LAPD to investigate allegations against Cosby; comedian counter-sues accuser

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- The Los Angeles County Police Department announced Thursday that it would investigate all claims of sexual assault against comedian Bill Cosby, even those that fall outside the standard statute of limitations.

Although no formal complaints have been filed against Cosby with the LAPD, Police Chief Charlie Beck said it will extend the two-year statute of limitations on sexual assault charges and open cases on any claims alleged to have occurred in Los Angeles County.

"We don't turn people away because things are out of statute," Beck said in a statement.

With over 20 women publicly accusing the former sitcom star of sexual assault dating back decades, the LAPD is launching a full investigation.

"Unfortunately, sexual offenses tend to be serial offenses," LAPD spokesman Cmdr. Andrew Smith said. "You find victim after victim after victim."

Cosby, meanwhile, is counter-suing accuser Judy Huth, who claims in a civil suit that Cosby molested her at the Playboy Mansion in 1974 when she was 15. Cosby's suit alleges Huth repeatedly failed to sell her story to tabloids in the mid-2000s, before trying to extort $250,000 from Cosby for her silence in November 2014.

"You get a longer amount of time under a child abuse statute because when someone harms or assaults them, they're not in a good position usually to take up for themselves or even to disclose," professor Robin Wilson of the University of Illinois College of Law told People magazine.

"Sometimes it can be so damaging that they don't even know that they've been harmed legally."

Cosby's attorneys say Huth's story cannot be true because central to the alleged assault is a drinking game played by Huth and Cosby, but Cosby is "a lifelong non-drinker."

On Friday, vandals wrote the word rapist three times on Cosby's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It has since been buffed clean.