Bill Cosby was finally charged with aggravated indecent assault last month during an arraignment at a Montgomery, Pennsylvania courthouse on December 30th. The charges came after more than 50 women came forward and claimed Cosby sexual assaulted them.
Reverends Irene Monroe and Emmett Price joined Boston Public Radio for their weekly segment, All Revved Up, to discuss the charges against Cosby.
“You have to think of the time that Cosby comes out in the 80’s, and this is the crack epidemic, we got AIDS, we got Reaganomics, we also have the Central Park rape. You’ve got an iconography of images of black men being everything other than the image that Dr.Huxtable is portraying, but what you find out is that we have Dr.Huxtable and Mr.Hyde,” Monroe said on how important Cosby was to the black community.
Monroe was happy to see charges be brought against Cosby and to have national attention on the issue of sexual abuse. “This is a very serious problem that has gone on for at least four decades,” she said about Cosby’s history of sexual abuse allegations.
“We have evolved as a country on the issue of sexual abuse and rape and unfortunately here is someone that we all trusted.”
Unlike Monroe, Price did not believe that Cosby should be made an example and become the poster child for the evil of sexual assault. “It is clear that he is sick, that he needs some help. It’s clear that a lot of these women have suffered greatly and I really wish the cameras would go away. Let the legal system work the way that it needs to work and that everybody could get access to healing,” Price said.
“You can’t use the legal system to make an example out of somebody if he is wrong he needs to pay for it, no question about it. But we don’t need to have every camera in America on him in order to get the first crack at the apple,” Price said.
Listen to the entire interview with Irene Monroe and Emmett Price above.
