Nine women filed suit in Nevada on Wednesday accusing Bill Cosby of using his “enormous power, fame, and prestige” to lure them in and sexually assault them.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, says the women were drugged and assaulted between 1979 and 1992 in Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe, with the attacks taking place in homes, dressing rooms, and hotels, according to ABC News.
The Nevada suit comes just weeks after Gov. Joe Lombardo signed a bill erasing a two-year deadline for adults to file sexual abuse cases. Other lawsuits have followed similar law changes in other states.
A former Playboy model in California filed suit earlier this month accusing Cosby drugged her and another woman and assaulted them in 1969.
Cosby’s publicist, Andrew Wyatt, accused the now more than 60 women who have accused the comic of sexual assault of filing lawsuits against his client because of “their addiction to massive amounts of media attention and greed.” Judges and lawmakers, he said, were allowing the suits to go forward despite “knowing that these women were not fighting for victims.”
“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.
Getting the accusations inside the courtroom is the point, said Lise-Lotte Lublin, one of the Nevada plaintiffs.
“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, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. “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.”
Cosby has denied all the accusations against him. He was convicted of sex crimes in Pennsylvania and served nearly three years in state prison before a court threw out the conviction on a technicality in 2021.
Earlier this year, a California jury awarded $500,000 to a woman who accused Cosby of abusing her at the Playboy Mansion in 1975, when she was 16.
Five women filed suit against Cosby in New York late last year, as CrimeOnline reported.
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[Featured image: FILE – Bill Cosby gestures outside his home in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, after being released from prison in 2021. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)]
