Bill Cosby arrested and charged with sexual assault.

Warning: This post contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault.

Bill Cosby has been arrested and taken into custody today, after years of accusations and denials, after countless stories of drugging and rape, and after more than 50 women described being sexually assaulted.

The Montgomery County District Attorney announced that the charges come after new information was brought forward on a case from 2004.

“A prosecutor’s job is to follow the evidence wherever it leads and whenever it comes to light,” First District Attorney Kevin Steele said “Upon examination of all the evidence, today we are able to see justice on behalf of Mr. Cosby’s victim.”

Mr Steele said that during the assault the victim was “frozen, paralyzed, unable to move.”

The charges came down just days before the 12-year statute of limitations for bringing charges was set to run out.

The 78-year-old award-winning actor was arrested, and bail was set at $1 million. Cosby, who entered court with the use of  a walking stick, did not enter a plea.  A preliminary hearing has been set for January 14.

The victim in the case, Andrea Constand, reported the sexual assault in 2005. Steele said that Constand “came to consider Mr Cosby her mentor and her friend.”

He said that Cosby “made two sexual advances at her that were rejected.”

“Mr Cosby urged her to take pills and to drink wine, the effect of which left her unable to [rebuff his advances].”

Andrea Constand, now 42 works as a massage therapist in her native Canada, and has agreed to have her name become public.

Her lawyer Dolores Troiani, said earlier this year “She’s a very strong lady. She’ll do whatever they request of her.”

It was reported that at the time of the alleged assault Constand, who is gay, was dating a woman.

Constand, who worked for the women’s basketball team at a University where Cosby was a trustee said she was assaulted after going to his home in January 2004 for some career advice. She alleges she was digitally raped.

She tried to press charges a year after the incident but police could not make the case stick. Constand settled a lawsuit against Cosby in 2006 on confidential terms.

Earlier this year, news organisations petitioned a judge to unseal documents from the Constand lawsuit. In them Cosby testified that he obtained quaaludes in the 1970s to give to women he wanted to have sex with.

He denied giving women drugs without their knowledge and said he had used the now-banned sedative “the same as a person would say, ‘Have a drink.'”

In the deposition, Cosby said he put his hands down Constand’s pants that night and fondled her, taking her silence as a “green light.”

Constand said she was semi-conscious after he gave her pills he said would relax her.

“I don’t hear her say anything. And I don’t feel her say anything. And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped,” Cosby testified.

Prosecutors reopened the case several months ago as the testimony was unsealed and as dozens of other women came forward with similar accusations.

Constand said Cosby gave her three blue pills, which he told her was herbal medication for her anxiety.

She said after she took the pills her “knees began to shake, her limbs felt immobile, she felt dizzy and weak, and she began to feel only barely conscious.” and then Cosby “touched her breasts and vaginal area, rubbed his penis against her hand and digitally penetrated her.”

She said in her deposition that she woke up hours later, “feeling raw in and around her vaginal area,” with her clothes “in disarray.”

Constand said Cosby was “in his bathrobe.” He then left her in the home by herself.

Cosby, who has been the subject of more than 50 accusations of sexual assault last month fired back last month against seven of his accusers, filing a defamation counter-suit against them.

He has constantly denied any wrongdoing.

Cosby came to prominence as the loving father figure in the hit TV show The Cosby Show.

In late 2014 comedian Hannibal Buress brought the allegations back to light when he mocked Cosby as a hypocrite and called him a rapist during a standup routine.

That opened the floodgates on even more allegations.

Women in the dozens came forward and described being offered a drink by Cosby and waking up to find they had apparently been sexually assaulted. Cosby, through his representatives, accused some of the women of trying to extract money from him or get ahead in show business.

His wife, Camille Cosby, who met her husband when she was 19, has constantly supported him,  saying: “ The man I met, and fell in love with, and whom I continue to love, is the man you all knew through his work. He is a kind man … and a wonderful husband, father and friend.”

The TV star has faced a litany of legal problems including defamation and sex-abuse lawsuits filed across several US states. But as for criminal charges, many of the alleged assaults date back decades, and the statute of limitations has expired in nearly every case.

Until now.

Many hope that these current charges see the 78-year-old finally face up to his accusers – and with a potential sentence of five to 10 years behind bars finally bring justice for so many women.

A timeline of victims:

1. Kristina Ruehli
Year of Alleged Incident: 1965

Ruehli claimed in an interview with Philadelphia Magazine that Cosby sexually assaulted her when she was a 22-year-old secretary at a talent agency.

2. Carla Ferrigno
Year of Alleged Incident: 1967

Carla Ferrigno – wife of The Incredible Hulk star Lou Ferrigno, claims she was sexually assaulted in Cosby’s basement.

3. Joan Tarshis
Year of Alleged Incident: 1969

Tarshis went public in Nov. 2014 with allegations that Bill Cosby had raped her in 1969 when she was a 19-year-old comedy writer “I was sitting up writing one second, and the next second I was lying down on the couch having my underwear taken off,” Tarshis alleged in an interview with CBS News. She went on to claim that Cosby raped her twice.

4. Cindra Ladd
Year of Alleged Incident: 1969

In an op-ed written for The Huffington Post  Ladd claims that she was drugged and that she awoke naked in bed with Cosby in a white robe in the room with her.

5. Victoria Valentino
Year of Alleged Incident: 1970

Valentino, a former Playboy playmate, said in an interview with The Washington Post that Cosby forced her to perform oral sex and then, raped her.

6. Autumn Burns
Year of Alleged Incident: 1970

Burns further alleges that Cosby raped her in his hotel suite.

7. Louisa Mortiz
Year Of Alleged Incident: 1971

Actress Louisa Mortiz, claims that Bill Cosby forced her to perform oral sex on him in the dressing room of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show in 1971.

8. Donna Motsinger
Year of Alleged Incident: 1971

Motsinger claims that Cosby drugged and raped her while she was working as a jazz club waitress in Sausalito, Calif.

9. Katherine McKee
Year of Alleged Incident: Early 1970s

McKee claims that Cosby raped her in a Michigan hotel room in the early 1970s.

10. Helen Hayes
Year Of Alleged Incident: 1973

Hayes said “His behavior was like that of a predator.”

11. Charlotte Fox
Year of Alleged Incident: Mid-1970s

People reports. “The next thing I remember was that I was sort of awake, in a bed, with no clothes on and there was Mr. Cosby, in a robe, crawling from the bottom of the bed.”

12. Judy Huth
Year Of Alleged Incident: 1974

Huth said she was 15 when she was raped.

13. Tamara Green
Year of Alleged Incident: 1975

Green first publicly shared her story on the Today show in 2005

“To go for help and be dismissed because he’s very cool and famous and you are not,” she wrote. “It is crushing and you are a victim all over again.”

14. Marcella Tate
Year of Alleged Incident: 1975

Tate claims that Cosby gave her a drink that caused her head to get “cloudy.” Tate claims that she woke up in an unfamiliar bed the next day, allegedly with a naked Cosby in bed with her.

15. Therese Serignese
Year of Alleged Incident: Mid-1970s

Seringese claims that Cosby pressured her into taking Quaaludes and then pressured her into agreeing to engage in sexual activity.

16. Shawn Brown
Year of Alleged Incident: Mid-1970s

Brown said Cosby drugged and raped her.

17. “Elizabeth”
Year of Alleged Incident: 1976

“Elizabeth” a flight attendant says he drugged her and raped her.

18. Joyce Emmons
Year of Alleged Incident: Late 1970s

Joyce Emmons says he drugged her and raped her.

19. P.J. Masten
Year of Alleged Incident: 1979

Masten alleges that she woke up in bed next to Cosby who was naked.

20. Linda Kirkpatrick
Year of Alleged Incident: Early 1980s

Kirkpatrick claims he served her spiked champagne and then sexually assaulted her.

21. Lynn Neal
Year of Alleged Incident: Early 1980s

“I felt helpless and I couldn’t stop him.”

22. Janice Baker-Kinney
Year of Alleged Incident: Early 1980s

Baker-Kinney made her allegations during a press conference held by attorney Gloria Allred on April 23, 2015.

23. Janice Dickinson
Year of Alleged Incident: 1982

The 59-year-old supermodel told ET :

“The next morning I woke up, and I wasn’t wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man,” she alleges. “Before I woke up in the morning, the last thing I remember was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me. And I remember a lot of pain.”

24. Renita Chaney Hill
Years of Alleged Incident: 1982-1986

Hill says that she doesn’t know if Cosby raped her because she was unconscious after drinking cocktails he allegedly served her.

25. Beth Ferrier
Years of Alleged Incident: Early to mid-1980s

ET reports that one night after she ended their months-long consensual affair, she was drinking a cup of coffee in Cosby’s dressing room in Denver. “He said, ‘Here’s your favourite coffee, something I made, to relax you,'” she says. And then she blacked out. When she came to, Ferrier claims that her clothes were disheveled and her bra unhooked.

26. Heidi Thomas
Year of Alleged Incident: 1984

Thomas made her claims in an interview with CNN.

27. Beverly Johnson
Year of Alleged Incident: Mid-1980s

Supermodel Beverly Johnson wrote for Vanity Fair alleging that she was drugged and almost attacked by Cosby after she auditioned for a role on The Cosby Show.

28. Sammie Mays
Year of Alleged Incident: Mid-’80s

She says she believes that she was raped by the comedian while unconscious.

29. Barbara Bowman
Year of Alleged Incident: 1986

She made headlines when she penned an article for The Washington Post titled, “Bill Cosby raped me. Why did it take 30 years for people to believe my story?”

30. Lisa Jones
Year Of Alleged Incident: 1986

Jones went public with her allegations to ET Canada on Dec. 1, 2014, where she further claimed that Cosby tried to sexually assault her. “He, out of nowhere, started to walk past me, and crouched in front of my knees, grabbed my legs, and tried to pull them apart… I just remember I was so shocked… All I wanted to do was get out of there because I was in an unsafe environment and that’s what I did.”

31. Chelan
Year Of Alleged Incident: 1986

Chelan, claims Cosby drugged her and raped her.

32. Jena T.
Year of Alleged Incident: 1988

Jena T. claims Cosby pressured her into an unwanted sexual position, and allegedly gave her $700 before she left.

33. Lisa
Year of Alleged Incident: 1988

Lisa appeared on Dr. Phil where she accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her when she was 21.

34. Jewel Allison
Year(s) of Alleged Incident: Late-1980s

In an interview with The New York Daily News, Allison said, “There’s no such thing as America’s Dad… There’s just a man named Bill Cosby. He’s a very sick sociopath.”

35. Kacey
Year of Alleged Incident: Early 1990s

Kacey claims Cosby drugged her and raped her.

36. Angela Leslie
Year of Alleged Incident: 1992

Leslie claims that the comedian tried to get her to drink a cocktail he had made her, but she didn’t drink from it.

37. Lili Bernard
Year of Alleged Incident: 1992

Lili Bernard alleged that the comedian raped her during an encounter in the show’s studio and then threatened her.

38. Michelle Hurd
Year of Alleged Incident: 1995

Michelle Hurd, best known for her work in Law & Order: SVU, claims that Cosby was very “inappropriate” with her when she had a small role in an episode of The Cosby Mysteries.

39. Lachelle Covington
Year of Alleged Incident: 2000

Lachelle Covington, an actress on the sitcom Cosby, filed a police report against the comedian accusing him of making unwanted sexual advances toward her.

40. Andrea Constand
Year of Alleged Incident:January 2004

Cosby has been arrested over this incident.

41. Chloe Goins
Year of Alleged Incident: 2008

Goins, 24, claims that Cosby drugged her and sexually assaulted her during a party at the Playboy Mansion when she was 18 years old.

Source: ET News.

For help 24/7 for sexual assault call the DV and Sexual Abuse hotline: 1800 737 732