In video testimony performed for jurors Wednesday at a civil trial, Invoice Cosby denies sexually abusing a teenage lady on the Playboy Mansion within the mid-Seventies.
Requested by an legal professional for Judy Huth, who’s suing Cosby, whether or not he had tried to place his hand down Huth’s pants, Cosby rapidly and clearly solutions “no.” Requested if he uncovered himself and compelled her to the touch him sexually, Cosby solutions “no” in the identical means.
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Requested whether or not it was doable that these items occurred however Cosby didn’t keep in mind them, Cosby answered “no.”
“Why would that not be doable?” Huth’s legal professional Nathan Goldberg asks.
“As a result of,” Cosby replies, “the truth that this younger woman is saying that she advised me she was 15.”
In one other clip, Goldberg asks Cosby if he would knowingly have relationships with women who had been below 18 within the mid-Seventies. Cosby solutions “no.” However he additionally says “no” when requested whether or not he would be certain these he sought sexual relationships with had been 18.
On the time the video deposition was taken, on Oct. 9, 2015, Huth maintained that the molestation had taken place in 1973 or 1974, when she was 15, however shortly earlier than trial mentioned an examination of the proof confirmed it was in 1975, when she was 16.
The 12 minutes of clips, performed for the jury on the finish of the sixth day of the trial in Los Angeles County, signify the primary time Cosby’s voice was heard through the proceedings. He’s carrying a grey sportscoat with a costume shirt and tie and sitting at a desk.
The 85-year-old actor and comic isn’t attending the trial as a result of glaucoma that has left him blind, his representatives mentioned. A decide additionally dominated that he might invoke his Fifth Modification privilege and decline to testify or to present a second deposition within the case that the plaintiff had sought.
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Cosby says within the video that he didn’t keep in mind assembly Huth or her good friend Donna Samuelson, who every testified earlier within the trial that they met him on a movie set, then days later met up with him at a tennis membership, briefly visited a home he was staying at then went with him to the mansion.
Requested whether or not being proven photos of himself with Huth on the mansion would change his solutions about whether or not he knew them, Cosby replies that it might imply little.
“What’s the phrase `know,’ that I `know’ any individual?” Cosby says in one in every of his few lengthy replies within the video. “Or that I met somebody? Or that, whereas at Disneyland I met 100 individuals and took photos with them? Or that, whereas I’m on the airport I’m sitting, ready to catch a airplane and other people come up and sit subsequent to me, sit on me, put your arm round me, say hiya and take an image that later may present up someplace by some means and that I do know this particular person? No, sir.”
Cosby provides, “It doesn’t imply that they had been with me, or that I used to be even with them.”
Two photos that Samuelson took of Cosby with Huth on the mansion have been proven a number of occasions through the trial. Cosby’s legal professional Gloria Bonjean has acknowledged that he took the women there, however each Bonjean and a Cosby spokesman have repeatedly denied that any sexual interplay occurred.
Huth’s attorneys rested their case after enjoying the video. Cosby’s attorneys will start calling their very own witnesses Thursday.
Huth, now 64, was on the stand earlier Wednesday after testifying for a lot of Tuesday.
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Whereas cross-examining her, Bonjean challenged Huth over the timing of her struggles with melancholy, suggesting they had been clearly not spurred by any abuse from Cosby.
Huth filed the lawsuit in 2014, saying that her son turning 15 that very same yr introduced again painful reminiscences of her sexual assault, and introduced on subsequent melancholy.
Bonjean confirmed Huth medical data from 2011, 2012 and 2013 by which her physician assessed her with main melancholy and prescribed her anti-depressants.
“We will agree that you just suffered from main melancholy earlier than your son turned 15?” Bonjean requested Huth, who was on the witness stand in a Los Angeles County courthouse for a second day within the civil trial.
“I don’t know that I did,” Huth mentioned.
“So medical data displaying that may be inaccurate?” Bonjean requested.
Huth repeatedly answered that and related questions by saying she didn’t keep in mind coping with melancholy or taking drugs for it throughout these years, however acknowledged that the paperwork in entrance of her mentioned she had.
Bonjean additionally pointed to totally different potential causes for Huth’s melancholy.
“You had an extended historical past of trauma in your life that had nothing to do with Mr. Cosby, proper?” Bonjean requested.
“Nothing as unhealthy as that, that’s for certain,” Huth answered.
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Huth’s lawsuit says she suffered psychological injury from Cosby’s abuse from 2014 when she started having nervousness over it and flashbacks to it, till 2018 when he was despatched to jail within the Pennsylvania felony case.
Goldberg, her legal professional, requested her Wednesday, “Do you know while you had been 16 that what Mr. Cosby did brought about you psychological harm?”
“No,” Huth answered. “I used to be only a child.”
The trial represents one of many final remaining authorized claims towards the 85-year-old Cosby after his felony conviction was thrown out by an appeals court docket and he was free of jail final yr, and his insurer settled many different lawsuits towards his will.
The Related Press doesn’t usually title individuals who say they’ve been sexually abused, except they arrive ahead publicly, as Huth has.
© 2022 The Canadian Press
