O. Adejo
A jury in California found Bill Cosby guilty of sexually assaulting a teenager at the Playboy Mansion nearly five decades ago.
Judy Huth, now 64, was awarded $500,000 in damages after a jury in Santa Monica determined that Cosby molested her when she was 16 in 1975.
The case is one of the few remaining legal actions against Cosby, 84, who has been accused of sexual assault by several women.
He was imprisoned in Pennsylvania in 2018 in a separate criminal case but was released last year after his conviction was overturned on a technicality.
Lawyers claimed during a two-week civil hearing, which Cosby did not attend, that he escorted Huth and her then-17-year-old friend, Donna Samuelson, to the mansion after meeting them on a movie set.
Cosby denied the allegations, and his lawyers emphasised obvious inconsistencies in Hutch’s story, such as the fact that both teens spent up to 12 hours at the mansion following the alleged assault.
They also claimed that Huth initially claimed the attack occurred in 1974 when she was 15, but later changed her story to the following year.
Because the statute of limitations had passed by the time Huth spoke to police, the case was never prosecuted criminally.
Huth was able to file the civil suit because of a California law that allows adults who claim they were sexually abused as minors but hid what happened for years to pursue such cases.
Jury finds Bill Cosby guilty in fresh sexual assault case