Bill Cosby's wife is not at his trial. But Camille Cosby's presence looms

She has not attended her husband's retrial on sexual assault charges. She is not on the list of witnesses. Her name has not even been uttered in the courtroom.

But Camille Cosby remains a central figure in the case.

Cosby's wife of 54 years is active behind the scenes, communicating with her husband's publicist and keeping up with the case. She has stood by him since 2014, when women began to publicly accuse Cosby of sexual misconduct. When the first trial ended with a jury deadlock in June, she issued a searing attack on the judge and district attorney that a spokeswoman read to dozens of reporters.

And her presence has loomed in occasional, if not uncomfortable, references to Bill Cosby's marital status and infidelity — comments inside and outside the courtroom by witnesses, the lawyers, and even Cosby's own publicist.

Having an extramarital affair is something "many men have done and are doing right now this second," publicist Andrew Wyatt declared last week on the steps of the courthouse in Norristown.

That blunt remark, even explanation, came after defense lawyer Tom Mesereau portrayed Cosby during his opening arguments last week as a lonely and troubled celebrity rather than a happily married man. He told jurors Cosby had given in to temptation and acted recklessly, but that his sexual encounter with Andrea Constand was consensual.

Constand, for her part, cited Cosby's marriage as one reason she never expected the entertainer to make a sexual advance on her.

"He was a married man," Constand testified. "I didn't think that he would be attracted to me."

Camille Cosby, 74, married Cosby in 1964. She worked as his business manager, and The Cosby Show character Clair Huxtable was based on her. The couple had five children together. Ensa, one of their four daughters, died in February at age 44 – just weeks before her father's retrial began. Their son, Ennis, was shot to death in Los Angeles in 1997.

Camille Cosby speaks with her husband every day during the trial, Wyatt said last week, but he declined to say whether she has been staying nearby at the family's home in Cheltenham or at their primary residence in Massachusetts.

Wyatt said he and Ebonee Benson, another publicist, stay in touch with Camille Cosby throughout the day, "and then Ebonee and I do an evening recap with her," he said.

It is unclear whether Camille Cosby will appear at the retrial, which is expected to wrap up this week as the jury begins deliberating her husband's fate.

Camille showed up just once during her husband's first trial, entering the courthouse arm  in arm with him and sitting through defense lawyers' closing arguments. But she said nothing, waiting to break her silence on the case until Judge Steven T. O'Neill declared a mistrial.

"How do I describe the district attorney? Heinously and exploitatively ambitious," she said in a statement read by a publicist as her husband exited the courthouse. "How do I describe the judge? Overtly and arrogantly collaborating with the district attorney."

It marked a rare airing of Camille Cosby's thoughts. It also sparked a dispute between Wyatt, the publicist, and Cosby's then-lawyer Brian McMonagle, who got into a quarrel about what to say to reporters immediately after the mistrial was declared.

After delivering his own comments to reporters on the day O'Neill declared a mistrial, McMonagle quickly left the courthouse steps as Benson stepped forward to read the statement. Soon after, McMonagle parted ways with Cosby.

After women began publicly accusing Cosby of sexual misconduct, Camille sat silently by her husband's side during an interview with the Associated Press in which he was asked about the allegations. When he asked at the end of the interview that the recording of him refusing to address the allegations not be made public, she nodded along.

Camille first acknowledged the allegations against her husband in December 2014, when she issued a statement describing him as "a wonderful husband, father, and friend," and suggesting that he had become the victim of un-vetted accusations and media attacks.

When she faced a deposition in a defamation suit against Cosby filed by some of his accusers, Camille claimed marital privilege to avoid answering many questions, and said, "I do not have an opinion," when asked if having an affair would be a violation of their wedding vows.

Cosby cheated on his wife – in consensual affairs, according to his lawyers, or through serial sexual assault, according to prosecutors – for years before he met Constand. Jurors heard from five women last week who said Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them.

Like Constand, they testified that they trusted Cosby and did not imagine he would make sexual advances on them because he was older than they were and married.

"I remember here was 'America's Dad' on top of me, and a happily married man with five children, and I remember thinking how wrong it was, how very, very wrong it was," said Janice Dickinson, a supermodel who testified that Cosby drugged and raped her on a trip to Reno, Nev., in 1982.

Dickinson said she even mentioned his wife when she confronted Cosby the next day about the alleged rape.

"I remember saying, 'You're married,'" she said.

Cosby's lawyers chose to make his marital status a focus in their attacks on Constand, asking her repeated questions about his wife.

"Did you ever discuss what his wife's name was?" Mesereau asked her.

"Um, no," Constand said.

"So when you were going to his house and you were going to Connecticut and you had dinner in New York … you had never discussed with him whether or not he was married?" Mesereau pressed on.

"No," Constand said. "It was assumed. I knew Cosby was a married man."

Constand said she never met Camille Cosby. Nor did she ask why not, testifying simply: "It was none of my business."