Last week, we reported that Bill Cosby had been freed from prison after his sexual assault conviction was overturned due to a promise a prosecutor made in 2005 that he would not be charged for the crime.
Now, the legendary Hollywood actress Carroll Baker of Baby Doll fame is speaking out to defend him despite the fact that dozens of women have accused him of rape and sexual assault.
“My heart is broken for Bill Cosby,” Baker, 90, said while appearing on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast the day before Cosby’s release. “Bill Cosby did not deserve, at his age and in the condition he’s in. … He’s a wonderful human being, absolutely wonderful, and I can’t bear the fact that he’s in prison. I don’t think it was his fault.”
Baker went on to blame the female victims of Cosby’s for anything that may have happened to them.
“Why would you go into a secluded place with a man? To play pinochle?” she questioned. “I’m sure they were all entranced with him. I have a feeling that that drink was just an aphrodisiac and he did not force them to take it, he just offered it to them. And I think it’s a sin he’s in jail.”
Baker feels differently about the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, branding him as “a maniac” who deserves to be locked up. However, she has a problem with women coming forward with sexual misconduct claims years later.
“But also these days, I hate the fact that these women do this,” she added. “That they come back from years before and they ruin a man’s career.”
When asked if she had ever seen any inappropriate sexual behavior during her decades in Hollywood, Baker could only think of one.
“I was only asked once to lie down on the casting couch, and I just walked out the door,” she recalled.
When asked if she believes that there were “nonconsensual” acts going on she wasn’t privy to, Baker responded by saying, “No, I don’t think so.”
Many feel that Cosby deserves to be in prison after over sixty women accused him of sexual assault. It remains to be seen whether prosecutors will go after the comedian again for another claim.
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