Bill Cosby Faces Trial for sexually assaulting teen in 1975

Less than a year after his sexual assault conviction was thrown out and he walked free from prison, comedian Bill Cosby is facing another allegation in court, this time an allegation from the 70s.

Mr Cosby, 85, is embroiled in a civil lawsuit over a claim he sexually assaulted Judy Huth, now 64, at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1975.

According to a lawsuit filed by Ms Huth in 2014, the incident took place when she was 16 years old, days after she met Mr Cosby at a park near Los Angeles where he was shooting a film.

“She said ‘I want to go, I wanna leave,’ she was crying,” said Donna Samuelson, then 17 and now 64, the first witness in a Los Angeles County civil trial stemming from Huth’s lawsuit against Cosby.

Samuelson, who had been looking forward to spending the rest of the afternoon and evening at the mansion, was angry with her friend, until Huth explained herself.

“She said Bill Cosby had tried to have sex with her,” Samuelson said.

Huth told Samuelson that in a bedroom off a game room on the mansion grounds where the three had been hanging out and playing pool and arcade games, Cosby had tried to put his hand down her tight pants, then exposed himself, forcing Huth to touch him sexually, testified Samuelson, who had been distracted playing a game and was oblivious to what had happened.

Samuelson shot two photos of Cosby and Huth together that day that are central to the trial, and were shown constantly to the jury on day one.

While Mr Cosby’s attorneys have acknowledged he met Ms Huth and went to the Playboy Mansion with her, they deny any assault took place. They also claim Ms Huth was 18, not 16. 

They also question why the accuser stayed on for hours at the mansion after the alleged incident, watching a film and swimming in the pool.

Defence lawyer Jennifer Bonjean dismissed Ms Huth’s case as a “fabrication”, questioning why she and a friend had preserved photos from the visit as “mementos” of an alleged sexual assault.

Cosby will not testify after the judge ruled that he could assert his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. And he has no plans to leave his Pennsylvania home to attend the trial, which is taking place at a small courthouse in Santa Monica. Cosby’s representatives say glaucoma has left him blind and made travel too difficult. 

Mr Cosby has faced dozens of accusations of sexual assault, misconduct, and rape stretching back to the mid-1960s. 

In 2018, he was convicted of drugging and molesting a woman at his home in 2004 and sentenced to three to 10 years in prison. 

The conviction, however, was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last year. He was released from prison after serving nearly three years.