The 85-year-old actor faces new charges. Five women are suing NBC and Bill Cosby under a New York law that temporarily suspends the time bar in sexual assault cases.
These women allege that Bill Cosby either raped them or forced them to have sex. Four of these complaints date from the late 1980s, early 1990s, when the actor was at the height of his fame in the American sitcom The Cosby Show, airing on NBC. The fifth person accuses the actor of having raped her in 1969.
One of the complainants, actress Lili Bernard, made a special appearance at the Cosby Show. She first accused Bill Cosby at a press conference in 2015. Cindra Ladd, Eden Tirl, Jewel Gittens and Jennifer Thompson are the other four plaintiffs. They all filed a lawsuit in New York citing the Adult Survivors Act.
Bill Cosby was convicted by a jury in 2018 of drugging and then assaulting Andrea Constand. He had been sentenced to a term of at least three years, then released immediately afterwards, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania annulling this sentence for a reason of legal procedure.
In total, more than fifty women filed complaints against Cosby.