At the new year’s dawn, New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton made an unprecedented announcement: The city had experienced a sharp increase in reported rapes, driven in part by victims bringing forward years-old assaults. One-fifth of the assaults reported in 2015 happened at least a year prior to the police complaint, dating back as far as 1975.
Bratton called this “the Cosby Effect.”
Data from police departments across the country, using the FBI's latest definition, show the Cosby Effect hasn’t struck only New York.
