American actor Bill Cosby, now 84, was convicted on Tuesday, June 21, of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in 1975 by a California court jury.

The verdict is in. A US court on Tuesday found Bill Cosby, a former TV star, guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in 1975 when she was 16.

This civil decision is the only valid conviction to date targeting the former actor, now 84 years old, who has nevertheless been accused of various sexual assaults by dozens and dozens of women.

Convicted of sexual assault in another case in Pennsylvania in 2018 and imprisoned, he had indeed against all odds been released in June 2021, following the cancellation of his conviction for the procedural flaw.

This decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, then the rejection of an appeal on this file to the American Supreme Court, had moreover been seen by many as a snub for the #MeToo movement against violence against women.

Judy Huth’s victory is all the stronger symbolically. The plaintiff accused Bill Cosby of having raped her in 1975 when she was 16 years old.

The defense claimed during the trial that the comedian, met on a film set, had made him drink a large quantity of alcohol before taking him to the Playboy Mansion of his friend Hugh Hefner, and sexually assaulting him in a room in the mansion, in Los Angeles.

“Immediately after she sat up (on the bed), he jumped up…He tried to slip his hands into her panties,” Nathan Goldberg, Ms. Huth’s attorney, told the jury. When the girl told him she was on her period, Bill Cosby released his penis and forced her to masturbate it, Goldberg added.

SIXTY CHARGES

The memories of his client came back with the media coverage of other accusations of sexual violence against Bill Cosby, explained Me Goldberg. In California, the law allows civil lawsuits to be launched for adults who remember sexual assaults during their childhood, even if the statute of limitations has passed for years. She was thus able to initiate the procedure.

It should be noted, however, that no action could be taken criminally, because Judy Huth filed a complaint in 2014, once the limitation period had passed.

In total, about 60 women have publicly accused Bill Cosby of being a calculating sexual predator, who used alcohol and sleeping pills to abuse his victims for decades.

An actress who had starred on The Cosby Show, Lili Bernard, filed a civil complaint in October 2021 against Mr. Cosby, accusing him of drugging and raping her more than 30 years ago. She is claiming $125 million in damages in a New Jersey court.