Thirty-five women who allege they were sexually assaulted by US comedy legend Bill Cosby have been united on a magazine cover to tell startlingly similar stories of abuse.
They include models, waitresses, Playboy bunnies and women who used to work in show business, with one claiming he raped her while she was grief stricken over the recent death of her six-year-old son.
The New York magazine cover story is the largest expose yet of alleged abuse from nearly 50 women who have publicly accused Cosby of assault from the 1960s to 1996 across the United States.
Cosby, a pioneering African-American comedian who played a beloved family doctor on the hit 1980s sitcom The Cosby Show, has become a pariah in the wake of the snowballing scandal.
Despite being interviewed separately, many of their stories are startlingly similar, with Cosby accused of drugging them, then assaulting or raping them while they were barely conscious.
"Each story is awful in its own right. But the horror is multiplied by the sheer volume of seeing them together," the magazine wrote on Sunday.
New York photographed and interviewed each woman separately in a project that was six months in the making before the stories were uploaded on the web edition late on Sunday.
The magazine's website crashed on Monday, reportedly due to a hacker – not upset with Cosby's accusers but allegedly out to avenge a unpleasant visit to New York, America's biggest city.
In all 46 women have publicly accused the 78-year-old of rape or sexual assault.
Many of the 35 in this week's magazine story say they know of others still out there who have chosen to remain silent.
In a lurid 2005 court deposition, Cosby admitted obtaining Quaaludes to have sex with at least one woman, obtaining seven prescriptions for the sedative and giving them to other people.
Last week, Cosby's lawyer Monique Pressley defended the actor, who has remained almost entirely tight-lipped about the allegations, even as his reputation has been shredded.
"The sheer volume, or number of people who are saying a particular thing does not make it true," she told ABC television.
AFP