NORRISTOWN, Pa. — A judge ruled Tuesday that comedian Bill Cosby is a “sexually violent predator.”
The classification means Cosby must undergo lifetime counseling and report quarterly to authorities. His name will appear on a sex-offender registry sent to neighbors, schools and victims.
Judge Steven O’Neill made the decision Tuesday as he prepares to sentence the 81-year-old comedian for drugging and molesting a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.
Prosecutors are asking for five to 10 years in prison. The defense wants Cosby sent home on house arrest.
Cosby’s lawyers had fought the “sexually violent predator” designation, arguing that Pennsylvania’s sex-offender law remains unconstitutional despite several revisions.
The victim, Andrea Constand, said she’s had to cope with years of unrelenting pain, anxiety and self-doubt after Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home in 2004.
Constand wrote in a victim-impact statement released Tuesday that Cosby’s 2004 attack on her was just “the tip of the iceberg” for the suffering that followed.
Constand says 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 Cosby knocked her out with pills and violated her.
She says the Cosby team’s subsequent attacks on her character left her with “insurmountable stress and anxiety.”
Constand says she now lives alone with her two dogs, “stuck in a holding pattern” as a middle-aged woman because she has trouble trusting people.
Earlier, a defense psychologist said the chances that Cosby will commit another sex offense are “extraordinarily low” because he’s old, legally blind and needs help getting around.
Psychologist Timothy Foley testified at the sentencing hearing. Foley met with Cosby in July to conduct a risk assessment.
He said the comedian’s lawyers wouldn’t let him discuss certain matters, including the sexual assault that led to his conviction or his admission that he gave quaaludes to women before sex.
Prosecutors questioned whether Foley got a complete picture of Cosby’s alleged deviance.