Hefner rubbishes Cosby accuser’s claim
Chloe Goins, who was allegedly abused by Bill Cosby at the Playboy Mansion, says Hugh Hefner enabled Cosby’s behaviour.
|||LOS ANGELES - Hugh Hefner’s attorneys have asked a federal judge to dismiss the Playboy founder from a former model’s lawsuit that alleges Bill Cosby drugged and sexually abused her at party at Hefner’s home in 2008.
The motion filed on Tuesday in a Los Angeles federal court argues that Chloe Goins’ lawsuit is barred by the statute of limitations, and it does not include any facts that would support a case against Hefner.
Goins sued Hefner and Cosby in May, repeating her allegations that the comedian drugged and sexually abused her in a bedroom of the Playboy Mansion during a party sometime in 2008. Goins had dismissed a previous lawsuit over the alleged incident so she could add Hefner to the case, her attorney said at the time.
Goins’ suit contends Hefner knew about Cosby’s history of drugging and abusing women and enabled the comedian’s behavior.
Hefner’s lawyers point to inconsistencies in Goins’ account, which she recounted to police investigators in 2015 before suing Cosby the first time. She initially accused Cosby of abusing her at a party in the summer of 2008, after she was 18, but later omitted all references to a date of the alleged abuse and contended it may have occurred while she was a minor.
"That Goins is suing Hefner … who has never once in his long and storied career been implicated in a single act of sexual impropriety against a woman, smacks of a desperate ploy to garner publicity and wrangle an unwarranted settlement," Hefner’s lawyers wrote in the motion seeking to dismiss him from the case.
U.S. District Judge George H. Wu has set an August 1 hearing on Hefner’s motion.
The filing notes that Los Angeles prosecutors declined to charge Cosby after police investigated Goins’ claims, in part because they couldn’t corroborate her account and because that statute of limitations had expired.
Goins has accused Cosby of spiking her drink and then escorting her to a bedroom at Hefner’s suggestion, where she blacked out. Her suit states Goins does not remember specifics of the abuse and states that she awoke in a bedroom of the Playboy Mansion with the comedian licking her toes and then pulling up his pants before leaving the room.
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they were sexually abused, but Goins has spoken publicly about her allegations and used her name in the two civil cases she has filed.
AP