{"id":216893,"date":"2016-05-24T19:38:45","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T19:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=216893"},"modified":"2016-05-24T19:38:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T19:38:45","slug":"bill-cosby-ordered-to-stand-trial-in-sex-assault-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/05\/bill-cosby-ordered-to-stand-trial-in-sex-assault-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Cosby ordered to stand trial in sex assault case"},"content":{"rendered":"
A US judge has ordered actor and comedian Bill Cosby to stand trial on charges of sexual assault.<\/p>\n
Mr Cosby, 78, is accused of drugging and molesting a former Temple University employee in his home near Philadelphia in 2004.<\/p>\n
The case was reopened last year after more than 40 women came forward with similar accusations. No trial date has been set.<\/p>\n
Mr Cosby has maintained that all of the encounters were consensual.<\/p>\n
During the hearing, Mr Cosby’s lawyer had a heated exchanged with the judge over police reading a statement from the accuser, Andrea Constand.<\/p>\n
Brian McMonagle, one of Mr Cosby’s lawyers, argued that Ms Constand, who lives in Toronto, should have testified in person and called her statement “hearsay”.<\/p>\n
“I told him, ‘I can’t talk, Mr Cosby’. I started to panic,” Ms Constand said in the statement.<\/p>\n
She described how Mr Cosby allegedly sexually violated her after giving her three blue pills. She said the pills made her dizzy and made her legs “like jelly”.<\/p>\n
Mr Cosby said in a statement read in court that she never told him to stop during the encounter.<\/p>\n
More than 40 women have accused Mr Cosby of sexual assault, but in nearly all of the cases too much time has elapsed for charges to be pursued.<\/p>\n
The Constand case is unusual in that it fell within the statute of limitations for charges.<\/p>\n
He is facing civil lawsuits in other states over the other accusations. Mr Cosby is free on $1m bail.<\/p>\n
Mr Cosby is best known for his role as the father in the television hit The Cosby http:\/\/vhealthportal.com\/product\/imitrex\/<\/a> Show which ran from 1984 to 1992 and was a huge hit in the US and around the globe.<\/p>\n It made the comedian one of America’s most popular entertainers.<\/p>\n The comedian, once the highest paid US television star, could go to prison for 10 years if convicted.<\/p>\n Ms Constand has said that she came to think of Mr Cosby as a “mentor and a friend” before she said he made unwanted sexual advances.<\/p>\n She went to visit him at his home in 2004 where she said he drugged and sexually assaulted her.<\/p>\n A criminal complaint unsealed last year details the encounter.<\/p>\n