Keshia Knight Pulliam supports Bill Cosby at start of trial

Actress Keshia Knight Pulliam is standing by her TV dad Bill Cosby after accompanying the embattled comedian to court for the start of his criminal sex assault trial.

The veteran actor is fighting accusations of felony indecent assault, amid allegations he drugged and sexually assaulted former Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his Pennsylvania home in 2004.

Cosby's trial kicked off on Monday (05Jun17) and Pulliam was by his side, holding the star's arm and helping to guide him into the Montgomery County courthouse. The 79-year-old's attorneys previously revealed the troubled funnyman had started to lose his sight in 2015 and was now legally blind.

Cosby and 38-year-old Pulliam, who portrayed his youngest daughter on hit 1980s sitcom The Cosby Show, did not speak to reporters as they entered the building.

Pulliam initially spoke out about Cosby's sex assault allegations in early 2015, after dozens of women claimed to have been drugged, assaulted, and/or raped in decades-old incidents, insisting the man at the center of the scandal was not the one who played her dad on TV.

She told America's Today show she can only make judgements based on "the man that she knows".

"Ultimately, they're just that, allegations, and it's very much been played out in the court of public opinion, but we're still in America, where ultimately you're innocent until proven guilty and I wasn't there," she said. "That's just not the man I know, so I can't speak to it."

More than 50 victims have gone public with their alleged experiences in recent years, all of which Cosby's representatives have slammed, but the majority cannot press charges against the actor because the statute of limitations has long since expired.

Cosby has always maintained the sex he had with Constand was consensual, and although he was not charged with any crimes at the time, he did settle a civil suit with her out of court in 2006.

The criminal case was reopened in 2015, after his previously-sealed testimony from the civil proceedings was made public. In the deposition, Cosby confessed to obtaining Quaaludes, strong sedatives, to hand out to females he wanted to have sex with, although he insisted he didn't use them when he is alleged to have assaulted Constand.