SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — A woman testified Friday that she was 14 when Bill Cosby took her to a trailer on a movie set in 1975, grabbed her so she couldn’t move his arms and kissed her.
“I had a hard time getting out of it,” she said. “It was very shocking.”
The woman, now 61, told her story in a public place for the first time during a civil trial in Los Angeles County regarding the lawsuit of Judy Huth, who alleges Cosby sexually assaulted her . at the Playboy Mansion when she was 16 around the same time, in the spring of 1975.
The woman testified that she, her mother and other family members and friends were on the Los Angeles set of the film ‘Let’s Do It Again,’ starring Cosby and Sidney Poitier, where Cosby had invited them to act as extras after meeting them at a tennis tournament a few months earlier.
She said Cosby invited her to his trailer alone to help straighten the bow tie he wore for a scene.
“He immediately grabbed me,” she said. “He started kissing me, all over my face, tongue in my throat.”
Asked by Huth’s attorney, Nathan Goldberg, how tightly Cosby held her, she replied, “Enough that I couldn’t run away.”
After about 30 seconds, she broke free and left.
Photos were shown in court of Cosby and the 14-year-old together at the tennis tournament, with him smiling and his arms around her. Other photos were shown of Cosby and the girl with her family on the set of the film. Huth would later meet Cosby on a different set of the same film.
Old photos from the mid-1970s featured prominently at the trial, one of the last remaining lawsuits against Cosby after his criminal conviction in Pennsylvania was expelled and other lawsuits were settled by his insurer. Two photos of Cosby and Huth at the Playboy Mansion were shown during previous testimony. Cosby has denied sexually assaulting Huth, and his attorney says the case is about his attempt to profit from the photos.
The woman who testified on Friday said that after leaving the trailer she did not tell anyone she was with what happened with Cosby, who is not attending the trial.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said. “I didn’t want to ruin everything for everyone.”
They spent the rest of their day, appearing in a boxing scene for the film shot at the Grand Olympic Auditorium.
In her cross-examination of the woman, Cosby’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, showed a photo from the film of the young girl and her brother cheering in the front row next to the boxing ring.
Bonjean asked if she had been upset at the time.
“I probably was,” the woman said.
“Most likely?” Bonjean asked.
“I was overwhelmed when I was there,” she said.
The woman said she didn’t speak about the incident until she told her husband years later and her teenage daughter years later.
Bonjean asked if several media reports containing allegations in 2015 about Cosby led her to come forward and tell her story to Gloria Allred, who, along with Goldberg, represents both her and Huth.
The woman said a brief clip from Allred prompted her to do so after hearing Cosby’s denial, but said she had no plans to take legal action when she Allred looked up.
The woman is not a party to the trial, but is allowed to testify with another woman about her experiences in Huth’s case.
Bonjean issued serious challenges to the other witness, Margie Shapiro, who has already told her story several times in the media and at a press conference with Allred.
Shapiro testified that when she was 19 in November 1975, she was at the Playboy Mansion with Cosby when he gave her a pill, which she took voluntarily. She said she later awoke from unconsciousness to find him raping her.
Bonjean produced a document that showed Shapiro was supposed to be in court as a defendant the day she said she met Cosby while working at a donut shop near the set of another movie he was shooting.
“I might have left,” Shapiro said. “If I had needed it, I would have taken a short break.”
Bonjean also grilled Shapiro on a matchbook that was produced in court that Shapiro said he got from Cosby when they briefly stopped there before heading to the mansion.
Written on the matchbook was “11/18/1975, my night at Bill Cosby’s”.
“After this drug and this rape, do you have any memories?” Bonjean asked.
“It was important whether it was good or bad,” Shapiro replied.
Bonjean also challenged Shapiro on her testimony that she knew the pill Cosby gave her was not a Quaalude, a popular depressant in the 1970s, because of the coding engraved on it.
She pointed out that in a 2016 police interview she said the pill looked like a Quaalude and that Cosby told her it was.
“Either I got it wrong or the detective got it wrong,” Shapiro said.
One of the jurors, many of whom weren’t born in the 1970s, raised their hand and asked the judge for clarification on what a Quaalude was. Shapiro compared it to Valium.
Shapiro said she angrily searched for Cosby’s house a few days later, but couldn’t find it.
Bonjean asked if it was true that she was upset because Cosby refused to take her to the Playboy Mansion, and that she and Cosby had consensual sex at his house and she didn’t like the way with which he had subsequently treated her.
“I was upset because he raped me,” she said.
The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Huth and Shapiro have repeatedly done.
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Follow AP Entertainment writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton