US comedian Bill Cosby has been sued in a Los Angeles court by a Californian woman who claims he molested her in 1974 in a bedroom at the Playboy Mansion when she was 15 years old.
The case filed by Judy Huth (55) is said to be the first court action taken since more than a dozen women have come forward alleging that they were sexually abuse by the star over more than four decades.
In a five-page complaint submitted to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Ms Huth accused Mr Cosby (77) of molesting her by “attempting to put his hand down her pants, and then taking her hand in his hand and performing a sex act on himself without her consent”.
She said that the entertainer, who was 37 at the time, had served her and a friend alcohol while playing billiards before bringing them to the Playboy Mansion in LA where he told them to say that they were 19. Ms Huth alleges that the sexual abuse occurred after Mr Cosby led her to a bathroom in the mansion and claims that the “traumatic incident” has caused “psychological damage and mental anguish” that has led to “significant problems throughout her life”.
She is seeking an unspecific amount of money in damages from the comedian.
Mr Cosby’s lawyer has not commented on these new allegations but has dismissed similar claims of sexual misconduct against the star from about 20 women, calling them unfounded and defamatory. The accusations have scuppered plans for a television comeback by Mr Cosby, who topped US television ratings in the 1980s playing the ideal American dad Dr Heathcliff Huxtable in The Cosby Show.
Television network NBC cancelled a forthcoming project with the comic and online streaming company Netflix postponed a special Cosby stand-up programme last month after allegations that Mr Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted young women over several decades re-surfaced following an on-stage routine by a younger black comedian.
Comic Hannibal Buress called Mr Cosby a rapist during a performance in October that was video-recorded and went viral online. Further interest was generated by Arizona woman Barbara Bowman who wrote in a Washington Post article last month that she was sexually assaulted by Mr Cosby on multiple occasions in 1985 when she was trying to make it as an actress in her teens.
The comedian has not been criminally charged and many of the allegations are so old that they cannot lead to prosecutions because they are time-barred by the statute of limitations. Ms Huth’s lawsuit is believed to be the first against Mr Cosby since Andrea Constand, a former employee at Temple University in Philadelphia, the comedian’s alma mater, sued him claiming that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home in 2004.
Mr Cosby settled that action in 2006, paying her an undisclosed sum. The fresh legal action emerged a day after he resigned from the board of trustees of Temple University over the rash of allegations. Re-runs of The Cosby Show, the programme that revived the sitcom in the 1980s, on the cable television channel TV Land were pulled and a number of the entertainer’s stand-up shows were cancelled.
Mr Cosby had for weeks refused to answer questions about the allegations in interviews promoting his art collection but he broke his silence last month ahead of a stand-up show in Florida. “I know people are tired of me not saying anything, but a guy doesn’t have to answer to innuendos. People should fact check. People shouldn’t have to go through that and shouldn’t answer to innuendos,” he told a local newspaper on November 22nd.
