Bill Cosby's Alleged Rape Victim Speaks Out

During their first meeting, he told her to wet her hair and sit in his chair for an improvisation exercise.

“He wanted me to act completely drunk, wasted, while he stood behind me and stroked my neck and upper chest. He didn’t touch me beyond that, on that day, but that’s where it certainly started.”

And it only got worse from there.

Initially, Cosby would see Bowman whenever he was in Denver but soon, he was flying her all over the country to study with him. Cosby told her he wanted to see how she would behave around celebrities.

But Cosby’s promises to make her a star or audition for “The Cosby Show” never came to fruition. And Bowman says now that she looks back on it, she sees how Cosby worked to gain her mother and grandmother’s trust:

” so they wouldn’t butt in and get in the way. ‘By the time I was drugged and raped by him in New York, he’d already broken me down, brainwashed me and made me feel like there was something wrong with me if I resisted his sexual advances.

Bill would say that he needed to guide me, and that I must trust him. When he’d fill me in on my next itinerary to meet him, he would say, “You’re not going to fight me this time, are you?” He’d remind me that if I was going to be a successful actress, I’d have to break down my barriers and “learn to be vulnerable.

‘I knew something was wrong, that this was a twisted situation, but if I resisted, I was failing him and failing my good fortune. He was a pot of gold and I needed to take good care of it.”

Bowen said that there were times when she thought to resist but would then give in.

Once in Reno, Nevada in 1986, Cosby invited her to his hotel suite which was completely darkened.

‘He turned out all the lights. It was completely pitch black. He laid me down on the couch and started caressing and touching me all over. Then he put my hand on his penis, covering it with his hand. He had me masturbate him. I couldn’t see what was going on. When it was over, I ran out of the room and threw up.

‘It was so invasive and frightening and humiliating. There was no way I could tell my mother. I couldn’t even admit it to myself. I tried to convince myself that I’d imagined it. That it was a one-time thing, that it wouldn’t happen again. And I was paralyzed with fear.

But it did happen again, in a time that Bowen calls “the apartment incident.”

“He invited me to his New York brownstone for dinner. Staff was there. We ate in the kitchen. I had one glass of red wine with dinner. My next recollection is me, coming to, slumped over the toilet bowl, throwing up. I was wearing a man’s white t-shirt and my panties.

‘The t-shirt was not mine. Bill was standing over me, holding my hair out of my face as I threw up. I had no idea how I’d gotten there. I’d had one glass of wine with dinner. He was trying to soothe me with his words, “It will be okay. It’s okay.” 

By the time I came to, the staff was gone. No one in the house but us. And as the fogginess lifted, he escorted me to the couch where I recovered. I then got dressed and he called me a cab.

‘I was mystified. It was a sick pit in my stomach, knowing that I was out of control over the last undetermined amount of time. And that I was undressed, while he was in a white robe, and how had I gotten there?”

Bowen says that while one part of her knew that their relationship wasn’t right, another part of her felt superior for being an actress with this time of connection.

The relationship finally ended when Bowen embarrassed Cosby, nearly blowing his cover.

She arrived at his hotel suite in Atlantic City and noticed that her baggage was missing. So she called the concierge to inquire about it. Naturally, a 19 year old calling from Bill Cosby’s suite was not a good look. After Bowen awoke from a nap–or what she was believes was another drugging–she said Cosby was in her room, livid.

“He freaked out that I disclosed to the concierge the fact that a 19-year-old girl was calling from his penthouse. He couldn’t handle it. He throws me down on his bed and jumps on top of me. He used his forearm to pin me down by the neck.

‘He was trying to unbuckle his belt and take down his pants. I’ll never forget the sound of the clinking of his belt buckle. He couldn’t get his belt off. I’m screaming for help and trying to wrestle out of his grip while he’s trying to get his belt off and he’s trying to pull my pants down at the same time. I couldn’t get out from under him.

‘I didn’t stop screaming. He realizes I’m not stopping. He finally gets to a point of frustration and decides it’s too much trouble and he doesn’t want to risk it. He gets off me and calls me a “baby.” That’s when he throws me out.”

After that incident, Bill Cosby kicked Barbara out of the apartment he had been paying for her to live in, without giving her a chance to collect her personal belongings. Once Cosby had ensured that Bowen’s life and career in New York were successfully thwarted, her agent, a friend of Cosby’s, ordered her to take a drug and pregnancy test.

After her relationship with Cosby ended, Bowen, advised by a friend spoke to a lawyer. She was laughed out of offices. Despite no one believing her story, she had success. She starred in 30 national tv commercials, including ones for McDonalds, Miller Lite and Holiday Inn and appeared on “SNL”, “One Life to Live” and “All My Children” and excelled in film and tv, she believed she never had the career she was meant to have.

And because her story had been met with such resistance she stopped telling it. Until 2004, when Andrea Constand came forward. Then Bowman made it her mission to support her. But on her way to Philadelphia she had learned the Constand had settled out of court.

But Bowen is still not discouraged.

“Step one is exposing Bill Cosby as the monster he is. Step two is getting support from public figures, like Buress, who had the courage to speak out. Hollywood’s not deaf. Buress is surely not the only one to know about this. But no one is talking. There’s too much to lose. Yet, that leaves us victims feeling like we are on a desert island fending for ourselves, and that’s a lonely place to be.”

While Bowen is a successful artist and married mother of two, she’s still haunted by the time she spent with Cosby, “‘Those experiences live inside me. They take up space in my brain and altered the course of my emotional development and altered the course of my career.

Being assaulted like that made a huge impact on my ability to trust my own instincts, as well as others’ actions. It was a block I’ve been working to undo. And a block that Bill Cosby is solely responsible for creating.”