Ms. Bonjean has instead said that Ms. Huth was motivated by money and saw an opportunity to join others who were providing accounts of misconduct by Mr. Cosby at that time.
According to Ms. Huth, 64, she and a friend were invited by Mr. Cosby to join him at the Playboy Mansion several days after meeting him on a film set that they stumbled upon in a park not far from their homes. The friend, Donna Samuelson, testified at the trial and said Ms. Huth had confided in her that she had been assaulted that same night, but they agreed at that point to keep it a secret.
Mr. Cosby has denied the sexual assault and his lawyers have sought to undermine the credibility of Ms. Huth’s account, initially suggesting before trial that the two had met several years after Ms. Huth has said, when she was no longer a minor. During the trial, however, they have moved away from that point and argued that other parts of her account, such as the length of time — several hours — that she stayed at the mansion after what she described as a sexual assault, were inconsistent.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have also tried to show that any trauma she had experienced in her life was related to something other than her encounter with Mr. Cosby.
Going through her medical history in court, Ms. Bonjean showed that Ms. Huth had been prescribed antidepressants as early as 2011, and she said that Ms. Huth has discussed a history of abusive relationships and other episodes, any of which could have been the cause of her trauma. Ms. Huth’s lawyer countered that she was diagnosed with PTSD, and started suffering severe flashbacks, for the first time in 2014.
The trial comes a year after Mr. Cosby’s criminal conviction in the case of Andrea Constand was overturned on due process grounds. Ms. Constand was a former Temple University employee who said he sexually assaulted her when she was 30.
Mr. Cosby was asked in his video deposition, which was taken in 2015, whether or not in the 1970s he routinely asked women whether they were under 18 before he had sex with them, and he said no. But at the same time, he said that, were he to know, he would never go out with a minor.
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