preparing the witness for her testimony. Judge Pallenberg denied that motion, too.

A retrial is scheduled to start Oct. 2.

Law enforcement officers in Alaska can legally have sexual contact with people they are investigating for crimes. Proposed legislation seeks to change that.

“(I) brought House Bill 112 forward to close a loophole and eliminate a gray area about sexual contact during police investigations,” said Anchorage Rep. Matt Claman, who sponsored the legislation.

He said he proposed the bill after seeing research conducted on behalf of a sex worker advocacy group. The statewide telephone survey was completed by Hays Research, which has run surveys and focus groups in the state for over a decade. It shows that more than 90 percent of the people surveyed didn’t know that police officers could legally have intercourse with sex workers, and they do not think it should be legal.

Sex worker advocate Maxine Doogan said current law only protects people who are in custody, not people who are under investigation.

“What happens in prostitution sting operations is that you’re in a state of being investigated, not technically in custody,” she said. “So police are allowed to have sexual contact as part of sting operations because that’s part of investigating prostitution.”

Doogan says multiple women have reported sexual contact with law enforcement officers to her organization, Community United for Safety and Protection.

A spokesperson for the Alaska State Troopers said they have a policy against sexual contact during investigations. The Anchorage Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Fifty-eight percent of the people surveyed say they do not think the state should be expending resources “arresting consenting adults for prostitution.”

Doogan’s organization is also pushing for legislation that would expunge prostitution charges from a person’s criminal record and from CourtView. She says those public records make it hard for women to move out of the industry and take other jobs.

“When people have those really stigmatizing things on their records, it prohibits them from being hired in certain jobs,” she said. “So there’s a high level of discrimination against our population when people are looking to transition into other occupations.”

No legislation to remove the charges has been proposed yet.