Sex assault trial: Cosby faces 10 years if convicted

Pasadena: A US judge has determined there is enough evidence to send actor and comedian Bill Cosby to trial on a sexual assault charge.
Cosby is accused of drugging and molesting a former Temple University employee in his home outside of Philadelphia in 2004.
The case was opened last year after dozens of women came forward with similar accusations. Cosby has maintained that all of the encounters were consensual, said BBC.
Police read a statement from the accuser, Andrea Constand, who now lives in Toronto. “I told him, ‘I can’t talk, Cosby’. I started to panic,” Constand told police in 2005 following the incident, describing how Cosby allegedly sexually violated her after giving her three blue pills.
The pills made her dizzy and mad her legs “like jelly.” The judge has ruled that she will not have to testify.
More than 40 women have accused Cosby of sexual assault, but in nearly all of the cases, too much time has elapsed for charges to be pursued.
The Constand case is the only one that falls within the statute of limitations for charges. Constand has said that she came to think of Cosby as a “mentor and a friend” before she said he made unwanted sexual advances.
She went to visit him at his home in 2004 where she said he drugged and sexually assaulted her.
A criminal complaint unsealed last year details the encounter.
Prosecutors allege that the victim protested when Cosby offered her a glass of wine, saying she had not eaten that day.
He urged her to drink wine anyway, Constand said in her testimony, so she drank a few sips along with the pills.
Within 30 minutes, she says she experienced blurred vision and had trouble speaking. Cosby then told her to lie down on the couch and relax.
During that time she was lying on the couch, she says she was aware of Cosby moving toward her, touching her breasts and genitals, and making her touch his genitals.
She says she did not consent to any of the acts, that she could not speak, and that she felt “frozen” and “paralyzed.”
Prosecutors re-opened her case last summer. She and Cosby settled a lawsuit in 2006 and she was paid an undisclosed sum.

Source : Arab News