SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Sixteen-year-old Judy Huth was deeply distraught minutes after Invoice Cosby is alleged to have sexually abused her on a day in 1975 on the Playboy Mansion, her greatest good friend on the time testified Wednesday.
“She mentioned `I need to go, I wanna go away,’ she was crying,” mentioned Donna Samuelson, then 17 and now 64, the primary witness in a Los Angeles County civil trial stemming from Huth’s lawsuit in opposition to the 85-year-old comic and actor.
Samuelson, who had been wanting ahead to spending the remainder of the afternoon and night on the mansion, was offended along with her good friend, till Huth defined herself.
“She mentioned Invoice Cosby had tried to have intercourse along with her,” Samuelson mentioned.
Huth informed Samuelson that in a bed room off a sport room on the mansion grounds the place the three had been hanging out and enjoying pool and arcade video games, Cosby had tried to place his hand down her tight pants, then uncovered himself, forcing Huth to the touch him sexually, testified Samuelson, who had been distracted enjoying a sport and was oblivious to what had occurred.
Samuelson shot two pictures of Cosby and Huth collectively that day which are central to the trial, and have been proven continuously to the jury on day one. A clearly recognizable Cosby has a beard and pink beanie.
A lawyer for Cosby referred to as the intercourse abuse allegations “a whole and utter fabrication” and mentioned the photographs are the one motive the case exists.
“That is a few plan hatched by Judy Huth and her estranged good friend Donna Samuelson based mostly on some pictures,” lawyer Jennifer Bonjean mentioned in her opening assertion shortly earlier than Samuelson took the stand. “You’ll be taught Judy Huth has been making an attempt to money in on these pictures for many years.”
The trial represents one of many final remaining authorized claims in opposition to Cosby after his Pennsylvania legal conviction was thrown out by an appeals courtroom final 12 months, and his insurer settled many different lawsuits in opposition to his will. He isn’t attending the trial, and won’t testify, however components of a video deposition he gave shortly after the 2014 lawsuit was filed shall be performed.
Samuelson testified that Cosby had met the 2 women on a movie set at a Los Angeles space park a number of days earlier, and invited them to return to a membership the place he can be enjoying tennis, then took them as a shock to the mansion, telling them if anybody requested their ages to say they have been 18, however nobody did.
By the point Huth informed her story to Samuelson, Cosby had left to attend an occasion with plans to return hours later, leaving the ladies behind.
Samuelson mentioned she requested her distraught good friend if she needed to go to the police or inform anybody else, Huth emphatically answered no. She satisfied Huth to remain on the mansion.
“I believed it might calm her all the way down to go swimming and stuff,” Samuelson testified. “I mentioned, `We’ll go away as quickly as he will get again.”’
She mentioned the mansion’s butler introduced the ladies swimsuits in no matter model, measurement and coloration they requested for, they usually frolicked within the mansion’s well-known grotto pool and ordered tequila sunrises. Then they’d dinner within the mansion, sitting throughout from actor Peter Lawford.
They have been tinkering on a grand piano when Cosby returned and put his arm round a horrified Huth. The women promptly bought as much as go away, Samuelson mentioned, however simply then Playboy head Hugh Hefner and his journal mannequin girlfriend Barbi Benton walked in, and Cosby launched them earlier than they left.
Bonjean seized on the ladies’ staying on the mansion throughout her opening.
“Boy did Judy and Donna get pleasure from themselves. They stayed for 12 hours,” Bonjean mentioned. “There’s no typical response to a traumatic occasion however partying on the Playboy Mansion doesn’t appear constant.”
However in his opening assertion, Huth’s lawyer Nathan Goldberg mentioned within the months that adopted, she was very a lot emotionally affected by the trauma, smoking pot in nice quantities, moving into troubled relationships and affected by nervousness.
“She was now not the happy-go-lucky woman she had been,” Goldberg mentioned.
The Related Press doesn’t usually title individuals who say they’ve been sexually abused, except they arrive ahead publicly, as Huth has.
