To say that you were wrong — or a step further, to apologize for that wrong — has the potential to be powerful, even if it comes a little too late. It’s an acknowledgment of wrong-doing and can provide a minor step to justice for whoever deserves the apology.
Not surprisingly, some people are too stubborn (or in this case, also too vile) to do so: enter Bill Cosby. The disgraced comedian is currently serving up to a 10-year sentence in a state prison in Pennsylvania after a jury found him guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault. He was also fined $25,000 and held financially responsible for the trials.
But being found guilty of sexual assault by a jury of your peers at the encouragement of basically every woman in the country isn’t enough for some of us. Cosby, 82, said in a recent interview with BlackPressUSA that the Pennsylvania parole board will never hear him say that he has remorse: “I have eight years and nine months left […] when I come up for parole, they’re not going to hear me say that I have remorse. I was there. I don’t care what group of people come along and talk about this when they weren’t there. They don’t know.”
Not only is this frustrating and semi-idiotic, it also cements the fact that he will most likely serve the maximum 10-year sentence that he was given. He is currently serving a three-to-ten year sentence with the potential for parole, but that potential just almost all went out the window. According to reporting by ABC News, legal experts say that sex offenders typically have to show remorse in order to be considered for parole.
On top of this, Cosby is appealing his sentence – claiming that the trial was a setup and that the jury was full of imposters. I really hope he knows this isn’t a deleted scene from “The Cosby Show,” but his actual life. In this interview, he also went on to call his prison cell a “penthouse,” and that he is a “privileged man in prison” so yeah, I don’t totally see signs of remorse coming any time soon.
Cosby, who has been accused of rape or sexual assault by more than 60 women, is currently serving out his sentence for the sexual assault of Andrea Constand and has also been ruled as a “sexually violent predator.” Attorney Gloria Allred, who represented many of the other women who accused Cosby, even said when he was first sentenced that she was “glad that judgment day has finally come for [him],” saying he showed “no remorse.” Some things never change.
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