Bill Cosby’s defense team attempted to discredit Judy Huth on a number of counts during the trial. His lawyers noted that she changed the year she said she was assaulted, asked why she hadn’t come forward for decades, and questioned her portrayal of the encounter, suggesting she was an untrustworthy witness who made up her account so she could could file a lawsuit.
“I honestly don’t think you can believe anything Mrs. Huth says,” said Jennifer Bonjean, a lawyer for Mr. Cosby. “I’m not going to give her credit just because we live in a time where if she says it, it has to be true,” she added. “There is no evidence.”
Ms. Bonjean noted that Ms. Huth had changed her memory of when the episode took place. While Ms Huth initially said it happened in 1974 when she was 15, she recently came to the conclusion that it was in 1975 when she was 16.
Ms. Huth said she realized she’d made a mistake regarding the date, in part because she only recently saw a 1975 photo of Mr. Cosby wearing a beard and looking like him, she said, as they watched Playboy together. Mansion went .
Mr. Cosby’s defense team also wondered how Ms. Huth could have suffered what she described as callous sexual assault at the Playboy Mansion and then, by her own account, stayed there for hours swimming in the outdoor pool, ordering cocktails and mingling with celebrities .
Ms. Huth testified that she had been angry and wanted to leave after the meeting, but her friend Donna Samuelson, who accompanied her to the mansion, persuaded her to stay. Mrs. Samuelson testified that she would have liked Mrs. Huth to calm down.
And Mr Cosby’s lawyers asked why she hadn’t brought her accusation forward for decades and only decided to sue in December 2014, long after meeting in 1975.
Ms. Huth said she only came forward in 2014 after acknowledging that the anxiety, depression and other difficulties she suffered later in life had been caused by what she described as Mr Cosby’s sexual assault.
But Mr. Cosby’s lawyers suggested that any emotional distress she’d experienced in her life stemmed from a number of other painful episodes, including what she reported as meeting a family member who tried to abuse her as a young child. “She cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between this incident and the alleged trauma 40 years later,” Ms Bonjean said.
The legal team of Mr. Cosby accused Mrs. Huth of pretending to suddenly realize the emotional damage caused by an event so many years earlier, because that was required under California law to be eligible to sue decades later.
His lawyers asked how she only recently remembered the encounter when she had contacted a reporter for The National Enquirer ten years earlier, suggesting that she had tried to make money by selling pictures of herself with Mr. Cosby. They introduced the former reporter, arguing that the reporter’s portrayal of Ms Huth’s meeting with Mr Cosby contradicted Ms Huth’s own story from the stands.
Ms. Huth testified at trial that Mr. Cosby took her hand and forced her to engage in a sexual act with him. But the reporter, Robin Mizrahi, said in a personal essay published in 2018 that Ms. Huth, identified by a pseudonym in the essay, had said in a 2005 interview that she was too afraid to touch Mr. Cosby and alone. watched as he performed a sexual act on himself.
But Ms Huth denied that money was her motivation for coming forward and said the essay was incorrect.
Ms. Mizrahi, a defense witness, said she too could not vouch for the accuracy of her essay, saying she had tried to reconstruct the 2005 interview as best she could, not from concurrent notes of their conversation.
Mr Cosby did not testify at the trial, but in a video deposit played before the jury, he denied having had any sexual contact with Ms Huth. He said he didn’t know her, couldn’t remember taking her to the Playboy Mansion, and wouldn’t be able to recognize her.
Ms Bonjean argued in court that Ms Huth was motivated by money, coordinated with her friend, Ms. Samuelson, and saw an opportunity in 2014 to join other accusers who at the time made statements about Mr Cosby’s misconduct.