Bill Cosby again faced sexual assault charges on Wednesday, this time in a California court which heard on Wednesday how he abused a teenage girl in Los Angeles nearly 50 years ago.
This civil complaint is one of the last legal proceedings still active against the fallen actor, now 84, who has been accused of various sexual assaults by dozens of women.
Sentenced to prison in 2018 on the East Coast for one of these complaints, Bill Cosby was released last year after the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania overturned the judgment for a procedural flaw.
Judy Huth, plaintiff in this trial opened last week in Santa Monica, claims that the comedian, who for years played the ideal father in the series “Cosby Show”, had abused her in 1975, when she was n was only 16 years old.
According to him, Bill Cosby made him drink a large quantity of alcohol before taking him to his friend Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion and sexually assaulting him in a bedroom of the mansion.
“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.
Bill Cosby’s defenders have denied any assault on the part of their client.
The judge not having ordered the actor to be present at the trial, the latter, who usually resides in New York, should not make the trip to California. He made a deposition via video recording.
Judy Huth had filed a civil complaint in December 2014, but the justice had decided to suspend the procedure, because of the criminal proceedings which Cosby was the subject of at the time, following the very first accusations made against him.
“It’s like a cork popped,” said Nathan Goldberg. “Memories came flooding back… she was overwhelmed with those memories of Mr. Cosby and what he had done. »
The overturning of the actor’s criminal conviction for procedural flaw allowed Ms Huth’s complaint to resume.
Me Goldberg indicated that two other women claiming to be victims of Bill Cosby in 1975 would come to testify at the bar, making it possible to highlight the many similarities in the modus operandi used by the accused, who according to him took advantage of his celebrity to attract unsuspecting teenage girls.
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 has always denied, assuring that the sexual relations were consented.
The ongoing trial in Santa Monica is expected to last several weeks.