Bill Cosby's alleged rape victim: How come nobody cared until a man spoke up?

Barbara Bowman, who alleges that Bill Cosby repeatedly raped her in the 1980s, is demanding to know why it took a male comedian criticizing the comedian for "public outcry [to] begin in earnest."

Bowman's article comes on the heels of the disastrous Twitter experiment in which Cosby asked users to "meme" him. The results were not what his public relations team anticipated:

As that last tweet attests, each "#CosbyMeme" required the approval of the site administer, but unfortunately for Cosby's team, people who use Twitter know how to take screen captures. According to Bowman, online awareness of Cosby's alleged crimes only arose after a video of comedian Hannibal Buress accusing him of being a rapist went viral.

"It’s even worse because Bill Cosby has the f*cking smuggest old black man persona that I hate,” Buress said in the video. “He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up black people, I was on TV in the 80s! I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom!’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches."

Bowman wrote in the Post that she is "grateful" for the attention, but it makes her wonder, "Why wasn’t I believed? Why didn’t I get the same reaction of shock and revulsion when I originally reported it? Why was I, a victim of sexual assault, further wronged by victim blaming when I came forward? The women victimized by Bill Cosby have been talking about his crimes for more than a decade. Why didn’t our stories go viral?"

In the same piece, she attacked the "network of willfully blind wallflowers at best, or people willing to aid [Cosby] to commit these sexual crimes at worst."

"His assistants transported me to hotels and events to meet him," she wrote. "When I blacked out at Cosby’s home, there were several staffers with us. My agent, who introduced me to Cosby, had me take a pregnancy test when I returned from my last trip with him. Talent agents, hotel staff, personal assistants and others who knowingly made arrangements for Cosby’s criminal acts or overlooked them should be held equally accountable."