SANTA MONICA, CA –
“Donkey Kong’s defense” was introduced Monday at a civil trial on sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby, when his attorney pressed a key witness about previous claims. that she played the video game during a visit with Cosby to the Playboy Mansion in 1975, six years before its release.
The testimony was given in a Los Angeles County trial on the case of Judy Huth, who also began testifying Monday, but has not yet described her allegation that Cosby sexually assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion when she is 16 years old. Cosby denied his allegations.
Donna Samuelson, a high school friend of Huth who accompanied her and Cosby on a visit to the mansion, returned to the stands Monday to testify about the adjoining bedroom game room, where Huth said Cosby forced her to perform sexual acts.
“You testified many times that you were playing Donkey Kong,” Cosby’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean told Samuelson, referring to the 2014 police interview and the 2016 Huth case.
“If I did, I would,” Samuelson said, “I understand it hasn’t come yet.”
Bonjean played a clip from the deposition in which Samuelson mentioned the game several times.
When asked Monday to explain the difference, Samuelson replied, “I got the name wrong. I just keep saying it because it’s a game. It could be Atari. “
She also said she was playing games when Cosby walked up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders before she shook them off.
Bonjean showed Samuelson and the jury a game room photo taken in 2016, where the Donkey Kong game could be seen, and asked if similar photos taken after 1975 might affect his memory. remember and her testimony or not.
Samuelson replied that she had not seen such an image until the 2016 photo was shown in court during her testimony last week.
In his opening statement on Wednesday, Huth’s attorney Nathan Goldberg sought to settle the matter, telling jurors they would hear “Donkey Kong’s defense” from Cosby’s attorneys.
“So she got her name wrong,” said Goldberg, “so what?”
Bonjean accepts the term in his opening, saying that similar earlier claims by Huth about Samuelson playing the game, and photographs showing it in the room afterward, are evidence that the two men women are coordinating a false story.
The trial represents one of the last remaining legal claims against Cosby after his Pennsylvania criminal conviction was dropped and other lawsuits were settled by the insurance company in the will of Mr. he.
Huth, 64, quickly stood up late Monday, recalling a spring day in 1975 when she and Samuelson took their brother’s dog to a game of frisbee at Lacy Park in San Marino, California, a where they frequented.
She said that they noticed a production was going on there that would become the set for the movie “Let’s Do It Again”. They saw stars Sidney Poitier, Jimmie Walker and Cosby, Huth said.
She remembered whispering, “It’s Bill Cosby” to Samuelson, and Cosby playfully mimicking her whisper and pretending to be holding his own dog on a leash.
She testified that after chatting for a while, Cosby invited them to watch him play tennis at a club in Los Angeles the following Saturday.
Huth said they were “excited, because we were kids, and he was a celebrity. That is bound to happen. ”
The girls met Cosby at the club, where they briefly watched him play tennis then went to the local house where he was staying.
There, Cosby suggested they play a game of pool and offered a bet.
“He said for every game I lost I had to drink a beer, and every game he lost he had to drink a beer,” Huth testified.
Huth says she has one to three beers.
“I’m sure I’ve felt the effects of alcohol,” she said.
After about an hour, Cosby said he had a surprise for them, and they followed him in Samuelson’s Mustang to a gate where two cars were let in, Huth said.
They parked and entered a game room where Buck Owens, the country star and “Hee Haw” TV host, was shooting marbles, but they left after a few minutes, Huth said.
She said she realized she was at the Playboy Mansion when she saw a painting on the wall signed “Dear Hugh,” gradually realizing that it referred to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.
When asked by her lawyer about her reaction to being there, she simply replied, “Wow.”
She was shown a photograph taken by Samuelson inside the game room.
“It was me and Bill Cosby,” she said.
The painting, essential to Huth’s case, was shown to jurors several times. It shows Cosby wearing a red beanie and smiling next to the teenage Huth.
Cosby’s attorneys admitted that he brought the girls to the mansion, but denied any sexual assault had occurred. They described Huth’s lawsuit as a scheme to monetize photos taken that day.
The Associated Press usually doesn’t name people who say they’ve been sexually abused unless they’ve made it public, as Huth has said.
