With so much other news at the moment, little attention is being paid to the fact that Dr. William Henry Cosby Jr. (or did they take back the doctorate?) lost a civil trial. He must pay $500,000 to a woman who said that he took her to the Playboy Mansion and assaulted her in 1975 when she was sixteen years old. Cosby did not attend the trial but the jury heard part of a deposition in which he said he had no memory of the woman, Judy Huth.
But there was a photo of them together at the mansion and the jury apparently believed her testimony on the witness stand. (One juror is quoted as saying that in this news story.) Perhaps Mr. Cosby would have been believed if he'd shown up and taken the stand, perhaps not. I would guess that he felt that showing up there would cause the case to get a lot more attention and he's happy now that it hasn't. And what's half a million to him? He probably paid his lawyers a lot more than that.
One of those lawyers said it was a partial victory for Cosby because he was assessed no punitive damages. That ain't much of a victory. It is now more of an established fact than before that Cosby is a rapist. Sexual contact with a woman under the age of consent is statutory rape just about everywhere…even at the Playboy Mansion.