Another lawsuit has been filed in the ever-growing Bill Cosby sex scandal — this time against a former Montgomery County, Pennsylvania district attorney.
In the suit, filed Monday by Cosby accuser Andrea Constand, she claims that Bruce Castor has defamed her with recent comments made to the media.
The issue resurfaced in a recent political attack ad. Castor was the district attorney when former Temple University employee Constand first brought her allegations against Cosby, but he declined to file criminal charges against the scandal-plagued comedian.
The Republican Castor is currently campaigning to regain the district attorney position. But the ad from his Democratic opponent questioned whether he would do enough to put “sexual predators” behind bars, citing the Cosby case. However, Castor slammed the spot.
Constand’s suit, obtained by TheWrap, alleges that Castor has accused her of giving differing accounts in her initial claims to the police and her subsequent lawsuit against Cosby, painting her account as unreliable. Specifically, the lawsuit says, Castor claimed that her initial account led him to believe that it was a misdemeanor case, but that she had included more serious claims in her civil suit against Cosby, which was settled in 2006.
“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,” Castor is quoted as saying in Constand’s latest lawsuit. The suit also cites other similar alleged examples.
“At the time he made those statements Defendant knew the statements were false, that the statements would be disseminated in the United States and Canada, and further knew that they portrayed Plaintiff as having filed a lawsuit which was false and exaggerated,” the new lawsuit reads. “As a direct and proximate result of Defendant’s actions, Plaintiff suffered extreme emotional distress, unwanted publicity and an invasion and intrusion into her private life.”
Constand is seeking unspecified damages “in excess of $150,000.”
Castor has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.
In the past year, Cosby has been accused of rape or sexual assault by dozens of women, with many of the women claiming that they had been drugged beforehand. Though he has not been criminally charged, he faces multiple lawsuits stemming from the accusations.
Cosby’s former attorney, Martin Singer — with whom Cosby severed ties last week — has denied the allegations in the past.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.