Decades after a woman stepped forward and accused disgraced comedian Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting her, a jury has ruled in her favor.
Donna Motsinger, who was Jane Doe Number 8 in the 2005 lawsuit filed by former Temple University athletics director Andrea Constand, won a $19 million judgment against Cosby, $17 million for past mental suffering and $1.75 million for future suffering.
“Bill Cosby used his power, celebrity, and influence to silence his victims for decades. The jury saw the truth and recognized the bravery Donna showed in standing up for herself. The verdict brings vindication for our client, who has spent 54 years battling the trauma she endured from this evil predator,” Spencer Lucas, Motsinger’s attorney, said in a statement sent to Rolling Stone after the verdict.
The two-week trial concluded on Monday (Mar. 23) in the same courtroom where, in 2022, an accuser won a jury award after she sued Cosby with claims that he sexually assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion in 1975 when she was 16 years old and he was 37.
Motsinger, 84, alleged that Cosby drugged and raped her in 1972. The jury also determined that Cosby acted with “malice, oppression, or fraud,” setting the stage for more punitive damages to be set in a second phase of the trial.
In her testimony, Motsinger said Cosby befriended her as she worked as a waitress at a restaurant in Sausalito, California. She said Cosby invited her to a recording of his stand-up act, “Inside the Mind of Bill Cosby,” where Cosby gave her a glass of wine that made her feel sick. He then gave her two pills she thought were aspirin.
“Next thing she knew, she was going in and out of consciousness,” Motsinger’s lawsuit stated. “The last thing Ms. Motsinger recalls were flashes of light. She woke up in her house. with all her clothes off, except her underwear on – no top, no bra, and no pants. She knew she had been drugged and raped by Bill Cosby.”
In a recently surfaced deposition, Cosby admitted to being given a prescription for Quaaludes after a poker game from a gynecologist years prior. The 88-year-old has denied assaulting any of the dozen women who have accused him of sexual battery and misconduct and his lawyers say they plan to appeal the jury’s decision.
Cosby was convicted in 2018 of three counts of indecent aggravated assault against Constand and sentenced to three to 10 years in prison. Cosby was released in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction, citing a prior “non-prosecution agreement” filed by another prosecutor that barred criminal charges if he testified in Constand’s lawsuit against him.
