Nine more women are accusing Bill Cosby of sexual assault in a lawsuit that alleges he used his “enormous power, fame and prestige” to victimize them.
A lawsuit filed Wednesday in a federal court in Nevada alleges that the women were individually drugged and assaulted between approximately 1979 and 1992 in Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe homes, dressing rooms and hotels.
One woman alleges that Cosby, claiming to be her acting mentor, lured her from New York to Nevada, where he drugged her in a hotel room with what he had claimed to be non-alcoholic sparkling cider and then raped her.
The 85-year-old former Cosby Show star has now been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by more than 60 women. He has denied all allegations involving sex crimes. He was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era — and spent nearly three years at a state prison near Philadelphia before a higher court threw out the conviction and released him in 2021.
Earlier this year, a Los Angeles jury awarded US$500,000 to a woman who said Cosby sexually abused her at the Playboy Mansion when she was 16 in 1975.
The Nevada lawsuit came only a few weeks after Gov. Joe Lombardo signed a bill that eliminated a two-year deadline for adults to file sexual abuse cases. Similar suits have followed other “lookback laws” in other states.
One of the plaintiffs, Lise-Lotte Lublin, a Nevada native, had advocated for the change. She had previously alleged that Cosby gave her spiked drinks and raped her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1989.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly.
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“For years I have fought for survivors of sexual assault and today is the first time I will be able to fight for myself,” Lotte-Lublin said in a statement cited by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “With the new law change, I now have the ability to take my assailant Bill Cosby to court. My journey has just begun, but I am grateful for this opportunity to find justice.”
In California, a former Playboy model who alleges Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her and another woman at his home in 1969 sued him on June 1 under a new California law that suspends the statute of limitations on sex abuse claims.
Cosby publicist Andrew Wyatt blasted such laws in a statement Wednesday.
“Mr. Cosby is a Citizen of these United States but these judges and lawmakers are consistently allowing these civil suits 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 said.
“From this day forward, we will not continue to allow these women to parade various accounts of an alleged allegation against Mr. Cosby anymore without vetting them in the court of public opinion and inside of the courtroom,” Wyatt said.
In the latest suit, the women contend 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.”
© 2023 The Canadian Press
