A woman who settled a sex abuse lawsuit against Bill Cosby has sued the former prosecutor who declined to file charges, saying he has defamed her through recent attacks on her credibility.
Andrea Constand's defamation lawsuit cites a series of comments that Bruce L. Castor Jr. made to the media as he runs for another term as district attorney in Montgomery County, near Philadelphia.
The suit, filed Monday, accuses Castor of rendering her "collateral damage for his political ambitions."
Castor has said Constand gave a different story to police in January 2005 than the felony assault she described in her lawsuit that same year.
"If the allegations in the civil complaint were contained with that detail in her statement to the police, we might have been able to make a case out of it," he told The Associated Press last month, defending his decision not to prosecute.
Constand's lawyer, Dolores Troiani, demanded a public apology. With none forthcoming, she filed the defamation and invasion of privacy lawsuit.
"He said that the statements that she gave to the police were inconsistent with the one in the civil lawsuit and that the one in the civil lawsuit was enhanced for monetary gain," Troiani told the NBC10 Investigators. "That is just not true."
Troiani said the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office has been conducting a criminal investigation into Constand's sexual assault allegations against Cosby.
"The DA's office initiated the contact with our office," Troiani said. "They asked us if she'd be willing to cooperate."
The Legal Intelligencer first reported on the lawsuit, which seeks at least $150,000 in damages.
The filing comes eight days before the election. Both Castor, a Republican, and his opponent Kevin Steele, a Democrat, have tried to spin the Cosby case to their advantage in campaign ads.
Troiani has said Castor never intended to charge Cosby, given his own political ambitions.
"When he learned about the investigation he publicly asked the District Attorney not to prosecute because he believed it would affect the campaign," Troiani said.
Castor left office in 2008 and, after pondering a run for statewide office, is now a county commissioner.
In announcing he would not charge Cosby, Castor said that both parties could be portrayed in "a less than flattering light."
He later released a statement on the lawsuit and allegations Monday evening:
In 7 days the people of Montgomery County will select their next District Attorney. While Bruce Castor reminds voters about his impressive record as District Attorney and his vision for the future of that office, Kevin Steele and his campaign continue to sling mud.
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Instead of talking about the things that would improve the DA's office, make our community safer and your life more secure, Steele and his campaign are desperate to talk about an eleven year old case involving Bill Cosby.
The lawsuit filed today, seven days before an election, is the cheapest of Steele's cheap campaign stunts. It is the act of a desperate candidate who is down in the polls and headed to defeat. It is totally without merit. Bruce Castor remains committed to a positive, issues-based campaign and that is exactly where our focus will be for the next week.
It is fortunate we are seeing exactly the kind of District Attorney Kevin Steele would be before anyone makes the terrible mistake of actually voting for him.
Troiani dismissed claims that the lawsuit was a political move.
"He didn't make those statements about Andrea until September 24," Troiani said. "We gave him an opportunity then to retract that statement."
On Tuesday, Kevin Steele responded to Castor with a statement of his own:
Bruce Castor released a statement yesterday questioning my ethics and accusing me of a cheap campaign stunt.
His statement is untrue.
The origins of the current Cosby story began this summer when a federal judge released testimony from a civil case against Bill Cosby. My opponent has spent the past four months defending in the press his decision not to prosecute Cosby. Last week he asserted he could not prosecute because no other victims had come forward. We point again to his own signed press release declining to authorize the filing of criminal charges in the Cosby case: Castor himself states, “Lastly, the District Attorney reviewed statements from other persons claiming that Mr. Cosby behaved inappropriately with them on prior occasions.”
The accusation this lawsuit was orchestrated by me is simply untrue. Attorney Troiani is representing the interests of her client, which are unrelated to my campaign. My opponent declined the Cosby prosecution. He made public statements about a victim. And now, in an attempt to deflect attention away from his record, he is blaming others and alleging political motivation.
Dozens of women have since come forward to accuse Cosby of drugging and molesting them. And Cosby's deposition in the Constand case, released to the public this year, shows that Cosby acknowledged having sexual contact with Constand that night. He also said that, years earlier, he had gotten quaaludes from his doctor to give to young women before sex.
However, he said that his sexual relations with various women were consensual and that he never gave any women drugs without their knowledge.
The current Montgomery County prosecutor, Risa Vetri Ferman, appears to have revived the criminal investigation in Constand's case. Cosby's agents have contacted defense lawyers to handle a pending Montgomery County criminal probe. The 12-year statute to file charges expires in January, the month she leaves office as she runs for judge.
Ferman has declined to confirm that an investigation is underway, but, in response to the question, she recently noted the "tremendous courage" it takes for sexual assault victims to come forward.
Steele is Ferman's top deputy. He appears to be locked in a close race with Castor for the $172,000-a-year post.
Constand, then 31, left her job with the Temple University women's basketball team months after the January 2004 encounter at Cosby's home. She is now a massage therapist in Canada, in her native Ontario.
