Northern California Woman Claims Hefner Did Nothing To Stop Cosby Sexual Assault Against Her
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A new and serious wrinkle in the allegations being made against comedian Bill Cosby has surfaced.
This time, the allegations also involve Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.
A Northern California woman named Chloe Goins alleges that Hefner knew that Cosby assaulted her in 2008 during a party at the Playboy mansion and did nothing to stop it.
Goins is a former model.
She says she will hold a news conference on Thursday and detail new allegations including hat Hefner let Cosby use his house in order to violate her.
CBS2's Tom Wait tried to get a comment from Hefner's publicist, and lawyers for Cosby and Goins but did not hear back.
Goins dropped a previous lawsuit she filed against Cosby so that she could add Hefner's name to the suit.
"To bring in someone other than the actual accused perpetrator is legally significant and it's interesting," sayd CBS2/KCAL9 Legal Analyst Steve Meister.
He says it may be difficult to prove Hefner had a role in the alleged incident.
"The theory of liability is that Hugh Hefner had to have known about this and either not stopped it or did something to encourage it," Meister said.
Goins claims Cosby spiked her drink during the party – then sexually assaulted her in one of the bedrooms. Goins says she doesn't remember exactly what happened or the exact date it happened but claims she woke up with Cosby licking her toes and zipping up his pants.
"What the plaintiff's attorney has noted is that by bringing in Hefner as a defendant they're hoping to figure out when this might have occurred – but that seems like putting the cart before the horse," Meister said.
The LA County DA's office reviewed Goins' case but decided not to file criminal charges against Cosby. Meister says some of the reasons the criminal case was never filed may haunt Goins in her civil case.
"The DA's office rejected the case for two reasons – first there were some uncorroborated facts," he says, "and they couldn't figure out exactly when it occurred so they didn't know whether it was outside of the statute of limitations."
