Cos says he did give woman pills - Benadryl He denies sexually assaulting former Temple employee

By NICOLE WEISENSEE EGAN weisenn@phillynews.com

BILL COSBY did give Andrea Constand pills at his Montgomery County mansion but says they were Benadryl, not drugs, and denied having sexually assaulted her, his attorneys said in court papers filed yesterday. Constand, 31, has accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her while she was immobile at his Elkins Park home in January 2004. She went to police a year later. Authorities declined to prosecute Cosby in February. She filed a civil suit against him in March. Yesterday's filing was an answer to the claims made in her initial complaint. In the response, Cosby also denied having offered Constand and her mother financial compensation after she went to police this past January, and denied having apologized to Constand. He also denied having defamed her in a March National Enquirer story and denied that his representatives had leaked unfavorable information about her to "Celebrity Justice," a tabloid TV show. Cosby said he did befriend Constand through her work at Temple University, and believes she did regard him as a friend and mentor, the papers said. Cosby said that he and Constand saw each other socially, at various group dinners and functions at his mansion, and at some one-on-one dinners at his home and elsewhere, but that he could not recall the exact dates, the filing said. On one of the occasions when they were at his home alone, Constand complained "of tension and an inability to sleep" so he offered her 1 1/2 tablets of Benadryl, an allergy medication sold over the counter, the response said. She accepted. She claims she told him she was stressed so he gave her three pills, which he told her was herbal medication. Cosby denied having laid her down on a sofa and sexually assaulting her when she became woozy, but said she did sleep over. He said that when he came to wake her the next morning, she already was awake. He denied that he was wearing his bathrobe when he woke her, which she had stated in her complaint, but said he had given her a homemade blueberry muffin and a cup of hot tea before she left. He said she attended a dinner party with him in March 2004, and attended one of his performances in August 2004. Also yesterday, Constand's attorneys filed a motion in response to Cosby's request for all documents in the case to be sealed. Cosby's attorneys want the protective order so the entertainer won't be "embarrassed" by the details of the "salacious" drugging and/or sexual-assault statements made about him by as many as 12 other women. Constand's attorneys want the identities of those 12 women kept from the media but said they believe all other documents should be public. "If the court were to seal discovery in this case, defendant's public relations machine would continue to paint him as a picture of virtue," wrote Constand's attorneys, Bebe Kivitz and Dolores Troiani. "Defendant will continue to talk, lecture and promote his own 'defense' merely by promoting the image he has fostered, where the plaintiff's lips must remain sealed about the evidence she has learned. " Furthermore, Kivitz and Troiani argue that publicity has benefited society in general because other women, who were "victimized after being conned by the Cosby image," came forward after hearing about Constand's allegations. *