Nine women accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault on Wednesday, less than two months after Nevada changed the statute of limitations for sexual assault civil lawsuits.
In the lawsuit, the women said the assaults took place in Nevada between 1979 and 1992, some in Cosby’s hotel suite in Las Vegas. Cosby, now 85, had or was about to drug them all before the assault, they said.
Cosby’s spokesman Andrew Wyatt was not available for comment Wednesday night.he told NBC News Plaintiffs in the lawsuit were motivated by “addiction to mass media attention and greed,” it said.
The lawsuit is the latest in several lawsuits to accuse the entertainer of being a sex offender. He was convicted of sexual assault by a Pennsylvania court in 2018 and began serving a sentence of three to 10 years.
Cosby was released in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction for violating his rights by reneging on prosecutors’ promises not to prosecute him. Wyatt said the courtroom reversal at the time was a victory for both blacks and women in America.
But Cosby, who spent many years appearing on “The Cosby Show,” which dominated American television in the 1980s and early 1990s, faced a steady stream of sexual misconduct accusations. And he now faces several new lawsuits in states where the laws governing statutes of limitations have recently changed.
In California last year, a jury sided with Judy Hughes, who accused her of sexually assaulting Cosby when she was 16 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1975. She was awarded a prize of $500,000.
Cosby was also sued earlier this month in Los Angeles by former Playboy model Victoria Valentino, who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting him after meeting a friend for a meal at a restaurant in the city in 1969.
California lawsuits are possible because, starting in 2020, state law changed to extend and then temporarily lift the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims in civil court.
In New Jersey, a similar process will see actor and visual artist Lili Bernard accuse Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting him at an Atlantic City hotel in 1990, and will file a lawsuit in 2021. was recognized.
In Nevada, the state legislature passed the law in May Revised provisions for some civil cases, including sexual assault. The law allows civil lawsuits to be filed by persons who were at least 18 years of age at the time the sexual assault was allegedly committed. Old state law already allowed a person who was under the age of 18 at the time of the sexual assault allegation to file such a lawsuit.
Several of the nine women who filed lawsuits on Wednesday are involved in lawsuits against Cosby in other states.
One is former guest star of The Cosby Show, Mr. Bernard. Another was model Janice Dickinson, who appeared as a witness in Mr. Cosby’s Pennsylvania trial and testified that Mr. Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982. .
“States should follow Nevada’s footsteps and remove the statute of limitations on sexual assault,” said Lisa Bloom, an attorney who represented Dickinson in the Pennsylvania lawsuit. “I applaud the courage of the women who demanded her justice against Bill Cosby,” she said.
