Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Cosby Assault Accuser Has Words for Ex-DA

PHILADELPHIA (CN) - A woman who settled Bill Cosby sexual-assault claims that the prosecutor called "weak" says in court the same man is now using her ordeal to win an election.

Andrea Constand claims that she met the comedian over a decade ago when she was the director of operations for the women's basketball team at Temple University, where Cosby was a trustee.

In 2005, she told police that Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted her a year before.

At the time, Bruce Castor Jr. was the district attorney of Montgomery County - the jurisdiction where the alleged assault occurred - but Constand says Castor declined to prosecute Cosby, viewing the case as "weak."

Though Castor had a duty to first notify the alleged victim of his decision to drop the case, Constand says she only learned that the criminal case would not move forward through a press release that the Republican prosecutor issued to the media.

Constand in turn sued Cosby in civil court, engaged in discovery under seal and ultimately reached a settlement.

With similar claims against Cosby growing to a roar in the last year, the judge who presided over Constand's civil case unsealed startling testimony over the summer from Cosby's secret depositions.

The transcript shows Cosby admitting to buying quaaludes to give to women before having sex with them.

Constand is now taking Castor - the DA who declined to prosecute Cosby back in 2005 - to court, saying other disturbing allegations have come to light.

The Oct. 26 federal complaint focuses first on a 2014 interview with Bloomberg in which Castor is quoted as saying that Constand's case brought "at least a handful" of other women with similar stories about Cosby out of the woodwork.

Castor has not been the Montgomery County DA since 2008, but he told MSNBC on July 7, 2015, that he is running for his old seat, according to Constand's complaint.

Constand says Castor has promised to investigate Cosby if re-elected, seeking to determine if Cosby perjured himself in his deposition.

Though Castor told various media outlets that the statute of limitations on Constand's "misdemeanor" claims have run, the Montgomery County DA's Office reopened her case against Cosby last month, according to the complaint.

This shows that Castor had been wrong about the statute of limitations, but Castor has made no move to own up to his mistake, Constand says.

Instead, he "chose to make plaintiff collateral damage for his political ambitions," the complaint states.

Constand notes that the the Associated Press has quoted Castor as saying that she had undersold her claims 10 years ago.

"He said Constand had lodged more serious sexual-assault allegations in the civil lawsuit than she divulged to police," the AP reported, as quoted in the complaint. "He recalled investigating the complaint as a misdemeanor case. Yet the lawsuit included allegations of digital penetration, a potential felony, he said."

Throwing Constand under the bus, Castor told the AP that prosecutors "might have been able to make a case" if Constand had included the allegations from her civil complaint "with that detail in her statement to police," the complaint continues.

Castor is not just spewing lies about her to the press, Constand says, noting that Castor is also talking about her case on Twitter.

"Troublesome for the good guys," he tweeted on Sept. 14. "Not good."

Constand says the former DA is now trying to tank the newly reopened case against Cosby by claiming that he granted the comedian immunity back in 2005 since there was a risk he could incriminate himself furing the civil litigation.

Castor showed "reckless disregard" for both the truth and Constand's rights by portraying her as someone who had "exaggerated her claims in a lawsuit and was therefore not to be believed," the complaint states.

Constand seeking punitive damages for defamation, false light and invasion of privacy.

"By reason of the printing, publication and circulation of [Castor's] statements and charges, [Constand] has been brought into scandal and reproach, and has been held up to contempt among her neighbors, business acquaintances and other good citizens," the lawsuit said.

Castor's law firm has not returned a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Constand is represented by Dolores Troiani of Troiani & Gibley in Berwyn and by Bebe Kivitz of Jacobs, Kivitz & Drake.

Categories / Uncategorized

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...