Name: Heidi Thomas

Age: 55

Occupation: music teacher

Year of Alleged Assault by Bill Cosby: 1984

Heidi Thomas was 24 when she got a call from her agent, who told her that a big shot in the entertainment industry — “Mr. C.” — wanted to mentor her. Thomas flew out to Reno to meet with him. From the airport, Cosby’s driver brought her to a ranch where the comedian was staying. There, Cosby asked Thomas to read a script for him and he assigned her the role of a drunken person. He gave her a drink as a prop, and he encouraged her to take a sip. She woke up to find Cosby naked and trying to force her to have oral sex with him. She came forward in February 2015. “My first thought was: How did I get here? What did I say? What did I do? This is so unprofessional and I hope I don’t throw up on his bed because that would be really bad. The next snapshot I have was him telling me we were going to do this again, and I remember getting up and saying something to the effect of ‘This isn’t why I came here.’ It’s such a haze. I now know why I was so foggy. I remember the door when I closed it, it sounded so loud. I thought, “Oh my gosh, I just slammed the door on Bill Cosby.” The idea that I had just been assaulted didn’t even occur to me.

I was absolutely certain I had done something. Why couldn’t I remember? What did I say? At the time nobody had ever heard of a date-rape drug, no one had ever heard of anything like that. I’ve now talked with several of the women who went through this, though, and it’s so similar. We lost days worth of stuff.”

Photo: Amanda Demme