SANTA MONICA, California –
WARNING: This story contains graphic details
Sixteen-year-old Judy Huth was deeply dismayed minutes after Bill Cosby allegedly sexually abused her one afternoon in 1975 at the Playboy mansion, she declared her best friend at the time on Wednesday.
“She said, ‘I want to go, I want to leave,’ she was crying,” said Donna Samuelson, 17, now 64, the first witness in a Los Angeles County civil trial following Huth’s lawsuit against 85 year old man. comedian and actor.
Samuelson, who had been waiting eagerly to spend the rest of the afternoon and night in the mansion, was angry with her friend, until Huth explained herself.
“She said Bill Cosby had tried to have sex with her,” Samuelson said.
Huth told Samuelson that in a bedroom in a playroom on the mansion grounds where the three of them had spent their time and playing pool and arcade games, Cosby had tried to get his hands on his tight pants, then he exposed himself, forcing Huth to touch him. sexually, said Samuelson, who had been distracted by playing a game and was unaware of what had happened.
Samuelson shot two photos of Cosby and Huth together that day that are crucial to the trial, and they were constantly shown to the jury on the first day. A clearly recognizable Cosby has a red beard and hat.
A Cosby lawyer described the allegations of sexual abuse as “a complete and absolute invention” and said the images were the only reason the case existed.
“This is a plan devised by Judy Huth and her weird friend Donna Samuelson from some photos,” attorney Jennifer Bonjean said in her opening statement shortly before Samuelson took office. “You’ll learn that Judy Huth has been trying to take advantage of these photos for decades.”
The trial represents one of the last legal claims against Cosby after his Pennsylvania criminal conviction was overturned by an appeals court last year and his insurer resolved many other lawsuits against his will. He will not attend the trial, and will not testify, but parts of a video deposition he gave shortly after the 2014 lawsuit was filed will be played.
Samuelson stated that Cosby had met the two girls at a movie set in a park in the Los Angeles area a few days earlier and invited them to come to a club where he would play tennis, then took them. as a surprise at the mansion, telling them. them if someone asked at their age to say they were 18, but no one did.
When Huth told her story to Samuelson, Cosby had left to attend an event with the intention of returning hours later, leaving the girls behind.
Samuelson said he asked his distressed friend if he wanted to go to the police or tell someone else, Huth replied no. He convinced Huth to stay at the mansion.
“I thought it would calm her down to go swimming and stuff,” Samuelson said. “I said, ‘We’ll leave as soon as we get back.’
He said the mansion butler brought swimsuits to the girls in the style, size and color they asked for, and they spent time in the mansion’s famous grotto pool pool and asked for outings. tequila. They then dined in the mansion, sitting in front of actor Peter Lawford.
They were playing a grand piano when Cosby came back and put his arm around a horrified Huth. The girls quickly got up to leave, Samuelson said, but just then Playboy boss Hugh Hefner and his girlfriend magazine model Barbi Benton came in, and Cosby introduced them before they left.
Bonjean took advantage of the girls’ stay at the mansion during its opening.
“Boy, Judy and Donna had fun. They stayed 12 hours,” Bonjean said. “There’s no typical response to a traumatic event, but the party at the Playboy mansion doesn’t seem consistent.”
But in her initial statement, Huth’s attorney, Nathan Goldberg, said in the months that followed, she was deeply affected by the trauma, smoking large amounts of marijuana, having troubled relationships and suffering from anxiety.
“She was no longer the happy girl she had been,” Goldberg said.
The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they speak out publicly, as Huth has done.