LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nine more women are accusing Bill Cosby of sexual assault in a lawsuit that alleges he used his “enormous power, fame and prestige” to victimize them.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Nevada alleges that the women were individually drugged and assaulted between approximately 1979 and 1992 in Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe homes, dressing rooms and hotels.

One woman alleges that Cosby, claiming to be her acting mentor, lured her from New York to Nevada, where he drugged her in a hotel room with what he had claimed to be non-alcoholic sparkling cider and then raped her.

The 85-year-old former “Cosby Show” star has now been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by more than 60 women. He has denied all allegations involving sex crimes. He was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era — and spent nearly three years at a state prison near Philadelphia before a higher court threw out the conviction and released him in 2021.

Earlier this year, a Los Angeles jury awarded $500,000 to a woman who said Cosby sexually abused her at the Playboy Mansion when she was 16 in 1975.

The Nevada lawsuit came only a few weeks after Gov. Joe Lombardo signed a bill that eliminated a two-year deadline for adults to file sexual abuse cases. Similar suits have followed other “lookback laws” in other states.

One of the plaintiffs, Lise-Lotte Lublin, a Nevada native, had advocated for the change. She had previously alleged that Cosby gave her spiked drinks and raped her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1989.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly.

“For years I have fought for survivors of sexual assault and today is the first time I will be able to fight for myself,” Lotte-Lublin said in a statement cited by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “With the new law change, I now have the ability to take my assailant Bill Cosby to court. My journey has just begun, but I am grateful for this opportunity to find justice.”

In California, a former Playboy model who alleges Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her and another woman at his home in 1969 sued him on June 1 under a new California law that suspends the statute of limitations on sex abuse claims.

Cosby publicist Andrew Wyatt blasted such laws in a statement Wednesday.

“Mr. Cosby is a Citizen of these United States but these judges and lawmakers are consistently allowing these civil suits to flood their dockets—knowing that these women are not fighting for victims—but for their addiction to massive amounts of media attention and greed,” Wyatt said.

“From this day forward, we will not continue to allow these women to parade various accounts of an alleged allegation against Mr. Cosby anymore without vetting them in the court of public opinion and inside of the courtroom,” Wyatt said.

In the latest suit, the women contend that Cosby “used his enormous power, fame, and prestige, and claimed interest in helping them and/or their careers as a pretense to isolate and sexually assault them.”

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SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Jurors at a civil trial found Tuesday that Bill Cosby sexually abused a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in 1975.

The Los Angeles County jury delivered the verdict in favor of Judy Huth, who is now 64, and awarded her $500,000. She said the fact that jurors believed her story meant more than the sum of money or the fact that she didn’t win punitive damages.

“It’s been torture,” Huth said of the seven-year legal fight. “To be ripped apart, you know, thrown under the bus and backed over. This, to me, is such a big victory.”

Jurors found that Cosby intentionally caused harmful sexual contact with Huth, that he reasonably believed she was under 18, and that his conduct was driven by unnatural or abnormal sexual interest in a minor.

The jurors’ decision is a major legal defeat for the 84-year-old entertainer once hailed as America’s dad. It comes nearly a year after his Pennsylvania criminal conviction for sexual assault was thrown out and he was freed from prison. Huth’s lawsuit was one of the last remaining legal claims against him after his insurer settled many others against his will.

Cosby did not attend the trial or testify in person, but short clips from 2015 video deposition were played for jurors, in which he denied any sexual contact with Huth. He continues to deny the allegation through his attorney and publicist.

Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt said they would appeal the verdict and he claimed the defense won because Huth didn’t win punitive damages.

Jurors had already reached conclusions on nearly every question on their verdict form, including whether Cosby abused Huth and whether she deserved damages, after two days of deliberations on Friday. But the jury foreperson could not serve further because of a personal commitment, and the panel had to start deliberating from scratch with an alternate juror on Monday.

Cosby’s attorneys agreed that Cosby met Huth and her high school friend on a Southern California film set in April of 1975, then took them to the Playboy Mansion a few days later.

Huth’s friend Donna Samuelson, a key witness, took photos at the mansion of Huth and Cosby, which loomed large at the trial.

Huth testified that in a bedroom adjacent to a game room where the three had been hanging out, Cosby attempted to put his hand down her pants, then exposed himself and forced her to perform a sex act.

Huth filed her lawsuit in 2014, saying that her son turning 15 — the age she initially remembered being when she went to the mansion — and a wave of other women accusing Cosby of similar acts brought fresh trauma over what she had been through as a teenager.

Huth’s attorney Nathan Goldberg told the jury of nine women and three men during closing arguments Wednesday that “my client deserves to have Mr. Cosby held accountable for what he did.”

“Each of you knows in your heart that Mr. Cosby sexually assaulted Miss Huth,” Goldberg said.

At least nine of the 12 jurors agreed, giving Huth a victory in a suit that took nearly eight years and overcame many hurdles just to get to trial.

During their testimony, Cosby attorney Jennifer Bonjean consistently challenged Huth and Samuelson over errors in detail in their stories, and a similarity in the accounts that the lawyer said represented coordination between the two women.

This included the women saying in pre-trial depositions and police interviews that Samuelson had played Donkey Kong that day, a game not released until six years later.

Bonjean made much of this, in what both sides came to call the “Donkey Kong defense.”

Goldberg asked jurors to look past the small errors in detail that he said were inevitable in stories that were 45 years old, and focus on the major issues behind the allegations. He pointed out to jurors that Samuelson said “games like Donkey Kong” when she first mentioned it in her deposition.

The Cosby lawyer began her closing arguments by saying, “It’s on like Donkey Kong,” and finished by declaring, “game over.”

Huth’s attorney reacted with outrage during his rebuttal.

“This is about justice!” he shouted, pounding on the podium. “We don’t need game over! We need justice!”

The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they have been sexually abused, unless they come forward publicly, as Huth has.

Outside court, a group of four women who said they represented dozens of Cosby’s sexual abuse victims celebrated the verdict.

Chelan Lasha, who testified against Cosby in the Pennsylvania case, was in tears. She said he had drugged and assaulted her in the Elvis Presley suite of the Las Vegas Hilton when she was 17 years old.

“He’s a boogey man, he’s a sexual predator, he’s a deviant,” Lasha said. “He’s horrible. It’s one more victory. I came here to stand with Judy. I’m proud of Judy. I’m glad for the outcome.”

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SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Bill Cosby used friendly spaces — a film set at a public park, a game room — to give 16-year-old Judy Huth a sense of safety before sexually abusing her, Huth’s lawyer said Wednesday in opening statements at a civil trial.

Attorney Nathan Goldberg said the meeting of Cosby, already a major star in the spring of 1975, and Huth, then a typical Southern California teenager, was highly unlikely, and would lead to her life changing permanently.

“The odds of their world colliding and intermingling were slight to none,” Goldberg said.

A few days later, Cosby would take Huth to the Playboy Mansion, where he led her and a 17-year-old friend to a room off the main house full of pinball machines and other games that they played.

Goldberg projected for the jury an old, washed-out photo that Huth’s friend, Donna Samuelson, took of Cosby and Huth in the room, and left it up for most of his opening statement. Cosby, clearly recognizable, is wearing a red beanie and has a beard.

There were two bedrooms with their own bathrooms connected to the game room. When Huth left a bathroom at one point, she came out to find Cosby sitting on a bed, and padded the spot next to him, directing Huth to sit.

“After she sat down, he pounced,” Goldberg said.

He attempted to put his hand down her tight pants, then exposed himself, forcing Huth to touch him sexually, Goldberg said.

The trial in its first day at a Los Angeles County courthouse stems from a 2014 lawsuit filed by Huth, now 64. It’s one of the last legal claims against Cosby after his Pennsylvania criminal conviction was thrown out 11 months ago and many other lawsuits were settled by his insurer.

Cosby’s attorneys will give their opening statement Wednesday afternoon. Cosby’s attorneys will give their opening statement Wednesday afternoon, but have said no sexual abuse happened.

Goldberg said Huth and Samuelson, who will be the trial’s first witness, went to Lacy Park in San Marino, California, most likely in March of 1975, to play frisbee when they came upon the set of the movie “Let’s Do It Again,” which Cosby was shooting with Sidney Poitier.

The two whispered with excitement when they saw Cosby, and the comedian mocked their whispers when he saw them.

“He couldn’t have been friendlier,” Goldberg said.

Cosby invited the girls to meet him a few days later at a tennis club, where he had them play a game of pool where the loser had to drink a beer. Goldberg said Huth had to drink at least one beer, but can’t remember how many.

Without saying where they were going, Cosby got in his own car and led the girls in their car to the Playboy Mansion.

Goldberg said before Cosby molested Huth, he had been putting his hands on Samuelson’s shoulder, but she “made it obvious to him that it was not OK.”

Samuelson was oblivious and playing games when the abuse in the bedroom took place, but Huth told her about it as soon as Cosby left them alone, and she will tell the same story she heard then on the stand this week, Goldberg said.

The abuse would immediately lead to emotional problems for Huth.

“She was no longer the happy-go-lucky girl she had been,” Goldberg said.

She would “bury” her feelings for decades, Goldberg said, but they would come rushing back, and she would suffer from serious anxiety. The effects increased when Huth’s son reached the age she was when it happened, and when similar stories about Cosby began to emerge.

Two women will testify to similar experiences with Cosby when they were teenagers within a year of Huth’s meeting him.

In his opening, Goldberg sought to head off potential defense arguments.

He emphasized that after 47 years, Samuelson and Huth’s stories are bound to differ in the details.

“They don’t remember everything exactly the same way,” Goldberg said. “If they did you would be suspicious.”

He said some previously stated details, like Huth remembering playing Donkey Kong, which wasn’t invented until years later, in the Playboy Mansion game room, did not mean the core elements of her story were wrong.

“So she didn’t get the name of the game right, so what?” Goldberg said.

Cosby is not attending the trial, and will not be compelled to testify. Parts of a video deposition he gave soon after the suit was filed will be played for the jury.

The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they have been sexually abused, unless they come forward publicly, as Huth has.

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