Cindra Ladd, the wife of Oscar-winning producer and former MGM Chairman Alan Ladd Jr. and a former Hollywood executive in her own right, has come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault.
Cindra Ladd detailed her alleged experience in the 1960s in a detailed essay published Sunday on The Huffington Post website.
“I met Bill Cosby while working in New York for the late film producer Ray Stark,” Cindra Ladd wrote. “I was a 21-year-old single woman in the world’s most exciting city. He was a 32-year-old internationally known comedian and television star, one of the most likable and popular entertainers in the business. He asked for my number and I gave it to him.”
Ladd said the relationship started off normal enough.
“We began hanging out, took in a movie, watched television and ate pizza and hot dogs in my apartment with my roommate,” she wrote. “He was married to his current wife [Camille Cosby] and he acted like a perfect gentleman who didn’t come on to either of us.”
BLOG: Bill Cosby assaulted me in 1969 http://t.co/GfY2I4T5Wh pic.twitter.com/vZdPw1l8Vj
— HuffPost Canada (@HuffPostCanada) January 27, 2015
However, like most intelligent women, she wondered why a married man would pay so much attention to her.
“I have to admit,” she wrote. “[It] made me wonder what his objective was.
“One night we were going out to a movie,” she wrote. “We agreed to meet at an apartment that he said belonged to a friend of his. I had a terrible headache but didn’t want to cancel the evening. He told me he had a miracle cure his doctor had given him that would get rid of the headache. He went into another room and came back with a capsule. I asked a couple of times what it was. Each time he reassured me, asking, ‘Don’t you trust me?’ Of course I did. This was Bill Cosby.”
Cindra Ladd said she woke up the next morning with a “vague recollection of feeling like I was floating” through the previous evening’s events.
“What I do recall, vividly and clearly, is waking up the next morning nude in the bed of his friend’s apartment and seeing Cosby wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe and acting as if there was nothing unusual,” she wrote. “It was obvious to me that he had had sex with me. I was horrified, embarrassed and ashamed. There was a mirror above the bed, which shocked me further.”
Cindra Ladd wrote that she fled the apartment after the incident, but never considered taking it to the police.
“It never occurred to me to go to the police,” she said. “It was a different time and ‘date rape’ was a concept that didn’t exist. I just kept asking myself over and over in disbelief why this had happened to me. Other than my roommate, I did not discuss that night with anyone for 36 years.”
She went on to explain why she finally decided to tell her story.
“This is the first time I have chosen to speak out about that night. It is also the last time I intend to address it publicly,” Ladd said. “I have no plans to sue, I don’t want or need money. I have no plans for a press conference or for doing any interviews. So why speak out at all and why now? The simple answer is that it’s the right thing to do. The truth deserves to be known.”
Bill Cosby faces new allegations from Hollywood executive – http://t.co/1bVlnfVUPZ pic.twitter.com/EWql1sdGrG
— Nightline (@Nightline) January 27, 2015
Ladd and Cosby ran into each other many years later, and the philanthropist says the encounter unnerved her.
“I have crossed paths with Cosby only once, when my husband, a highly successful Oscar-winning film executive and producer, introduced me to him,” she wrote. “I was shaking, wondering if he would recognize me by my unusual first name. His reaction spoke volumes. To Bill Cosby, I was just another stranger.”
