CNN
(CNN) — When comedian Bill Cosby admitted in a decade-old deposition to getting Quaaludes to give to women he wanted to have sex with, he also said he got his prescriptions for the sedative from a Los Angeles gynecologist and cosmetic surgeon: Leroy Amar.
Cosby sat for the deposition over four days in 2005 and 2006, after being accused by a woman named Andrea Constand of rape. Her attorney, Dolores Troiani, questioned Cosby under oath. CNN obtained the deposition earlier this week and has been analyzing the 1,000-page document in detail.
Cosby said Amar — who died before Cosby gave the deposition — gave him seven prescriptions for Quaaludes for a sore back.
“Did he know when he gave you those prescriptions that you had no intention of taking them?” Troiani asked Cosby.
“Yes,” Cosby replied. It was not clear from the deposition how the doctor would have known that.
“Did you believe at the time that it was illegal for you to dispense those drugs?” Troiani asked Cosby.
“Yes,” Cosby replied, according to the deposition.
While Cosby admitted that he acquired seven prescriptions of Quaaludes with the intent to give the sedatives to young women he wanted to have sex with, he has not admitted to actually drugging any of his accusers.
Who was the doctor who gave Cosby Quaaludes?
Amar was a licensed physician and surgeon practicing gynecology and cosmetic surgery in Los Angeles, once serving as the chief of obstetrics and gynecology at a Los Angeles hospital. He had a practice called Wilshire Surgical Clinic, Cosmetic and Gynecology.
His license to practice medicine was revoked in California in 1979, after the California Board of Medical Quality Assurance decided that he “has engaged in most serious misconduct.”
The board listed several cases of concern, including one in which a woman who visited Amar after having a breast lift procedure said she developed an abscess in her breast after the procedure and couldn’t reach Amar. The abscess eventually ruptured and she was left with deformed breasts, which she had at least four surgeries to try to fix.
Years after having his license revoked, the board recommended a psychiatric evaluation during one of Amar’s multiple attempts to regain his license to practice in California. Amar was reinstated in California in 1985 on a “probationary basis.”
Amar was also licensed to practice medicine in Maryland and New York. The state of New York revoked his license to practice in 1995.
The physician died before Cosby gave his deposition in 2005. Calls to a former attorney for Amar were not immediately returned.
Cosby’s camp fights back
Patrick O’Connor, an attorney representing Cosby, wrote in a motion to keep terms of Cosby’s subsequent settlement with Constand from being released publicly that when excerpts of the deposition were released, Cosby’s answers to questions about Quaaludes were “cavalierly misinterpreted” by the media.
“Reading the media accounts, one would conclude that (Cosby) has admitted to rape,” O’Conner wrote. “And yet (Cosby) admitted to nothing more than being one of the many people who introduced Quaaludes into their consensual sex life in the 1970s.”
CNN has reached out to O’Connor, Troiani, and Martin Singer, another attorney for Cosby, for comment but did not receive any responses.
