In the first case by a woman accusing Bill Cosby of sexual abuse to make it to trial, a Los Angeles jury found Cosby liable and awarded his accuser $500,000 in damages.
Judy Huth, now 64, had accused Cosby of sexually abusing her nearly 50 years ago, when Cosby was in his mid-30s. Huth first filed suit seven years ago.
“It’s been torture,” Huth noted, according to NPR. “To be ripped apart, you know, thrown under the bus and backed over. This, to me, is such a big victory.”
“I was elated,” she added, per CNN. “It has been so many years, so many tears.”
Huth had accused Cosby of giving her liquor and taking her and her friend Donna Samuelson to the Playboy Mansion in 1975 after she and Samuelson had met him previously on a film set. Huth claimed Cosby tried to shove his hand down her pants but was dissuaded when she told him she was having her period.
“I was trying to deflect,” she said, reported NBC News. “But he didn’t stop. I just closed my eyes. … It was so fast. Maybe five minutes. Quick.”
Instead, she said, he took her hand and made her masturbate him, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Huth claimed that Cosby told her and Samuelson, “That if any of the Playboy bunnies asked their age, they should say they were 19,” according to CNN.
Huth said she did not tell anyone about the alleged incident until she saw other women accuse Cosby and after her son’s 15th birthday. “I went back to being irritable,” she recalled, per the Daily Mail. “I went back to blaming myself. I became a loner.”
“Jurors determined Cosby intentionally caused harmful sexual contact with Huth, that he reasonably believed she was under 18, and that his conduct was driven by unnatural or abnormal sexual interest in a minor,” the Daily Mail added.
Last year, Cosby’s conviction after he was found guilty of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand was thrown out and he was released from prison, where he had been incarcerated since 2018.
In April 2019, Cosby’s insurance company, American International Group (A.I.G.), settled a sexual battery lawsuit filed against him by Chloe Goins. Cosby, who was still in prison, bitterly denounced the decision as “unauthorized,” adding, “A.I.G. continues to act egregiously by settling these heinous claims without my knowledge and/or consent,” according to The New York Times.
Cosby, who had been a policyholder with A.I.G. for over 20 years, told other policyholders to “drop this pathetic insurance company quickly.”