This Monday, and after three days of deliberations, a jury in Santa Monica (Los Angeles, California) found actor Bill Cosby (88) guilty of drugging and raping a woman named Donna Motsinger (84) in 1972. At that time, 54 years ago, Motsinger was a waitress in Sausalito, a small coastal town next to San Francisco, who, after meeting him in a restaurant, accompanied Cosby to one of his comedy shows. Now Cosby will have to pay $19.25 million in damages. Once one of the most famous comedians in the world, Cosby is now struggling financially; their .
In her statement, which occurred last week, the plaintiff stated that the comedian admitted to having obtained prescriptions for methaqualone, a sedative and nervous system depressant similar to barbiturates, thanks to a gynecologist whom he met in a poker game, and that he planned to use them to give them to women and take advantage of their unconscious state to sexually abuse them. According to Motsinger, Cosby offered her a glass of wine while they were in his limo, and also what she thought was an aspirin. However, after that she only remembers fainting and waking up the next day, dressed only in her underwear.
Although more than half a century has passed since the events occurred, the trial has been possible because Article 199 of the California Penal Code establishes that there is no time limit established for reporting and prosecuting crimes of a sexual nature, since these do not prescribe. In fact, in which a woman named Judy Huth claimed that he had abused her at a party at the Playboy mansion, and that at the time she was barely 16 years old. Then, Cosby was forced to pay him just $500,000.
The comedian insists that the encounter, like all those he has been accused of, was “consensual”; He has acknowledged that he pursued women with the aim of having sexual relations with them, but, as he always repeats, with their permission. However, now the jury has left open the possibility that Cosby could also face punitive damages for having acted with “malice, oppression or fraud.” The actor’s lawyer has stated that they are “very disappointed” by the decision and that they will appeal it. The lawyer has also said that the actor, father of comedy in the United States and winner of five Emmy Awards, is being unfairly judged and that he has become, in his words,
Cosby has already served a sentence until 2021 (when) for having abused Andrea Constand, a former basketball player whom he drugged and sexually assaulted in 2004. Then he was in a maximum security prison in Philadelphia. A week ago, during the hearing for the current 1972 case, Constand was one of three witnesses who testified—and she did so for hours—in support of Motsinger. She herself said that Cosby had given her three pills, supposedly to calm her down, but in reality they left her completely incapacitated, with blurred vision, unable to speak or barely move, until she became unconscious.
For her part, Motsinger declared as she left the court that for her the important thing was that they believed her and that Cosby “somehow had to be held accountable for what he did.” She has also assured that the sentence of 19 million is “the icing on the cake”: “54 years have had to pass for justice to be done, and I know that for the rest of the women this does not represent complete reparation, but I hope it is of some use to them.”
Cosby has not appeared in person during the hearing in Los Angeles. In his statement, in addition to pleading innocent, he also claimed to be insolvent. “Due to the accusations, whether in the press, radio, television, magazines or simply on the Internet, I have not worked for about 10 years, or even more,” he said. “That means I haven’t made a cent as a TV artist, writer or actor, except in reruns, and my net worth has sunk like a submarine without a motor.” The actor. According to the newspaper, Cosby sold a house in Manhattan, in the heart of New York, for $28 million last year, and has another one in the city and two others in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
