Cosby is declared a 'sexually violent predator'

NORRISTOWN, Pennsylvania (AP):

Yesterday, Bill Cosby left a Pennsylvania courtroom in handcuffs to begin serving a three-10-year prison sentence for sexual assault. Earlier, a judge declared Bill Cosby a "sexually violent predator" before the sentencing of the 81-year-old comedian.

The classification means that Cosby must undergo monthly counselling for the rest of his life, and report quarterly to authorities. His name will appear on a sex-offender registry sent to neighbours, schools and victims.

Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill made the decision as he prepared to sentence Cosby for violating Temple University women's basketball administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia estate in 2004.

The comic once known as America's Dad is the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.

Prosecutors asked for five to 10 years in prison. The defence requested house arrest, saying Cosby is too old and helpless to do time behind bars. He is legally blind.

Cosby's lawyers had fought the "sexually violent predator" designation, arguing that Pennsylvania's sex-offender law remains unconstitutional and that he is no threat to the public at his age.

CLEAR EVIDENCE

But O'Neill said prosecutors had met their burden of proof by "clear and convincing" evidence.

When the ruling came down, a woman in courtroom shot her fist into the air and whispered, "Yessss!"

Meanwhile, Constand said in a statement submitted to the court, that she has had to cope with years of anxiety and self-doubt that have left her "stuck in a holding pattern."

Constand, 45, said her training as a professional basketball player had led her to think she could handle anything, but "life as I knew it" ended on the night that Cosby knocked her out with pills and violated her.

Constand said she now lives alone with her two dogs and has trouble trusting people.

"When the sexual assault happened, I was a young woman brimming with confidence and looking forward to a future bright with possibilities," she wrote in her five-page statement.

"Now, almost 15 years later, I'm a middle-age woman who's been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward."

In the years since Constand first went to authorities in 2005, more than 60 women have accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, though none of those claims have led to criminal charges.

The judge ruled on Cosby's sex-offender status after a defence psychologist, Timothy Foley, testified that the chances of the comedian committing another sex offence are "extraordinarily low" because he is old, legally blind and needs help getting around.

On Monday, a psychologist for the state testified that Cosby appears to have a mental disorder that gives him an uncontrollable urge to assault women.

Cosby was smiling and joking with his spokesman and sheriff's deputies as he settled into the courtroom yesterday. On Day one of the sentencing, the comic laughed at times as the psychologist on the stand for the state portrayed him as a sexual predator with signs of a mental disorder.

Tuesday's sentencing was a reckoning accusers and prosecutors said was decades in the making for the once-beloved entertainer known for his role as wise and understanding Dr Cliff Huxtable on the top-ranked, 1980s-era Cosby Show.