Five years ago, the case against Bill Cosby ended with a guilty verdict. Another abuse case is now before the court. The indictment accuses the former US television star of sexually assaulting a teenager in 1975.
The opening arguments have begun in the new abuse trial against former US television star Bill Cosby. Attorney Nathan Goldberg on Wednesday accused Cosby of sexually assaulting his then 16-year-old client Judy Huth in 1975 at the famous Playboy Mansion, home of “Playboy” founder Hugh Hefner in Los Angeles. Cosby’s attorneys dismissed the allegation in the civil trial in Santa Monica, California.
According to Goldberg, Cosby first got the teen drunk and then took her to Hefner’s mansion. In a bedroom he “threw himself” on her and tried “to put his hands in her pants”. When she told him she was on her period, Cosby forced her to masturbate, Huth’s attorney said.
Cosby’s attorneys denied any assault. They challenged Huth’s account of events after the plaintiff changed the date of the assault from 1974 to 1975. “This is not just a small mistake,” said Cosby’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean. “It’s proof of a fake.”
The process is scheduled to last two weeks. According to Goldberg, two other women who were allegedly abused by Cosby as teenagers in 1975 are to testify in the trial. Cosby himself does not have to testify personally in the proceedings. According to his spokesman, he wants to stay at home in New York. He recorded a video statement.
The woman made the allegations back in 2014. There was no criminal prosecution because the incident has already expired. Because the woman was a minor at the time, she can still take civil action against Cosby with claims for damages. Huth filed the civil suit in 2014. She said she suffered “psychological damage and mental anguish” from the attack. The process was then put on hold because of a criminal case against Cosby in the state of Pennsylvania. In this process, the actor, who became world famous with the sitcom “The Bill Cosby Show”, was found guilty in 2018 of sexually abusing a woman in 2004. The court saw it as proven that Cosby drugged his victim in his home in the east coast metropolis of Philadelphia and molested the woman.
Cosby was sentenced to a minimum of three and a maximum of 10 years in prison. However, he was released from custody in June 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the verdict on formal grounds.
Cosby has been accused of sexual abuse by more than 60 women, but most of the cases are statute-barred. The actor was revered in the US as “America’s Dad” for decades. As the amiable doctor and good-natured father of a family on The Bill Cosby Show, he was one of the country’s most popular TV stars before becoming an outlaw over abuse allegations.
Cosby’s 2018 conviction was the first guilty verdict against a celebrity since the beginning of the
