A file photo taken on September 24, 2018 of US actor Bill Cosby arriving at court. Photo: AFP
Bill Cosby used friendly spaces – a film set at a public park, a game room – to give 16-year-old Judy Huth a sense of safety before sexually abusing her, Huth's lawyer said Wednesday (June 1) in opening statements at a civil trial.
Nearly a year after being freed from prison, Cosby is facing yet another sexual assault allegation in a court case kicking off in California Wednesday.
The embattled 85-year-old actor is not expected to appear in the Santa Monica courtroom to face Huth, who claims that she and a friend met Cosby while he was in Los Angeles in 1975 to shoot Let’s Do It Again with Sidney Poitier.
A few days later, she claims, Cosby got her drunk and forced her to perform a sex act on him at the Playboy Mansion when she was just 16.
Huth, now 64, filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby in 2014, seeking financial damages, and a police report, but no criminal charges were ever brought.
Cosby’s lawyers have publicly admitted the pair met at Hugh Hefner’s sprawling home after a photo already confirmed their meeting, but claim that Huth was 18, not 16, at the time.
The trial, likely to last about two weeks, is one of the last for Cosby, who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women dating back to the 1960s and crossing states.
In 2018, he was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, a former college and Canadian national team basketball player, for drugging and assaulting her in his Philadelphia home.
He was sentenced to three to 10 years in state prison, but was released in June 2021 and had his conviction overturned when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that District Attorney Bruce Castor had broken his word when he promised not to file criminal charges.
Huth’s trial was delayed more than eight years as Cosby sat through two other trials and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Plaintiff Judy Huth's attorney Gloria Allred speaks to the media as she arrives for opening statements in the civil suit against Bill Cosby at Santa Monica courthouse, California, Photo: Reuters
A report by AP detailed attorney Nathan Goldberg's opening statement.
He first projected for the jury an old, washed-out photo that Huth's friend, Donna Samuelson, took of Cosby and Huth in the room, and left it up for most of his opening statement.
Cosby, clearly recognisable, is wearing a red beanie and has a beard.
There were two bedrooms with their own bathrooms connected to the game room.
When Huth left a bathroom at one point, she came out to find Cosby sitting on a bed, and patted the spot next to him, directing Huth to sit.
"After she sat down, he pounced,” Goldberg said.
He attempted to put his hand down her tight pants, then exposed himself, forcing Huth to touch him sexually, Goldberg said.
Cosby’s attorneys will give their opening statement Wednesday afternoon, but have said no sexual abuse happened.
Goldberg said Huth and Samuelson, who will be the trial's first witness, went to Lacy Park in San Marino, California, most likely in March of 1975, to play frisbee when they came upon the set of the movie Let's Do It Again, which Cosby was shooting with Sidney Poitier.
The two whispered with excitement when they saw Cosby, and the comedian mocked their whispers when he saw them.
"He couldn't have been friendlier,” Goldberg said.
Cosby invited the girls to meet him a few days later at a tennis club, where he had them play a game of pool where the loser had to drink a beer.
Goldberg said Huth had to drink at least one beer, but can't remember how many.
Without saying where they were going, Cosby got in his own car and led the girls in their car to the Playboy Mansion.
Goldberg said before Cosby molested Huth, he had been putting his hands on Samuelson's shoulder, but she "made it obvious to him that it was not OK."
Samuelson was oblivious and playing games when the abuse in the bedroom took place, but Huth told her about it as soon as Cosby left them alone, and she will tell the same story she heard then on the stand this week, Goldberg said.
The abuse would immediately lead to emotional problems for Huth.
"She was no longer the happy-go-lucky girl she had been,” Goldberg said. She would "bury” her feelings for decades, Goldberg said, but they would come rushing back, and she would suffer from serious anxiety.
The effects increased when Huth's son reached the age she was when it happened, and when similar stories about Cosby began to emerge.
Bill Cosby’s lawyer Jennifer Bonjean arrives for opening statements in the civil suit against Bill Cosby at Santa Monica courthouse on June 1, 2022. Photo: Reuters
Two women will testify to similar experiences with Cosby when they were teenagers within a year of Huth's meeting him.
In his opening, Goldberg sought to head off potential defense arguments.
He emphasised that after 47 years, Samuelson and Huth's stories are bound to differ in the details.
"They don't remember everything exactly the same way,” Goldberg said. "If they did you would be suspicious.”
He said some previously stated details, like Huth remembering playing Donkey Kong, which wasn't invented until years later, in the Playboy Mansion game room, did not mean the core elements of her story were wrong.
"So she didn't get the name of the game right, so what?” Goldberg said.
Cosby is not attending the trial, and will not be compelled to testify.
Parts of a video deposition he gave soon after the suit was filed will be played for the jury. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service/AP
