Nine other women accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault in a lawsuit that alleges he used his “enormous power, fame and prestige” to prey on them.
A lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Nevada alleges the women were individually drugged and assaulted between 1979 and 1992 in homes, locker rooms and hotels in Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe.
A woman alleges that Cosby, claiming to be her mentor, lured her from New York to Nevada, where he allegedly drugged her in a hotel room with what he claimed was non-alcoholic sparkling cider, then would have raped.
The former star of The Cosby Show, 85, has now been charged with rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by more than 60 women. He denied all allegations of sex crimes. He was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era and spent nearly three years in state prison near Philadelphia, before a higher court overturned the conviction and released him in 2021.
Earlier this year, a Los Angeles jury awarded $500,000 to a woman who says Cosby sexually assaulted her at the Playboy mansion in 1975. She was 16.
No more prescription
The Nevada lawsuit comes just weeks after Governor Joe Lombardo signed a bill that removed a two-year deadline for adults to file sexual abuse cases. Similar lawsuits followed other “retrospective laws” in other states.
One of the plaintiffs, Lise-Lotte Lublin, originally from Nevada, had campaigned for this change. She previously alleged that Cosby gave her drinks with drugs in them and raped her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1989.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly.
“For years I have fought for survivors of sexual assault and today is the first time I will be able to fight for myself,” she said in a statement quoted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“With the new law change, I now have the ability to sue my abuser Bill Cosby. My journey has only just begun, but I am grateful for this opportunity to find justice. »
In California, a former model of Playboy who alleges that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her and another woman, at his home in 1969, sued him on 1er June under a new California law that suspends the statute of limitations on sexual abuse claims.
The Cosby actor’s spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, blasted the laws in a statement Wednesday.
“Mr. Cosby is a citizen of these United States, but these judges and legislators constantly allow these civil lawsuits to flood their cases — knowing that these women are not fighting for the victims — but for their addiction to attention. and media greed,” Wyatt argued.