Nine women accuse Bill Cosby of sex abuse in Nevada
Nine women charged Bill Cosby with sexual assault in a Nevada lawsuit on Wednesday, less than two months after the state changed the statute of limitations on civil cases related to that crime.
The women said in the lawsuit that the assaults took place in Nevada between 1979 and 1992, some in Mr. Cosby’s hotel suite in Las Vegas. They said Mr Cosby, now 85, had drugged or attempted to drug each of them before the attacks.
A spokesperson for Mr Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday night. He told NBC News that the plaintiffs in the case were motivated by “addiction to massive amounts of media attention and greed.”
The lawsuit is the latest of several to accuse the entertainer of being a sexual predator. He was convicted of sexual assault by a Pennsylvania court in 2018 and began serving a three- to 10-year prison sentence.
Mr. Cosby was released in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction on the grounds that prosecutors violated his rights by reneging on a promise not to prosecute him. Mr. Wyatt described the court’s reversal as a victory for both Black America and women at the time.
But allegations of sexual misconduct continued to haunt Mr. Cosby, who starred for years on “The Cosby Show,” a mainstay of American television in the 1980s and early 1990s. And he now faces several new lawsuits in states where statutes governing statute of limitations have recently changed.
Last year in California, a jury sided with Judy Huth, who had accused Mr. Cosby of sexually assaulting her at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1975 when she was 16. She got $500,000.
Mr Cosby was also sued this month in Los Angeles by Victoria Valentino, a former Playboy model who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her in that city in 1969 after she and a friend met him for a meal at a restaurant.
The California cases were possible because state law has been amended since 2020 to extend and then temporarily lift the statute of limitations for sexual assault charges in civil courts.
A similar trial in New Jersey enabled Lili Bernard, an actor and visual artist, to sue Mr. Cosby in 2021, accusing him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at an Atlantic City hotel in 1990.
In Nevada, the state legislature passed a law in May that revised provisions around some civil assault cases. The law allows people who were 18 or older when a sexual assault allegedly occurred to bring civil lawsuits. Older state laws had already allowed people who were under age 18 at the time of an alleged sexual assault to bring such charges.
Some of the nine women who filed the lawsuit on Wednesday are involved in legal action against Mr. Cosby in other states.
One of them is Mrs. Bernard, a former guest star on “The Cosby Show.” Another is Janice Dickinson, a model who appeared as a witness at Mr. Cosby’s trial in Pennsylvania and testified that he drugged and sexually assaulted her in a hotel room in Lake Tahoe in 1982.
“Every state should follow Nevada’s example and abolish the statute of limitations for sexual assault,” said Lisa Bloom, an attorney who represented Ms. Dickinson in the Pennsylvania case. “I applaud the courage of these women to demand justice against Bill Cosby.”