Bill Cosby Scandal Update: 35 Accusers Featured On New York Magazine Cover

Thirty-five women who have accused Bill Cosby of drugging and raping them decades ago featured together on the cover of New York Magazine’s latest issue. Over 40 women have come forward since 2005 claiming that the comedian sexually assaulted them, but no charges have so far been filed against him.

The cover, which shows the 35 women seated in rows with the date of the alleged assault printed below, was first shared by the magazine on Sunday night and quickly went viral. The upcoming issue -- "Cosby: The Women, An Unwelcome Sisterhood" -- focuses on the stories of the victims’ allegations. The cover also shows an empty chair, which the magazine said represented the women not featured in the article.

"Today, the way we think and talk about rape has evolved, creating a safer space for survivors to feel empowered by speaking up and reclaiming their victimhood. And that’s led us here," the magazine wrote on its Instagram account. "Of the 46 women who have come forward to accuse Cosby, we spoke to 35 of them -- “a sorrowful sisterhood” of women united by their dark experiences, steadfast in their resolve to remain silent no more."

“I’m no longer afraid,” Chelan Lasha, who claimed Cosby assaulted her when she was 17, told the magazine. “I feel more powerful than him.”

The feature includes the stories of Beverly Johnson, and Janice Dickinson, who is reportedly one of the few women to have filed a defamation lawsuit against the comedian alleging that his lawyers branded her a liar over the rape allegations. Johnson, a black fashion model, accused Cosby in December of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1986.

On Friday, Spelman College, a historically black institution for women, said it is discontinuing its endowed professorship named after Cosby in light of the scandal. Late last year, the Atlanta college suspended the program after reports of Cosby's alleged sexual assault cases surfaced.

A 2005 deposition released this month showed Cosby admitting to giving Quaaludes to Andrea Constand [who is not among the 35 women featured in the New York Magazine article] in the 1970s. Cosby claimed that the two had a consensual sexual relationship.

“I walk her out. She does not look angry. She does not say to me, don’t ever do that again,” Cosby reportedly said in court documents filed by his lawyers last week. “She doesn’t walk out with an attitude of a huff, because I think I’m a pretty decent reader of people and their emotions in these romantic sexual things, whatever you want to call them.”

In the legal papers filed last Tuesday, the 78-year-old asked to preserve the confidentiality of his 2006 settlement in a sexual assault case and called for court sanctions against Constand, who wanted to unseal the documents. Constand urged the court to release the documents so that other victims could have "a right to determine what if anything can be used as evidence in their respective cases."