Payout revealed as Cosby retrial starts
UNITED STATES: Bill Cosby paid Andrea Constand nearly US$3.4 million to settle her 2005 lawsuit – a payment, a prosecutor says, that was meant to buy her silence after the entertainer sexually assaulted her at his Pennsylvania home.
The sum, hidden for more than a decade behind a confidentiality agreement signed by both parties, was revealed for the first time yesterday by Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R Steele in his opening statement to jurors at Cosby’s retrial in Norristown.
Its disclosure came near the end of a day in court that was marked by unexpected disruptions – first by a topless demonstrator who charged the 80-year-old entertainer outside the courthouse, then by an unsuccessful effort by the defence to oust a juror. It was only the first sign that Cosby’s second sexual assault trial is shaping up to be far different to the first, which ended in a hung jury and mistrial.
At last June’s trial, both sides avoided any mention of the lawsuit Constand filed after prosecutors in 2005 declined to pursue a case against Cosby based on her allegations that he had drugged and assaulted her.
This time, however, Steele and Cosby’s defence team see Constand’s legal action – and the amount she received to settle it – as central to their case.
Steele suggested in his opening remarks that the size of the payment indicated Cosby had something to hide after years of attacking other women in strikingly similar ways.
Cosby’s lead defence lawyer, Tom Mesereau, is expected to deliver his opening statement today, and put a far different spin on the payout to Constand. Mesereau has characterised the former Temple University women’s basketball manager in pretrial arguments as a gold-digging opportunist who fabricated her claims against Cosby in an attempt to win a big payday in court.
The entertainer’s supporters have tried the same tack to discredit Cosby accusers in the past.
Such attacks on the more than
60 women who have come forward since 2014 to accuse Cosby are what prompted Nicolle Rochelle, a
38-year-old actress who appeared in four episodes of Cosby’s sitcom
The Cosby Show between 1990 and
1992, to make her topless run at the entertainer as he walked into court yesterday.
‘‘The main goal was to make Cosby uncomfortable, because that is exactly what he has been doing for decades to women,’’ Rochelle later told reporters.