Bill Cosby Accusers Call Deposition “A Game-Changer”

“I’ve worked so long and hard to tell my story and screamed my story onto deaf ears. So after 10 long years it really was quite amazing to read my email today, and it was like everything turned a 180 in a matter of a minute,” Bill Cosby accuser Barbara Bowman told CNN’s Don Lemon Monday evening.

Bowman and Joan Tarshis, who both claim that Cosby drugged and raped them, joined Lemon’s CNN show via video on Monday, hours after a court unsealed a 2005 deposition in which Cosby admitted he obtained quaaludes with the intent of giving them to women with whom he wanted to have sex.

Tarshis added that she, too, was surprised but happy about the news. “Never thought this day would happen,” she told Lemon. “I’m just so relieved that the truth has come out.”

Tarshis, who Lemon noted has been battling some health problems, said the Cosby revelations “definitely lifted my spirits.”

“This was like a weight around my feet for so many years, that I wasn’t believed, that I was called a liar,” she said.

Bowman said she was glad to get the news after years of Cosby calling his accusers liars and her joining Andrea Constand‘s lawsuit, from which Cosby’s unsealed deposition was taken, as a Jane Doe in hopes that it would be “a game-changer.”

“So to see those words today, I didn’t know if I was gleefully happy or feeling like I wanted to get out there and scream that from the rooftops. But it is a game-changer and it’s about time. We needed to hear this from him,” Bowman said. “When I went out publicly, my only intention was to support Miss Constand back then because I believed her, because I knew that it happened to me. So to have this long, hard journey of darkness and shame and fighting to be heard, I think we’re going to be heard now, and I think this is just the beginning.”

Watch video of Bowman and Tarshis‘ appearance on CNN below.

Fellow accusers Victoria Valentino and Patti Masten spoke to CNN’s Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper, respectively, after Cosby’s deposition was released, both saying they felt his admission validated their claims

“I am so overwhelmed that this has come out at long last,” Valentino told Burnett by phone. Thank you, God. I’ve been jumping up and down. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I just can’t believe that this is finally, finally opening up and we are being validated…I really was just kind of expecting it was going to continue to go on with more women coming out and him just slipping away and pretending to be feeble and senile and once more our claims getting swept under the carpet…Just because someone is famous and wealthy and powerful doesn’t mean that he gets away with it. He doesn’t get to drug and rape women.

Masten, who claims she was drugged and brutally raped by Cosby, told Cooper she “knows” that many more women will come forward who were assaulted by him.

“We’re up to 48 [women] that have come forward and there’s probably another 50 that are Jane Does,” Masten said.

When asked why someone as popular as Cosby was would drug women and whether he liked doing that, Masten said, “He’s a sociopath. They have no remorse. He will definitely be known as the most prolific serial rapist in the United States of America, no doubt, Dr. Huxtable [his Cosby Show character] will be.”

July 7, Noon This story has been updated with Victoria Valentino and Patti Masten’s CNN interviews.