Bill Cosby found guilty of sexual assault

THE man who used to be referred to as “America’s dad” has been found guilty of three counts of sexual assault.

The disgraced comedian, 80, initially showed no emotion and looked down at the table in front of him as the verdicts were read — which prompted some of his victims in the gallery to burst into tears.

However, when District Attorney Kevin Steele asked the judge to have Cosby taken into custody immediately, saying he was a flight risk in part because he owned a plane.

Cosby reportedly stood up and in a loud voice, bellowed, “He doesn’t have a plane, you a**hole”.

The judge said he did not believe Cosby was a flight risk and said the $US1 million bail should be sufficient.

Cosby was allowed to go home after surrendering his passport but will be sentenced at a later date.

He faces up to 10 years behind bars on each of the three counts of aggravated indecent assault and a fine of up to $US25,000 ($33,000) on each count.

The reckoning comes following the disgraced comic’s second trial, and just over 14 hours of deliberations by a panel of five women and seven men.

His chief accuser, Andrea Constand, bravely took the stand to publicly relay for a second time her recollection of the horrifying 2004 attack.

Constand, 45, a former Temple women’s basketball administrator, told jurors that Cosby knocked her out with three blue pills he called “your friends” and then penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilised, unable to resist or say no.

It was the only criminal case to arise from a barrage of allegations from 62 women who have publicly said the former TV star drugged and molested them over a span of five decades.

Constand sat stone-faced in the first row but tilted her head back and breathed a sigh of relief after jurors were formally polled.

One of his victims, Lili Bernard, burst into tears as the verdicts were read, prompting Judge Steven O’Neill to call for order in the Montgomery County courtroom.

Cosby waved to the crowd outside the courthouse, got into a car and left without comment.

Cosby’s lawyer Tom Mesereau, who won an acquittal for Michael Jackson on child-molestation charges, says the “fight is not over” and that his client planned to appeal the verdict.

The verdict was considered the first big celebrity trial of the #MeToo era, completing the spectacular late-life downfall of a comedian who broke racial barriers in Hollywood on his way to TV superstardom as America’s dad.