Prosecutors interview Cosby accuser, want to interview Cosby

Tuesday, January 25th 2005, 1:08 pm

By: News On 6

PHILADELPHIA (AP) _ Prosecutors say they want to interview Bill Cosby after meeting with a former Temple University employee who alleges the comedian fondled her in his suburban Philadelphia home.

Investigators also are interviewing other potential witnesses before deciding whether any charges are warranted, Bruce L. Castor Jr., the Montgomery County district attorney, said in a statement Monday.

Cosby, 67, a Temple alumnus and booster who frequently attends campus events, was a close friend and mentor to the 31-year-old woman, her parents said in an interview published Sunday in The Toronto Sun.

A former basketball standout at the University of Arizona, she worked at Temple for several years before returning to her native Canada to attend massage school.

She went to Canadian authorities on Jan. 13, contending Cosby had given her some medication and later fondled her in his Cheltenham Township mansion a year earlier, after they and others met for dinner.

Cosby's attorney, Walter M. Phillips Jr., has called the allegations ``pointedly bizarre'' and questioned why the woman waited a year to contact authorities.

The woman's parents told The Sun she filed the report after becoming more aware of ethical boundaries during her massage school training. They said she had not seemed herself recently, and that they knew something was bothering her.

``She's starting to understand that when you violate a person it's not right,'' her father told the newspaper.

The woman's parents said they live comfortably and denied their daughter had any financial motives for making her allegations.

It is the policy of The Associated Press not to publish names of alleged sexual assault victims without their consent. A telephone number for the woman's family could not be found, and the AP has not been able to reach her.

The long-married Cosby, best-known as a warm, wisecracking TV dad, postponed several appearances after the allegations surfaced last week. His publicist, David Brokaw, said Tuesday that Cosby now plans to keep to his schedule.