Bill Cosby has been sued by nine more women who have accused the disgraced former US TV star of sexual assault.
In the lawsuit filed at a Nevada federal court on Wednesday, the women claim they were each drugged and assaulted between 1979 and 1992 in Las Vegas, Reno and at Lake Tahoe homes, dressing rooms and hotels.
The lawsuit means the disgraced 85-year-old former Cosby Show star has now been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by more than 60 women.
Although he has denied all allegations involving sex crimes, Cosby spent almost three years at a state federal prison near Philadelphia before a higher court threw out the conviction and released him in 2021.
In the latest lawsuit, the women say Cosby used his “used his enormous power, fame, and prestige, and claimed interest in helping them and or their careers as a pretence to isolate and sexually assault them.”
Specifically, one of the women claimed Cosby took on the role as her acting mentor before luring her from New York to Nevada. In a hotel room, the woman claims Cosby drugged her using non-alcoholic cider before she was then raped.
Earlier this year, a Los Angeles jury awarded 500,000 dollars (£396,000) to a woman who alleged that Mr Cosby sexually abused her at the Playboy Mansion when she was 16 in 1975.
The Nevada lawsuit came only a few weeks after Governor Joe Lombardo signed a bill that eliminated a two-year deadline for adults to file sexual abuse cases. Similar suits have followed other “lookback laws” in other states.
One of the plaintiffs, Lise-Lotte Lublin, a Nevada native, had advocated for the change. She had previously alleged that Mr Cosby gave her spiked drinks and raped her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1989.
“For years I have fought for survivors of sexual assault and today is the first time I will be able to fight for myself,” Lotte-Lublin said in a statement cited by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“With the new law change, I now have the ability to take my assailant Bill Cosby to court.
“My journey has just begun, but I am grateful for this opportunity to find justice.”
