Name: Jewel Allison

Occupation: writer

Year of Alleged Assault by Bill Cosby: circa 1990

Cosby was in New York City filming the Cosby Show, and asked through Allison’s agent to meet with her. He invited her to his New York City brownstone for dinner, but Allison was the only guest. He offered her a glass of wine. Allison took a few sips. She started to feel sick. She remembers Cosby helping her up, and seeing semen. She became nauseous and ill, and Cosby escorted her to a taxi and sent her home. “I told my closest girlfriend. That was the first person I told. I told family members. I told friends. Maybe about 10 years later or so, I ran into a former model who was with my agency and we compared notes. We started talking about him and she had an incident also, which I can’t talk about because she still hasn’t come forward. I told her then she should never tell anybody. I was trying to protect her.

I had a few moments where I tried to come forward. I’ve picked up the phone more than once over the course of two decades. This is before the women started coming forward in large numbers. But I was just too scared, and I also had the extra burden of not really wanting to take an African-American man down. I’ve always been very closely involved in the black community. And for me to come forward and basically destroy this very positive image of, as few as we have, of African-American men in America, it was just too difficult to do at that time.”

Photo: Amanda Demme