Bill Cosby’s attorneys presented expert testimony on memory Thursday at a civil lawsuit in California as they attempted to discredit a woman’s account of what she believes was an assault by Mr. Cosby some 47 years ago. .
dr. Deborah Davis, a psychologist and an expert in sexual communication, told the court that memories can fade over time and that a person can develop false memories based on details of unrelated events that happen later.
“Memory distortion could be due to things like societal change or the #MeToo movement,” she said. “It can make you think about it differently and remember it differently.”
dr. Davis, who also spoke on the issue of consent and misunderstandings about sexual cues, was one of three expert witnesses Mr. Cosby’s legal team had to bring forward as it tries to convince a jury in the Santa Monica trial. that the woman, Judy Huth, fabricated an account of an assault she believes took place in a bedroom in the Playboy Mansion in 1975.
Ms. Huth, 64, testified earlier this week that Mr. Cosby, now 84, invited her to the Playboy Mansion, where he tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to engage in a sexual act with him.
Because Mrs. Huth, then 16, was a minor at the time, the statute of limitations in the case was extended and set at the date Ms. Huth fully realized the psychological damage of such an event. She has testified that she didn’t realize the episode’s impact until many decades later, when she was an adult.
She filed charges in 2014, but the case was delayed in part by the criminal prosecution of Mr. Cosby in Pennsylvania, where he was convicted in 2018 of sexually abusing Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee. That conviction was quashed last year on the basis of a fair trial.
The 12-member panel sitting on the Huth case is expected to begin hearing closing arguments in the coming days.
Only nine of the twelve jurors must agree on a verdict, and their decision must be based on a preponderance of the evidence – a different standard from that used in criminal trials, where the evidence must be convincing beyond a reasonable doubt.
Another memory expert and medical professional who conducted a psychological evaluation of Ms Huth in recent weeks are still expected to testify as part of Mr. cosby.
Earlier in the trial, a forensic psychiatrist, brought in to testify by Ms. Huth’s legal team, said that traumatic memories of sexual assault were highly encoded in a person’s brain so that victims of such events remember the details of their trauma. remember accurately for years. even decades later.