Woman sues Cosby, alleging molestation

Comedian Bill Cosby was sued on Tuesday by a woman alleging he molested her in 1974 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles when she was 15, in what is believed to be the first court case arising from a recent wave of sexual misconduct accusations against the entertainer.

The five-page complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, charged that Cosby sexually abused plaintiff Judy Huth by putting his hand down her pants, and then "taking her hand in his hand and performing a sex act on himself without her consent".

Huth claims she and a female friend met and chatted with Cosby on the set of a movie that was being filmed in a suburban Los Angeles park, and that he invited them to his tennis club the following Saturday.

The suit says the girls told Cosby they were 15 and 16 years old when he asked their ages.

Arriving at the tennis club days later, the two girls played a drinking game with Cosby at his suggestion, and he then led them to the Playboy Mansion after they "had been served multiple alcoholic beverages", the lawsuit alleges.

Once at the mansion, the suit said, Cosby instructed the girls to lie about their ages if asked. It was there that Huth said she emerged from a bathroom to find Cosby on a bed. He asked her to sit beside him before groping her, she alleges.

"This traumatic incident, at such a tender age, has caused psychological damage and mental anguish for the plaintiff that has caused her significant problems throughout her life," the complaint said. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Cosby's lawyer, Martin Singer, had no immediate comment on the matter, his office said.

The suit came a day after Cosby resigned from the board of trustees of Temple University, his Philadelphia alma mater, amid a series of sexual assault accusations lodged against him by more than a dozen women in recent weeks.

None of those women is believed to have filed a lawsuit.

About 20 women have now accused the Emmy and Golden Globe winner of sexual assault and even rape, mostly from decades ago during Cosby's heyday.

Allegations that Cosby, now 77, drugged and sexually assaulted a number of young women gained renewed attention after stand-up comic Hannibal Buress called him a rapist during a performance in October.

One of Cosby's accusers, Barbara Bowman, wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece last month that he sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions in 1985 when she was 17.

Cosby's camp unwittingly intensified the scandal on Twitter by asking supporters to create viral online parodies, or "memes", about him, and were instead barraged with Internet satires about the rape accusations.

Cosby has not been charged.

(China Daily 12/04/2014 page12)