Bill Cosby found guilty of sexually abusing teen in 1970s, ordered to pay $500,000

Bill Cosby was found guilty Tuesday of sexually abusing Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion in the mid-1970s when she was 16. The disgraced comedian, 84, was ordered to pay her $500,000.

The verdict came days after the jury had nearly reached a complete verdict but was sent back to deliberations by Judge Craig D. Karlan in the civil lawsuit brought by Huth. At the end of Friday’s court session in Santa Monica, the jury had answered eight of nine questions on the verdict form. The only question remaining was whether Cosby should pay punitive damages for his alleged actions.

Karlan, who had promised one juror when she agreed to serve that she could leave after Friday for a prior commitment, decided over the objections of Cosby’s attorneys to accept and read the verdict on the questions the jury had answered. But he had to change course when deputies at the Santa Monica Courthouse appeared and required him to clear the courtroom. The courthouse has a required closure time of 4:30 p.m. because of no budget for deputies’ overtime.

Karlan refused to require the departing juror, who had been chosen as foreperson, to return Monday, so jurors had to begin again with an alternate in her place.

Cosby did not attend or testify during the trial, although his video deposition was played during the proceedings. The former “Cosby Show” star, who was 78 at the time of the deposition, gave terse “no” answers when asked questions about whether or not he had committed the alleged assault.

Asked whether it was possible that these things happened but Cosby didn’t remember them, Cosby also answered “no.”

“Why would that not be possible?” Huth’s attorney, Nathan Goldberg, asked.

“Because,” Cosby replied, “the fact that this young lady is saying that she told me she was 15.”

Huth took the stand June 7 after Judge Karlan ordered her to testify before the jury. Fighting back tears, she alleged that Cosby tried to put his hands down her pants. She said that she lied and said she was on her period to get him to stop. Instead, she said he forced her hand onto his erect penis, masturbating himself until he climaxed.

“I had my eyes closed at that point,” Huth, 64, said in court. “I was freaking out.”

Huth said that in the decades since the alleged attack, she entered a dark period of isolation and depression, cycling between abusive relationships that left her further scarred.

Still, she said her mind always went back to the alleged attack by Cosby, especially once other women began accusing him of similar behavior.

Throughout the case, Cosby’s legal team had tried to poke holes in Huth’s timeline of alleged events, pointing out inconsistencies in side details that were inaccurate. Huth had previously said that the alleged incident happened in 1974 when she was 15, but then changed her story to say it happened in 1975 when she was 16.

Asked in court what made her change her story, Huth said she saw pictures of Cosby with a beard in 1975, which he didn’t have the year before. She also said she had discovered the date of a National Enquirer issue, which featured on the cover actor Peter Lawford, whom she had seen at the dinner table the night of the alleged incident.

Cosby’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, also drilled Huth on why a number of life milestones did not remind her of when the alleged assault occurred, specifically Huth’s relationship status and when she befriended Donna Samuelson, with whom she went to the Playboy Mansion the day of the alleged attack.

Huth shrugged off many of the questions, plainly saying some variation of “I was inaccurate” in response to each question.

At one point, Bonjean pointed out a discrepancy where photos of the game room Huth had referenced showed a different layout than what Huth had described. On this and other challenges, Huth remained terse, meeting many of Bonjean’s questions with “no” or “I don’t remember.”

The Associated Press and Times staff writer Christi Carras contributed to this report.