LAS VEGAS — In a lawsuit claiming Bill Cosby exploited his “enormous power, fame, and prestige” to victimize them, nine more women have accused him of sexual assault.
A lawsuit filed on Wednesday in federal court in Nevada claims that between 1979 and 1992, the ladies were each drugged and molested in their own homes, motels, and changing rooms in Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe.
One woman claims that Cosby brought her from New York to Nevada by posing as her acting mentor, where he allegedly drugged her in a hotel room with what he claimed to be non-alcoholic sparkling cider before raping her.
More than 60 women have now accused the 85-year-old former “Cosby Show” star of rape, sexual assault, and harassment. All sex crime claims against him have been refuted. He was the first famous person to be tried and found guilty during the #MeToo era. He spent almost three years in a state prison close to Philadelphia before a higher court overturned his conviction, and he was freed in 2021.
A Los Angeles jury earlier this year paid $500,000 to a woman who claimed Cosby had sexually assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion in 1975 when she was 16 years old.
The Nevada complaint was filed just a few weeks after Gov. Joe Lombardo signed a bill removing the two-year window for filing sexual assault claims by adults. Comparable lawsuits followed other “lookback laws” in other states.
In a lawsuit claiming Bill Cosby exploited his “enormous power, fame, and prestige” to victimize them, nine more women have accused him of sexual assault.
Lise-Lotte Lublin, a native of Nevada and one of the plaintiffs, had pushed for the modification. She had earlier claimed that Cosby had assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel in 1989 while serving her drinks that had been drugged.
Unless they come forward publicly, The Associated Press does not identify those who claim to have been sexually assaulted.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal cited Lotte-Lublin as saying, “For years, I have fought for survivors of sexual assault, and today is the first time I will be able to fight for myself.” “Thanks to the recent legal amendment, I now have the option of suing my attacker, Bill Cosby. Even though my path has only begun, I am thankful for this chance to pursue justice.
A former Playboy model in California filed a lawsuit against Cosby on June 1 under a new California legislation that suspends the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims. She claims Cosby drugged and attacked her and another woman at his house in 1969.
Cosby spokesperson Andrew Wyatt denounced such regulations in a statement on Wednesday.
“Mr. Cosby is a Citizen of these United States, but these judges and lawmakers are consistently allowing these civil lawsuits to flood their dockets—knowing that these women are not fighting for victims—but for their addiction to massive amounts of media attention and greed,” Wyatt stated.
Wyatt declared, “Starting today, we will no longer permit these women to parade various tales of an alleged allegation against Mr. Cosby without first vetting them in the court of public opinion and the trial.
In their most recent lawsuit, the women allege that Cosby “used his enormous power, fame, and prestige, and claimed interest in helping them and/or their careers as a pretence to isolate and sexually assault them.”
SOURCE – (AP)
