A woman told a Los Angeles courtroom Friday how Bill Cosby forcibly kissed her while on the set of a movie in 1975 when she was 14 years old.
The woman, now 61, testified in connection with a civil suit against Cosby accuser Judy Huth, who claims the disgraced comedian isolated and sexually assaulted her in a bedroom at the Playboy Mansion in 1975 when she was 19 years old. Cosby, meanwhile, is not scheduled to testify.
After a chance meeting with Cosby at a tennis club, the woman said the comedian invited her family to become extras in his film “Let’s Do It Again,” starring Sidney Poitier, the Associated Press reported. While on set, Cosby used false pretenses to lure the woman to his trailer. “He immediately grabbed me,” she said, explaining that Cosby held her tightly “enough that I couldn’t get away.”
The woman said she was so “distraught” by Cosby’s actions that had not discussed the incident until years later, after she’d already been married. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said. “I didn’t want to ruin everything for everyone.”
“She walks in, and immediately he pounces,” lawyer Nathan Goldberg told jurors of the woman’s experience during opening statements this week. “He grabs her with both his hands and starts slobbering all over her, on her mouth, sticking his tongue down her throat. And she is smelling his cigar breath. She’s trying to push herself out of this embrace and eventually manages to get away.”
Huth first sued Cosby in December 2014. Hers is the first civil suit accusing Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial, according to the New York Times — but the case was put on hold put on hold while Cosby faced a different sexual assault case in Pennsylvania. That case was overturned last summer, releasing Cosby from prison after serving nearly three years.
Cosby is also being sued by actress and visual artist Lili Bernard over claims he drugged and raped her at the Trump Taj Mahal casino resort in Atlantic City in August 1990.