A California court jury on Tuesday convicted former television star Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in 1975 when she was 16.
Judy Huth, now 64, will be awarded US$500,000 in damages.
This civil decision is the only valid conviction to date against the former actor, now 84, who has been accused of various sexual assaults by dozens of women.
Convicted of sexual assault in another case in Pennsylvania in 2018 and imprisoned, he was released in June 2021 following an overturning of his conviction for procedural flaw.
The decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, then the rejection of an appeal on this case to the American Supreme Court, had been seen by many as a snub for the #MeToo movement against violence against women.
Bill Cosby has embodied for millions of Americans, for years, the ideal father in the series Cosby Show.
In the California case, Bill Cosby did not attend the hearings, which lasted two weeks in a Santa Monica court.
Judy Huth’s defense claimed during the trial that the comedian, met on a film set, had made her drink a large quantity of alcohol before taking her to the Playboy Mansion of her friend Hugh Hefner and assaulting her sexually in a room of the mansion, in Los Angeles.
“Immediately after she sat down [sur le lit]he jumped up…He tried to slip his hands into his panties,” Nathan Goldberg, Ms. Huth’s attorney, told the jury.
When the girl told him she was on her period, Bill Cosby released his penis and forced her to masturbate it, Goldberg added.
No criminal investigation
Bill Cosby’s defenders denied any aggression on the part of their client and questioned the events recounted by the complainant, who began by saying that the facts had taken place in 1974.
They also pointed to supposed inconsistencies in her account, including that she and a 17-year-old female friend who was accompanying her remained at the property for 12 hours after the described assault.
No criminal proceedings were carried out, as Judy Huth filed a complaint in 2014, after the statute of limitations had passed.
The memories of his client came back with the media coverage of other accusations of sexual violence against Bill Cosby, argued Me Goldberg.
In California, the law allows civil lawsuits to be launched for adults who remember sexual assaults during their childhood, even if the statute of limitations has passed for years.
An actress who had starred in the Cosby Show, Lili Bernard, filed a civil complaint in October 2021 against Mr. Cosby, accusing him of having drugged and raped her more than 30 years ago. She is claiming $125 million in damages in a New Jersey court.
In total, about 60 women have publicly accused Bill Cosby of being a calculating sexual predator who used alcohol and sleeping pills to abuse his victims for decades.
The latter, a central figure in American popular culture at the end of the 20th century, has always denied, assuring that the sexual relations were consensual.