Bill Cosby accuser says she has forgiven the embattled celebrity

The woman whose accusations against Bill Cosby resulted in his conviction for sexual assault said she forgives him, but she predicted that her victory in court would help many other women avoid a similar ordeal.

“I forgave Bill Cosby for what he did to me,” said the woman, Andrea Constand, in an interview with NBC that aired on “Dateline” on Friday evening. “It’s been many, many years, and if I did not forgive him, I wouldn’t have peace, and I sit here today, and I have my peace.”

In her first interview since Cosby’s conviction, Constand said she considered herself part of the #MeToo movement against sexual assault. Cosby molested her at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004.

“I’m just proud of everything that has unfolded in the past couple of years, especially in the past year, because we will hold people accountable, we will teach consent,” she told reporter Kate Snow. “This is just getting started, so I’m glad to be a part of where it’s going in the future.”

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The program, “Bringing Down Bill Cosby,” also included interviews with four women — Heidi Thomas, Janice Baker-Kinney, Chelan Lasha and Lise-Lotte Lublin — who testified during Cosby’s trial in April that he had also sexually assaulted them.

Lasha teared up as she recalled one of the most dramatic moments of the retrial. During her highly emotional testimony, she confronted him: “Now you remember me, Mr. Cosby.”

Cosby, 80, was convicted on all three charges of aggravated indecent assault against Constand. (The case had ended in a mistrial last June.) He faces up to 10 years in prison on each count and is due to be sentenced in September. His lawyers have said they will appeal.

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Constand recalled her feelings when the jury forewoman read the three-charge verdict against Cosby. “Guilty, guilty, guilty,” she said. “I was just overcome.”

She denied in Friday’s interview that she was a con artist who pursued Cosby for his money, as alleged by his lawyers. Constand, 45, received $3.38 million from Mr. Cosby in 2006 to settle her civil suit against him.

In the interview, Constand recalled her testimony — she had said that Cosby gave her three blue pills that she took to relax. But she said they gave her double vision, impaired her ability to walk and made her unable to stop him from putting his fingers in her vagina and putting her hand on his penis.

She was so incapacitated by the pills that she felt like a “limp noodle,” she said.

Constand acknowledged that her stories to the police and prosecutors changed somewhat since filing her civil suit against Cosby in 2005. But she insisted that she consistently provided the details of the assault at Cosby’s house.

“The one thing is what he did to me that night,” she said.