Thursday, Mar 28, 2024 | Last Update : 04:37 PM IST

  Newsmakers   Bill Cosby is charged with sexual assault

Bill Cosby is charged with sexual assault

Published : Dec 31, 2015, 2:17 am IST
Updated : Dec 31, 2015, 2:17 am IST

Bill Cosby was charged on Wednesday with sexually assaulting a woman at his home 12 years ago — the first criminal charges brought against the comedian out of the torrent of allegations that destroyed

Bill Cosby
 Bill Cosby

Bill Cosby was charged on Wednesday with sexually assaulting a woman at his home 12 years ago — the first criminal charges brought against the comedian out of the torrent of allegations that destroyed his good-guy image as America’s Dad.

The case sets the stage for perhaps the biggest Hollywood celebrity trial of the mobile-all-the-time era and could send the 78-year-old Cosby to prison in the twilight of his life and barrier-breaking career.

In bringing the case, Montgomery County district attorney Risa Vetri Ferman overruled her predecessor, who declined to charge Cosby in 2005 when Temple University employee Andrea Constand first told police that the comic drugged her and violated her by putting his hands down her pants at his mansion in suburban Philadelphia.

Cosby was charged with aggravated indecent assault and was to be arraigned in the afternoon. The TV star acknowledged under oath a decade ago that he had sexual contact with Constand but said it was consensual.

The charges were announced just days before the 12-year statute of limitations for bringing charges was set to run out.

Prosecutors reopened the case over the summer as damaging testimony was unsealed in Constand’s related civil lawsuit against Cosby and as dozens of other women came forward with similar accusations that made a mockery of his image as the wise and understanding Dr Cliff Huxtable from TV’s The Cosby Show.

Location: United States, Pennsylvania