Using a new California legislation that suspends the statute of limitations on sex abuse claims, a former Playboy model who claims Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her and another woman at his house in 1969 filed a lawsuit against him on Thursday.
Victoria Valentino, 80, claims in her lawsuit that she first encountered Cosby, 85, 54 years ago while working as an actress and singer. After seeing her sobbing in a Los Angeles cafe over the tragic drowning death of her 6-year-old son, the comedian and actor went up to her.
Unless they come forward publicly, The Associated Press does not identify those who claim to have been sexually assaulted.
In addition to sending a luxury car to pick up Valentino and a friend for dinner, Cosby offered to pay for a spa visit for them both. She said in the court document that Cosby gave them each a pill that evening at a steakhouse.”Here! Take this, Cosby allegedly commanded them in the lawsuit. It will improve your mood. We will all feel better as a result.
The lawsuit claims that Cosby then took the women to his house, where Valentino fell asleep on a couch and later awoke to see him sexually abusing her unnamed friend. Cosby allegedly “engaged in forced sexual intercourse” with Valentino while she was unconscious as a result of the drug, according to court records.
Valentino’s accusations follow six Cosby accusers who filed lawsuits in New York last year under a similar clause known as a “lookback” law, which permits individuals to initiate sexual abuse cases for claims that have passed the statute of limitations.
At least 60 women have accused the former “Cosby Show” star of rape, sexual assault, and harassment; he has refuted each and every one of these claims. He was the first famous person to be tried and found guilty during the #MeToo era. He spent almost three years in a state prison close to Philadelphia before his conviction was overturned by a higher court, and he was freed in 2021.
Andrew Wyatt, his spokeswoman, claimed on Thursday that Valentino’s case lacked “any proof or facts” and that so-called lookback laws infringe on constitutional rights intended to shield criminal defendants and “those that are accused of a crime.”
What cemetery may Mr. Cosby visit to find prospective witnesses who could testify in his favour? In a statement, Wyatt enquired. America is continuing to realise that this is a plan to prevent other Black men in the country from achieving the American Dream that Mr. Cosby has already attained.
Nearly two years after Cosby was released from jail after his 2018 sexual assault conviction was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the case was filed in LA County Superior Court. They discovered that he only admitted to lying in a deposition about the incident after mistakenly thinking he was exempt from prosecution. Both the trial judge and a lower appeals court had concluded that there was no proof of this immunity.
A Los Angeles jury earlier this year gave $500,000 to a woman who claimed that Cosby had sexually assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion in 1975 when she was a teenager.
Following Cosby’s conviction in Pennsylvania, seven additional accusers who had filed a Massachusetts defamation suit were compensated by his insurers. In denying their charges of assault, Cosby and his representatives, according to their lawsuit, disparaged them.
The complaint filed by Valentino asks for a jury trial and unspecified punitive damages.
