Authorities found insufficient evidence to support a woman’s claims that Bill Cosby fondled her at his suburban mansion after giving her medication that made her dizzy, a prosecutor said.
Cosby will not face charges stemming from the allegation by a former employee at Temple University, Cosby’s alma mater, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. said in a statement Thursday.
The woman, who now lives in her native Ontario, told Canadian authorities last month that, after a night out with friends in January 2004, Cosby gave her medication that made her woozy, then fondled her. She said she later awoke to find her bra undone and her clothes in disarray.
Cosby, 67, a Temple alumnus and booster, has denied the allegations. In a statement Thursday, his lawyer said Cosby was gratified by the decision.
“Mr. Cosby looks forward to moving on with his life,” attorney Walter M. Phillips Jr. said.
Castor has said that the accuser’s yearlong delay in coming forward, and her contact with Cosby in the past year, weighed in the comedian’s favor.
The prosecutor said he also reviewed claims by other people that Cosby had “behaved inappropriately” toward them, but that detectives could find no instance “where anyone complained to law enforcement of conduct which would constitute a criminal offense.”
The woman’s attorney, Dolores M. Troiani, called the evidence strong and said her client is likely to sue Cosby.
“She felt, as we did, that it’s a very strong case and that she was telling the truth and that Mr. Castor’s opinion does not change the facts,” Troiani said.
Troiani said her client gave prosecutors tapes of telephone calls between Cosby and the family that bolster the allegations. The calls occurred after her client contacted police, the lawyer said.
Cosby’s publicist, David Brokaw, declined comment Thursday on whether the comedian had any telephone contact with the family since the investigation began.
The long-married Cosby — best-known as a warm, wisecracking TV dad — has provoked debate this past year with blunt remarks on personal responsibility aimed at the black community. In 1997, the year his son Ennis was murdered, he acknowledged a brief affair with the mother of a young woman later convicted of extorting him.
It is the policy of The Associated Press not to publish names of alleged sexual assault victims without their consent.