Bill Cosby is being sued by a new Jane Doe accuser who claims the disgraced 86-year-old actor drugged and raped her in his dressing room in 1992 while an NBC employee stood outside the door, according to court records obtained by Rolling Stone.
The woman is coming forward for the first time and is joining the 60-plus women who have accused Cosby of sexually assaulting them from the 1960s to the 2000s. Cosby was sentenced to prison in 2018 on charges of indecent aggravated assault against Andrea Constand, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2021, letting Cosby walk free.
The lawsuit was filed in New York on Friday under the Adult Survivors Act — a 2022 act that briefly opened up a window for victims of sexual offenses to file a civil suit against their abuser even though the statute of limitations may have passed. The window closes on November 24, 2023.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Doe’s attorney Jordan Rutsky — who has represented several Cosby survivors — says his client has been “empowered” by the act and that she and several other women have been “triggered into action in part because of the feeling that whatever justice had been done had been undone.”
“The most important thing is now she has an opportunity to come forward,” Rutsky says. “There’s an extreme amount of shame and embarrassment, humiliation involved. Then you add into the factor that you’re dealing with a defendant, Bill Cosby, who, at one point in time, was among the most powerful men in entertainment and beyond. The law empowered Miss Doe to finally be able to have the confidence to tell her story and seek some sort of justice.”
Cosby’s spokesperson Andrew V. Wyatt, told Rolling Stone in a statement that he doesn’t have a comment on the lawsuit because the “alleged allegations are utterly ridiculous and ludicrous and I refuse to give any of these alleged distractors a platform.”
The woman claims she met Cosby in 1992 when she was invited to the set of The Cosby Show in Queens, New York, to “ostensibly meet with Cosby about a potential guest starring role” on the NBC sitcom.
Former NBC employee Frank Scotti — who previously admitted that he “felt like a pimp” bringing young women to Cosby — had Doe and other models and actresses wait outside Cosby’s dressing room to meet about the role. When it was Doe’s turn to meet with Cosby alone, she entered the room, and the door was closed behind her, the lawsuit claims.
Cosby allegedly offered the woman a drink, which she had two sips of. “Upon information and belief, Cosby had placed or had caused to be placed an unknown intoxicant in the beverage,” the lawsuit claims, that caused the woman to lose consciousness.
“When Ms. Doe regained consciousness temporarily, she was slumped down in a chair, her underwear had been removed, Cosby had his pants down, and Cosby was pulling his penis out from between Ms. Doe’s legs,” the lawsuit alleges. “When Ms. Doe next awoke, she was home. She does not know how she was transported home.”
The lawsuit claims that “the individual believed to be Mr. Scotti” stood outside the room the entirety of the alleged assault and remained there “to ensure that Cosby was uninterrupted… [and] could sexually assault and rape Ms. Doe without interruption.”
The woman, who is also suing NBC and the Queens studio where The Cosby Show was filmed, is seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
Cosby is currently facing several civil suits from women across the country, including California, Nevada, and New York. Actress Linda Ridgway-Whitedeer sued Cosby in September, alleging Cosby forced her to perform oral sex on him during an audition in 1971. Nine women, including Janice Dickinson and Lise-Lotte Lublin, sued Cosby in Nevada in June. The most recent suit came from Donna Motsinger, who claims Cosby drugged and raped her before sending her home in just her underwear in the Bay Area in the Seventies. And last June, a jury found Cosby guilty of the sexual battery of a 16-year-old girl in the Seventies, awarding her $500,000.