Dear Bill Cosby

 I just want to say that in my opinion all of us men (and some women) need a lot of 'civilizing' in terms of controlling our sexual and violent urges; and women, or any victim of sexual violence are often a savior to us and society in that respect. I'm guilty of sexual wrong doings. As a young man (but in my 20s) I gave in to bad urges to inappropriately touch or 'speak sexually' to women I didn't even know. I am very very thankful that in one such incident (30 years ago) in an Atlanta department store, where I made an inappropriate comment to a young woman, that she immediately went outside and found a policeman and 'told on me'. It was the first time I'd ever been reported to an authority for this rotten behavior I'd occasionally exhibited since 8th grade.  I'll never forget the moment I left that store and a tall big AfrAmerican Policeman walked up to me and told me about the woman's complaint and calmly, but sternly lectured me about how wrong my lewd remark had been and how much trouble I could face if I continued that behavior. It was an epiphany for me...a light bulb really went off in my head. For a year or more after that I gave thanks every night in my prayers for the woman who had spoken out against me and for the fact that I had heard and learned from a strong authority before I might have done something worse to an innocent woman and also ruined my life in the process. It's been 30 years since that fateful moment and I have never, at all, exhibited such wrong behavior since. I had been a rude sleazy dog on a few occasions from Jr. High to that moment, but never since.

No victim of any crime deserves blame, but the fact is that even victims of crimes are morally obligated to speak out against them for their own good and the good of society. The woman who reported me saved other women from my potential future heinous actions and saved me from the consequences of continuing on that way. Maybe it's Karma, but a few years ago I found myself in a situation where a giant pit-bull mix dog belonging to a new neighbor escaped containment and cornered me in my own back yard. It wanted to kill me and could have. After that I took measures to protect myself from the animal, but I felt obligated to report the incident (and a few more) to city officials, mostly out of worry about what this dog might do to an unsuspecting child or jogger in the neighborhood. I was ridiculed and harassed by the dogs owners and city officials, but I eventually convinced them that the dog had to be moved to a more controlled safer environment. I took a lot of grief and it took a long time, but I'm sure that action on my part saved a tragedy of some kind. Just as the woman who had reported me saved a future victim and me from my ugly urges.

I guess what I'm saying is that we as a society are in this together and while no woman or man deserves bad treatment from each other, we are all obligated to speak out against crimes when they occur. If you did indeed do some terrible things to some women, it is still the case that it would have been better for them and future victims and for you, if they had spoken out at the time. And it is not right for people to put others in danger out of convenient silence and then pile up the debts of a lifetime and dump them out to the public years after a time when they could have made a real difference for all involved.

God bless us all and I pray that we learn from our tragic mistakes.