Therese Serignese, latest Bill Cosby accuser, urges star to ‘quit lying’

A Florida nurse who says she was drugged and sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby in 1976 is urging the beleaguered comic to “quit lying” about his past and apologize.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Therese Serignese, now 57, said she met Cosby in a gift shop at the Las Vegas Hilton, where he wrapped his arm around her neck and invited her to his show at the hotel.

Backstage afterward, she said, Cosby -- who would rise to even greater fame in the 1980s as the star of NBC’s “The Cosby Show” -- invited her to take two large white pills. She said her next memory was of the comedian sexually assaulting her in a bathroom.

“You blame yourself,” she told the website, explaining why she did not immediately contact the authorities. “You now are a victim.”

Serignese said she had intermittent contact with Cosby, now 77, over the next 20 years. In the mid-1980s they met during one of his visits to Michigan, where she was living at the time, she said, and after she was seriously injured in a car accident in the 1990s, Cosby’s agent sent her a check for $5,000.

“I really don’t think that I ever had consensual sex with him, ever,” she said. “It was an intimidation thing.”

“I wish he would quit lying and denying it,” she said. Cosby has said virtually nothing himself about the allegations from Serignese and other women, although his lawyer last week said the stories were “discredited.”

Two other women on Thursday joined the growing chorus of women who have accused Cosby of inappropriate behavior.

Carla Ferrigno, the wife of former “Incredible Hulk” star Lou Ferrigno, told the British newspaper the Daily Mail that Cosby tried to sexually assault her in 1967.

TMZ reported that actress Louisa Moritz claims Cosby sexually assaulted her backstage at NBC’s “Tonight Show” in 1971.

Martin Singer, an attorney for Cosby, attacked Moritz’s story.

“We’ve reached a point of absurdity,” he told TMZ. “The stories are getting more ridiculous.”

Twitter: @scottcollinsLAT