Bill Cosby (left) has been found guilty of assaulting Judy Huth (right) when she was 16 years old
(Picture: AP)Comedian Bill Cosby sexually assaulted a teenager at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1975, a jury in a civil trial has found.
A Los Angeles County jury delivered the verdict on Tuesday in favour of the victim, who was 16 years old at the time of the offence.
Judy Huth, who is now 64, was awarded $500,000 (£407,327).
The jury’s decision is a major legal defeat for the 84-year-old actor and comedian.
It comes nearly a year after his Pennsylvania criminal conviction for sexual assault was thrown out and he was freed from prison.
Cosby did not attend the Los Angeles trial. He has repeatedly denied Ms Huth’s allegations that he forced her to perform a sex act at the mansion.
Jurors found that Cosby intentionally caused harmful sexual contact with Ms Huth, that he reasonably believed she was under 18, and that his conduct was driven by unnatural or abnormal sexual interest in a minor.
Ms Huth's lawsuit was one of the last remaining legal claims against him after his insurer settled many others against his will.
Cosby's attorneys agreed that he met Ms Huth and her high school friend on a Southern California film set in April of 1975, then took them to the Playboy Mansion a few days later.
Ms Huth's friend Donna Samuelson, a key witness, took photos at the mansion of Ms Huth and Mr Cosby, which loomed large at the trial.
Ms Huth testified that in a bedroom adjacent to a game room where the three had been hanging out, Mr Cosby attempted to put his hand down her pants, then exposed himself and forced her to perform a sex act.
She filed her lawsuit in 2014, saying that her son turning 15 - the age she initially remembered being when she went to the mansion - and a wave of other women accusing Cosby of similar acts brought fresh trauma over what she had been through as a teenager.
Ms Huth's attorney Nathan Goldberg told the jury of nine women and three men during closing arguments that "my client deserves to have Mr Cosby held accountable for what he did".
"Each of you knows in your heart that Mr Cosby sexually assaulted Miss Huth," Mr Goldberg said.
