Bill Cosby Settles Alleged Assault Suit

PHILADELPHIA (November 8, 2006) — Bill Cosby settled a lawsuit Wednesday with a woman who said the entertainer drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home outside Philadelphia.

Terms of the settlement will remain confidential, according to a one-paragraph statement released jointly by both sides.

Cosby’s publicist, David Brokaw, said there would be no further comment. A telephone number for the plaintiff could not be determined Wednesday and she could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Delores M. Troiani, declined further comment.

The woman claimed that Cosby, 69, assaulted her at his mansion in Cheltenham in early 2004 after giving her pills. Attorneys for Cosby say the comedian gave the woman Benadryl after she complained of stress and sleeping problems.

The federal judge presiding over the case earlier denied Cosby’s request for a gag order and the plaintiff’s request to shield the names of a dozen other women who say Cosby assaulted them. Some of the accusations raised by the other women go back for decades, and none have pending lawsuits filed against him.

The plaintiff, a native of Ontario, Canada, who is in her 30s, previously worked at Temple University in Philadelphia, which touts Cosby as a trustee and one of its most famous alumni. She is identified in court documents, but The Associated Press does not publish names of alleged sexual assault victims without their consent.

The woman, who called Cosby a friend and mentor, went to police about a year after the encounter, but Montgomery County prosecutors declined to file criminal charges. She then filed a lawsuit.

Cosby, best known as a warm, funny TV dad on “The Cosby Show,” has sparked debate with blunt remarks on personal responsibility aimed at the black community. In 1997, the year his son Ennis was murdered, the long-married Cosby acknowledged a brief affair with the mother of Autumn Jackson, a young woman convicted of extorting him.

The woman said Cosby had given her three blue pills that rendered her semiconscious, and then molested her. She said she awoke to find her bra undone and her clothes in disarray.

Cosby, in his legal filings, denied the assault and said he made the woman breakfast the next morning. He described them as social friends who sometimes had dinner together, alone or with others.

“Plaintiff and he discussed many topics, including basketball, plaintiff’s career and personal development, job opportunities, and plaintiff’s spiritual beliefs,” Cosby said in his answer to the lawsuit.

The accuser also sought damages for defamation after Cosby’s representatives allegedly suggested that her family had asked him for money before going to police.

Temple has no plans to distance itself from Cosby over the assault allegations or the settlement, spokesman Ray Betzner said Wednesday. Cosby, a trustee since 1982, has four years remaining on his current term.