When former basketball pro Andrea Constand was preparing to give her testimony in Bill Cosby’s first criminal trial in 2017, she desperately wanted to win.
Constand had accused the iconic actor and comedian of drugging and sexually assaulting her in his Elkins Park home in 2004. Since then, more than 60 women had come forward to say that Cosby assaulted them in a similar fashion. Constand knew she was fighting for all of them, and the pressure was getting to her.
That’s where prosecuting attorney Kristen Gibbons Feden came in. As Assistant Montgomery County District Attorney, Gibbons Feden had been there for Constand from the moment the Commonwealth decided to pursue criminal charges against Cosby. She even traveled to meet in Constand’s home in Toronto.
As they prepared for cross-examination, Gibbons Feden asked Constand if she thought she could beat Angela Agrusa, one of Cosby’s defense attorneys, in a game of one-on-one. “I said, ‘Yeah, I would definitely kick her butt,’” Constand remembers. Gibbons Feden explained courtrooms aren’t like the basketball court. There was no way to guarantee a win. All Constand could do was tell the truth.
“Kristen, in Kristen fashion, just looked at me and she said, ‘This won’t be hard for you. I guarantee you, all you have to do is get up there and tell the truth. The truth is your power,’” Constand says. “It really took the pressure off.”
Cosby’s first criminal trial resulted in a hung jury and mistrial, so Constand and Gibbons Feden went back in 2018. Almost immediately, Gibbons Feden became a national name for her incredible closing statement. At one point during the proceedings, Cosby chuckled, and the attorney “spun around in the courtroom and looked at Bill Cosby and pointed her finger at him and said, ‘Drugging and sexually assaulting a woman is not a joke. It’s not a laughing matter,’” Constand recalls. “She didn’t even think twice about confronting that kind of masochism and patriarchy.”
Gibbons Feden’s closing argument would likely have gone viral, had the press been allowed to film the proceedings. Her last words included a face-to-face apology to Constand on behalf of the DA for not prosecuting when Constand initially went to the police in 2005. Gibbons Feden openly called Cosby a con man and said that defense attorneys’ attacks on victims, wherein they called these women lying, promiscuous and fame-hungry, is why so many survivors are afraid to come forward. (Fellow 2024 Rad Award winner Natalie Hope McDonald covered the Cosby trials extensively for Vulture).
“All sexual abuse survivors deserve their day in court, but [the Cosby case] was tremendous because of the profound message that it was able to send.” — Kristen Gibbons Feden
It worked. This time, the two women got to sit in the courtroom and hear the jurors say “guilty, guilty, guilty,” Gibbons Feden remembers. (The PA Supreme Court has since thrown out the verdict on a technicality.)
Cosby’s two criminal trials were Gibbons Feden’s most public appearance, but he is far from the only predator she’s taken to court. The 41-year-old attorney has dedicated her entire legal career to representing survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence, first as a Montgomery County prosecutor, now as a civil litigator with Anapol Weiss in Philly. Although she’s taken on big names like R. Kelly, most of the survivors she represents don’t make national headlines.
Through it all, Gibbons Feden has become a champion of the #MeToo movement. Now, she’s using her platform to raise awareness about sexual violence and advocating for PA legislation to open up a revival window that would allow survivors of sexual abuse to bring to court claims that have exceed the statute of limitations. This year, The Philadelphia Citizen recognized her as Attorney of the Year during the return of the Rad Awards.
From physician to attorney
Gibbons Feden didn’t start off wanting to be a lawyer. She grew up in a family of healthcare providers. Her father is a physician; her mother, a speech pathologist; her older sister went to medical school. At Lafayette College, she assumed she’d follow their path and studied neuroscience.
She was getting ready to apply to medical school when her sister, then in her first year of med school, told her a patient story involving blood and maggots, a tale too gross for Gibbons Feden to repeat. Gibbons Feden realized she wouldn’t be able to handle it.
She was uncertain what to do. “It was too late in my college career to pivot,” she says. Her dad told her that she should become a lawyer because she liked to debate — and, “Like any critical debater, I was like, no, it’s not my decision. I’m not going,” she jokes.
For two years, she worked in finance in New York. She kept thinking about her father’s advice. “I wanted to do something that was meaningful, that would really leave some type of legacy for my family,” she says.
Upon starting law school at Temple, she saw two different paths: She could use her scientific background to work in patent law or work as an advocate for victims of crimes.
“I did have a passion for assisting those that were voiceless. I have a lot of friends and family who have suffered some type of criminal activity. And so I wanted to also analyze that passion,” Gibbons Feden says. “I wanted work to be something that I enjoyed. I knew that there are going to be times when I don’t enjoy it, but for the most part, I wanted it to be meaningful.”
Fierce and compassionate
For a while, Gibbons Feden pursued criminal prosecution and intellectual property law, serving as president of Temple’s intellectual property law society and interning with the Philadelphia DA’s office’s field violence unit. She drafted patent work for small businesses and was getting trial experience.
As time went on, she saw herself in the women she worked with. “A lot of the survivors of child sexual abuse were people who looked like me — young, little, Black females,” Gibbons Feden says. Forty-percent of Black women are abused by a family member or intimate partner; about 20 percent are survivors of rape; 41 percent face other forms of sexual violence and coercion.
“Providing representation to marginalized communities by someone who looks like them is extremely important, and that is something that I know from experience, but also importantly, that has been stated to me over and over and over again by different survivors,” she says.
Gibbons Feden clerked for two years after graduating law school in 2006. Then, a position at the Montgomery County DA’s office opened up, working under Risa Vetri Ferman, a sex crime prosecutor and the county’s first woman to be elected district attorney. In her interview, she told the DA of her goals.
Years later, Gibbons Feden says she still approaches each case thinking about what justice looks like for each plaintiff. For some, that’s a criminal conviction. Others want to win a civil suit. Many just want someone to listen to their story and believe them.
“The common thread would be just having their voice back and being able to be supported and not judged,” Gibbons Feden says. “I want to make sure that at the end of the day they are seeking the justice that they want and that they deserve.”
Erin Milbourne, direct services supervisor for Victim Services of Montgomery County, worked with Gibbons Feden when she was at the DA’s Office. (Gibbons Feden is now on the board of Victim Services of Montgomery County.) “I have been in this field for a really long time, and I’ve seen it go well, I’ve seen it not go well, and she is clearly at the top,” Milbourne says. “She is a fighter for victims of sexual assault.”
Second Cosby trial and moving to civil litigation
Gibbons Feden left the Montgomery County DA’s three months before the second Cosby trial began for the Philadelphia firm Stradley Ronon, which allowed her to continue working on the Cosby case, which she saw through until it ended in April 2018.
The choice of whether to try Cosby again was difficult, Gibbons Feden says. The defense’s first cross examination of Constand had been brutal; she’d already received a $3.38 million in a civil settlement from a 2006 civil suit against Cosby and lived far away. They weren’t sure she would come back.
“When we initially went to her and said, Hey, listen, we’re thinking about reopening the investigation, she said, ‘It would be my civic duty,’” Gibbons Feden says. “That was so beautiful seeing her resilience.”
“I want to make sure that at the end of the day [survivors] are seeking the justice that they want and that they deserve.” — Kristen Gibbons Feden
This time, four more survivors took the stand. When it was Constand’s turn, “she was able to look out and see all of the other survivors who had her back,” Gibbons Feden says. “It was just so profound and beautiful,” she says. “It was all things that I’ve done before in other cases. I don’t want to highlight this just because the defendant was high profile.
“All sexual abuse survivors deserve their day in court, but it was tremendous because of the profound message that it was able to send.”
After that victory, Gibbons Feden moved to civil litigation, where survivors of sexual and domestic violence often turn for justice. Nationally, for every 1,000 survivors who report their rape to the police, only 13 get their cases prosecuted. She also served as plaintiffs’ liaison counsel for a number of cases where children in PA juvenile detention facilities have accused staff of sexual assault.
Gibbons Feden joined Anapol Weiss in March of this year. Managing Shareholder Thomas R. Anapol says the firm had been following Gibbons Feden’s career since her days as a prosecutor and wanted her to help lead the expansion of their civil ligation practice for survivors of sexual assault.
“Kristen was just a really terrific natural fit for who we want to be and where we’re headed,” says Anapol. “I think that her compassion just screams out above and beyond anything else.”
Navigating #MeToo backlash and looking forward
Nonetheless, progress in the area has been far from linear. The Cosby case’s overturning was procedural, and, Gibbons Feden wants to be clear, “had nothing to do with the credibility of survivors, specifically Andrea and the five prior witnesses.” But the reversal had an impact.
“Initially, survivors felt heard. They saw their concerns and their actions were being taken seriously and someone was being held accountable,” says Joyce Lukima, director of the Pennsylvania Coalition to Advance Respect (PCAR). “To see it overturned, especially on a technicality, just reverses all of that.”
Although several high-profile men have since been tried and convicted of sexual assault, others have escaped responsibility. Donald Trump, found guilty of sexual assault in a civil trial, is going to be president again. Trump chose three men accused of sexual assault — Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Matt Gaetz — for his cabinet, though Gaetz eventually stepped back from the offer.
In the public imagination, survivors are still often regarded as complicit in their own assaults. “Unfortunately, as a society, we still have stereotypes around the victim,” says Melissa Landsmann, executive director of Women In Transition, a nonprofit that helps people suffering from domestic violence. Such stereotypes can lead victims to delay reporting assaults.
That’s why, in addition to all her work representing survivors, Gibbons Feden (and PCAR) have advocated for the state to pass a revival window for sexual assault cases that have exceeded the statute of limitations. PA legislators have stalled the measure, which could have appeared before voters in 2023. High-profile cases, like the ones Gibbons Feden takes on, also help build awareness.
“I hope that the legislators get in line, particularly in Pennsylvania,” she says. “We need to build a society where people are comfortable coming forward.”
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