MANHATTAN (CN) — A former “Cosby Show” stand-in accused Bill Cosby in a civil lawsuit on Tuesday of grooming under the guise of actor mentorship, and then drugging and raping her while she was unconscious.
The anonymous plaintiff says in her 24-page complaint that she joined the production of the “Cosby Show” sitcom as a stand-in in the late 1980s and the show’s namesake star actor offered to act as a mentor in her acting career after their first meeting.
After developing their acting mentorship relationship, she says Cosby took her home and served her wine he laced with an unknown drug, which caused her to black out.
When she regained consciousness, she found herself partially undressed and vomiting into a toilet, she says in the complaint.
“Upon information and belief, while unconscious Cosby sexually assaulted Anonymous, without her consent and when she was unable to consent,” she says in the civil complaint. “After the assault, Anonymous spoke with an actor at The Cosby Show who expressed that Cosby could do whatever he wanted to do with impunity at The Cosby Show.”
Represented by attorney Jordan Rutsky, the accuser filed suit in New York state court in the final days of the Adult Survivors Act’s one-year "look-back window" for survivors to bring claims ordinarily barred by the statute of limitations.
The complaint includes counts of battery, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false imprisonment against Cosby, while the corporate entities that produced the “Cosby Show,” including Comcast-owned media giant NBCUniversal Media, are named as co-defendants on counts of negligence and negligent hiring.
The anonymous plaintiff says NBC and the Kaufman Astoria film studio — where the “Cosby Show” was shot from 1984 to 1992 — benefited financially from the wholesome “public perception of Cosby as ‘America’s Dad,’ and as a morally upstanding father figure.”
Even through the corporate entities should have known about “Cosby’s propensity toward, history of, and ongoing serial sexual assault, battery, and rape of women,” she says NBC, Kaufman Astoria, ASLP II and Carsey-Werner did nothing to address, prevent or discourage Cosby’s “preying upon, grooming, sexual assault, battery, and rape of women in a manner that implicitly permitted, approved, encouraged, and ratified such sexual assaults, batteries, and rape."
She seeks compensatory and punitive damages from both Cosby and the corporate defendants.
Cosby's spokesman Andrew Wyatt declined to comment on Tuesday on the allegations but offered his thoughts on the New York statute.
"I will urge the public to reach out to their legislators and demand that they close these Look Back Windows because they are being abused to go after successful, wealthy men like Diddy, Steven Tyler, and LA Reid," he said in a written comment to Courthouse News. "When will it stop and who will be the next man to be victimized by these Look Back Windows?"
One week after the lookback window opened in November 2022, five women brought a civil suit in Manhattan Supreme Court against Cosby under the Adult Survivor Act. The law's one-year window is set to end this week.
Four other women, including "Cosby Show" actresses Lili Bernard and Eden Tirl, jointly filed a related complaint on Tuesday, naming the Astoria, Queens television studio where "Cosby Show" was made as the defendant on counts of negligence and negligent supervision for, among other things, encouraging women to meet with Cosby alone and without adequate supervision, and providing locations for him to sexually assault women.
Cosby, 86, has been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by more than 60 women.
Joan Tarshis, one of Cosby's first accusers, also brought a civil suit under the Adult Survivors Act earlier in the month, accusing Cosby of drugging her and forcing her to perform oral sex on him in 1969 or 1970, when he was the star of the earlier NBC sitcom “The Bill Cosby Show.”
Barbara Bowman also brought a complaint in the final month of the lookback window; she accused Cosby of drugging and raping her in 1986, when she was 18 years old, at his Manhattan brownstone apartment.
Cosby was the first celebrity tried and convicted for crimes against women in the #MeToo era, but his landmark sexual assault conviction was thrown out in June 2021 by Pennsylvania’s highest court in a ruling that swiftly freed him from prison more than three years after he was found guilty of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004.
Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, the maximum for each of the counts against him. They emphasized that Cosby showed "no remorse" for his actions.
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