Award winning TV star and comedian Bill Cosby has been ordered by a US judge to stand trial on charges of sexual assault.
Cosby, who is the subject of dozens of accusations from women who say he sexually assaulted them, is accused of drugging and molesting a former Temple University employee in his home near Philadelphia in 2004.
Mr Cosby has maintained that all of the encounters were consensual.
More than 60 women have come forward saying Cosby had sexually assaulted them (but in nearly all of the cases too much time has elapsed for charges to be pursued).
There was relief when Magistrate Judge Elizabeth McHugh ruled that this one case should proceed, following a preliminary hearing.
Cosby faces three counts of sexual assault.
Police read a statement from Andrea Constand, who now lives in Toronto and was not in court.
Constand, then a basketball coach at the university, saw Cosby – a former student at the same university – as something of a mentor.
In her statement she said: “I told him, ‘I can’t talk, Mr Cosby’. I started to panic.”
Ms Constand told police that in 2005 Mr Cosby allegedly sexually violated her after giving her three blue pills.
The pills made her dizzy and made her legs “like jelly”.
Mr Cosby said she never told him to stop during the encounter.
The judge has ruled that she will not have to testify.
In 2005 Cosby gave a written declamation, in which he explained his version of the events.
“Andrea came to the house. We talked about Temple University. We talked about her position. And then I went upstairs and I got three pills… because she was talking about stress,” he said.
