Bill Cosby faces a new trial for sexual harassment in Los Angeles

Bill Cosby and Judy Huth, right, who says she was harassed by the comedian at the Playboy mansion.AP

Comedian Bill Cosby, 85, is facing a new trial for sexual harassment this week.

A California civil court began the process on Wednesday after the accusations made by Judy Huth, who claims to have been abused by the actor at a party held at the Playboy mansion in 1975. The complaint was filed in 2014, but the trial was delayed eight years because justice first had to unburden two other criminal proceedings against Cosby.

The comedian regained his freedom last June after a court annulled his conviction for a pact that the defense had reached with one of the prosecutors.

This new process is expected to last for two weeks in the courts of Santa Monica, in the Californian Pacific.

Huth's defense seeks that the plaintiff pay an amount that has not been specified for damages.

Cosby did not appear in the first session and there is little chance that he will appear in the next few days because he has been blinded by glaucoma.

The comedian, who has been accused of abuse by some 60 women, claims to be innocent in this case.

Huth and another witness to the events will be called to testify.

The alleged victim has reported that she met Bill Cosby with a friend in 1975. The meeting was in a park that served as the location for the film

, in which the comedian starred alongside Sidney Poitier.

"Bill Cosby was then a celebrity, a star," Nathan Goldberg, the victim's attorney, said Wednesday.

“At the time, Judy Huth was just a high school student.

She was 16 years old.

The chances that these worlds would meet were minimal, “added the lawyer in the opening arguments.

According to the prosecution's account, Cosby and Huth met again and he offered the minor alcohol as part of "a game."

After that, he took her to a party at the Playboy mansion.

There he took her to a private room, where he kissed her and put his hand on her penis.

Cosby's defense admits that the meeting between the two happened, as there is a photograph of them on the site, famous for its excessive parties in which sexual acts were held without due consent.

The defendant's attorneys deny that the abuse occurred, arguing that Huth was 18 at the time.

It is not clear how they intend to prove this in the coming days, but it is the prosecution who must convince the 12 jurors (eight women and four men) that the event happened.

Many of the possible witnesses have died, which represents a challenge for the legal team.

Hugh Hefner, the owner of Playboy magazine, who died in 2017, has testified about this case in the past.

Age matters to the sentence Cosby may receive.

Huth's story fits into the avalanche of accusations made about Cosby, one of the protagonists of the #MeToo movement.

The star of

and

has faced charges from 60 women who say they were victims of sexual groping or abuse between 1960 and 2000. Accounts claimed the actor was taking advantage of his image as a family man who had developed on American television.

Despite the accumulation of accusations, only one of the accusations prospered.

This was done by Andrea Constand, an administrator for a basketball team at Temple University (Philadelphia), an institution where Cosby was a patron.

The former basketball player claimed that in 2004, the comedian gave her three blue pills and then fingered her while she was pinned down on a couch.

Cosby had already admitted under oath that he had bought drugs to give to women so he could have sex with them.

These medicines, known as Quaaludes, are a powerful sedative.

The actor assured that the sexual relations were consensual.

The comedian was sentenced in 2018 to a sentence of up to 10 years in prison for the rape of Andrea Constand.

He only spent two years behind bars.

His conviction was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which argued that a district attorney had struck a deal with the sexual predator that allowed him not to be prosecuted.

Many of the charges he was facing have been paid for by his insurer against his will.

"When I'm paroled, you're not going to hear that I have any regrets," Cosby said in a 2019 interview.

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