Inside Lili Bernard's Decision to File a Sexual Assault Lawsuit Against Bill Cosby
"I’m not just pursuing justice for me; I’m pursuing justice for all survivors.”
It took Lili Bernard nearly 25 years to muster up the courage to report one of Bill Cosby’s drugging and sexual assaults to the police, only to find out she was too late.
New Jersey had no statute of limitations for sexual assault charges when she went to the Atlantic City, N.J. police in April 2015, but still had them in the early 1990s, when she said her rape occurred, so her case simply didn’t qualify.
It’s something that happens all too frequently to sexual assault victims - it takes them years, sometimes decades to tell anyone what happened to them, let alone the police, especially if their rapist is someone rich, powerful and beloved like Bill Cosby - then when they do, they find out their window for getting justice has passed. It’s why Lili and fellow Cosby survivors Victoria Valentino, Janice Baker-Kinney, Linda Kirkpatrick and Patricia Steuer, led by Caroline Heldeman, a college professor and co-chair of End Rape Statute of Limitations, successfully pushed for the statute of limitations laws for sexual assault to be abolished in California. (Cosby survivors Beth Ferrier, Heidi Thomas and Lise Lotte-Lublin led similar efforts in Colorado in Nevada, which got them extended in both states.) It was too late for all of them but now, at least, it wouldn’t be for victims who came forward in the future.
But a law passed in New Jersey in 2019 opened the door for another way for Lili to get some measure of justice: a civil lawsuit. Among other things, the law created a one time two-year window for adult sexual assault victims to file civil lawsuits against their perpetrators, regardless of when they were abused. Lili and her attorneys Jordan Merson and Jordan Rutsky announced Thursday she’s filed a federal sexual assault lawsuit against Cosby for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting her at the Trump Taj Mahal in August 1990 in Atlantic City, N.J.
“So few sexual assault survivors ever get justice, because the ‘justice’ system is stacked against us,” Lili told me afterward. “The only reason I can pursue justice now is because New Jersey opened a window for two years. Imagine if every state opened a window for every survivor who has evidence. That would be justice.”
When I interviewed Lili for my podcast CHASING COSBY, based on my book of the same name, she spoke of the impact the assaults had on her; how she’s been suicidal and hospitalized for depression; her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder diagnosis and the panic attacks she still has. She’s not alone. Many sexual assault survivors experience the same symptoms, said Kristen Houser, who was the spokeswoman for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape when I interviewed her for my podcast in June 2019. And, with just 5.7 percent of rapes ending in an arrest, the only way left to get some accountability - and help in dealing with the aftermath - is to file a lawsuit against their perpetrator.
“The civil courts recognize that damages have been done and it is a way to get compensation for some of the losses,” she told me. “We know for certain that when it comes to sexual assault there are many losses that are financial - loss of education, loss of employment, medical costs for treatment. It’s difficult to concentrate or to be a reliable worker when your body is on overdrive dealing with the aftermath of a sexual assault, so sleep doesn’t come easy.
“So there are all of these things that ultimately do come down to a loss of income and victims are entitled to seek damages and compensation for the actual real cost of what they lost in addition to their sense of safety,” she said. “And how do you put a price tag on your sense of safety and security in the world? That’s an impossible thing to do. So the civil courts are a bona fide option for victims of violent crime, just like the criminal courts are.”
Andrew Wyatt, Cosby’s spokesman, had this to say about the lawsuit: “These look back provisions are unconstitutional and they are a sheer violation of an individual’s constitutional rights and denies that individual of their due process. This is just another attempt to abuse the legal process, by opening up the flood gates for people, who never presented an ounce of evidence, proof, truth and/or facts, in order to substantiate their alleged allegations. Mr. Cosby continues to maintain steadfast in his innocence and will vigorously fight ANY alleged allegations waged against him and is willing and able to take this fight to the highest court in these United States of America.”
Lili first met Cosby when she had a brief non-speaking role on The Cosby Show in 1988 in the episode featuring jazz singer Betty Carter, but she didn’t actually get to know him until after she went to an open casting call for the show during the summer of 1990. Afterward he called her and offered to mentor her. He began running theatrical exercises with her, telling her if she worked hard and followed his direction, he would feature her in a principal speaking role on The Cosby Show. Along the way, he skillfully questioned her about her life and her past.
“We would rehearse scenes together,” Lili told me. “I was doing a lot of plays, theater in New York City so he would actually school me on my work that I was doing for these shows and have me do the monologues and the scenes for him. And this was not uncommon, because there were a number of other celebrities with whom I would meet, Spike Lee, Eriq La Salle, Ving Rhames. I would also be mentored by them from a very academic prospective, so that was not uncommon for me to be mentored by actors in the entertainment industry, sometimes in their homes. So, this was just another actor who was successful, who took an interest in my career, that's how I viewed it.”
He told her she was like a daughter to him and told her parents that when he spoke to them. And even though he grabbed her breast during one of their training exercises, she believed him when he told her it was an accident.
That August, Cosby invited her to Atlantic City to meet a producer who would further her career - or so he said.
He sent a car to pick her up from her apartment in New York City and take her to Atlantic City. Once there they had a lobster dinner with the producer, Cosby went off to perform then the three of them went up to the massive suite he was staying in at the Trump Taj Mahal.
And then Cosby brought her a drink.
“And it's brown,” she said. “And he's very enthusiastic and bubbly and joking and telling me that I have to drink it. It tasted horrible to me because I didn't drink alcohol. And I said, ‘Mr. C, I don't drink alcohol.’ … But he kind of nervously went back to the kitchen area and came back with another drink and it was still brown and this time it was sweet like maybe he put Coca Cola in it or something, but it tasted horrible. He said that it was non-alcoholic and kept telling me to drink it.”
So she did.
Within a few minutes, the room started spinning. She felt dizzy, like she was going to vomit. She’d had food poisoning a few months prior and the symptoms were exactly the same so she thought it was something she ate, maybe the lobster. She excused herself, but she could barely stand, let alone walk to the bathroom so Cosby escorted her.
“And I just vomited all over,” she said. “I got it on myself, on my thigh, my skirt. All I’m thinking is embarrassment, embarrassment, embarrassment.”
The next thing she knows she’s back in the living room of the suite, Cosby is taking off her clothes and she passes out. She wakes to find herself lying on the floor.
“There's a rug on my back,” she said. “And then I remember the feeling of the friction, like my back, going back and forth like this in the rug, the carpet rubbing on my back… I remember opening up my eyes and seeing Bill Cosby on top of me and he's shirtless. And I felt a stick inside of me. I'm confused. You know, am I naked? Bill Cosby on top of me, am I dreaming? Stick inside of me? And then I pass out again.”
Early the next morning, he escorts to the car he ordered that will take her back to New York City. Her mind is swirling with questions, but she has to perform in a play at 9 a.m. And with that, she blocked the memory of what he’d done to her; something she’d learned to do to survive the abuse she suffered as a child, one of the many things she’d revealed to Cosby during their mentoring session.
A couple of months later, Cosby invited her to go to Las Vegas to meet the producers and casting director for A Different World, the Cosby Show spinoff.
“Now by this time I had already blocked out the trauma of Atlantic City, I mean literally blocked it out,” she said. “I had no memory of it whatsoever. And I know that that's something that's difficult for people who are not trauma survivors to understand.”
When she arrived, he invited her up to the Elvis Presley suite at what was then the Las Vegas Hilton, which is where he usually stayed when he was in Las Vegas, and told her The Different World people couldn’t make it after all.
But they were going to celebrate anyway, he said. He promised to reschedule with the Different World people and spoke glowingly of her future career. He disappeared for a while, she can’t remember if he had to perform, but when he returned he had two bottles with him; one was apple cider , because she’d told him she didn’t drink alcohol, and one was champagne.
"We are going to drink to your success,” he said. “We clinked glasses and he said, ‘Drink up.’ And he pushed the glass toward my face and forced me to drink it quickly.”
Within a few minutes, the room started spinning. Because she’d blocked out what happened in Atlantic City, she just assumed she mistakenly drank the champagne instead of the apple cider.
“I said, ‘Whoa, Mr. C. I think you gave me the wrong glass,’ ” she said.
And then it happened again. Afterward, she was reeling. She steered clear of him for the most part for the next year.
Until he called one day in October 1991 to say he’d gotten her that guest-starring role on The Cosby Show. She agreed to go to his Manhattan brownstone so they could call his agent to discuss the terms of her new part. “It’ll be safe,” she thought.
He managed to sexually assault her anyway as she sobbed helplessly. He then offered her what he said was sparkling apple cider to help her calm down. Those same dizzy, helpless feelings started up a few minutes after she drank some of it.
At that point, all of the memories came flooding back.
“The Atlantic City memory came back,” she said. “The Las Vegas memory came back. And I’m like, ‘Oh my God. I didn’t have food poisoning in Atlantic City. He didn’t accidentally give me the wrong glass and give me alcohol in Las Vegas. This is pre-meditated. He drugged me.’ ”
She started screaming and yelling, telling him she was going to go to the police and report the assaults. He said if she did, he’d file a report against her for false accusations; he’d blacklist her in Hollywood and tell everyone she was a whore.
“And then he told me that I was dead, that I didn’t exist, that all it takes is one phone call,” she said, “that I better watch my back.”
Lili somehow managed to stumble out of his brownstone and hail a cab. She told her boyfriend, who later became her husband, what happened and they called Cosby. Her boyfriend was enraged and wanted to go to the police, but they both realized they couldn’t after Cosby said he would sue them for defamation and have them charged with making a false accusation.
“We were like, ‘Wow. We’re stuck. We can’t do anything. No one’s gonna believe us. He’s right,’ ” Lili said. “We’re going to file a police report and then he’s gonna file a police report against us for false accusations. Who are they gonna believe? Him or us?”
They knew the answer to that question.
A month or so later, her agent called to say, “He’s finally going to put you on the show.” By then her agent knew what Cosby had done to her. She’d even done her best to convince Lili to go to the police. Lili agreed to film the role. It was the chance of a lifetime and one she couldn’t afford to pass up.
The week was brutal. Cosby was hostile and angry; yelling at her; and the night before they filmed the episode, he told her she was fired when she refused to go to his home for more rehearsals.
“I came home that night from rehearsal just crying and thinking ‘I suffered all this for nothing. I’m fired.’ ” she said. “And I cried through the whole night. I couldn’t sleep.”
And then at six o’clock in the morning, the car showed up to take her to the studio in Queens like nothing had ever happened.
“I did the role,” she said. “It was really difficult. I felt like I was gonna faint and vomit the whole time that I was on the set. I was trembling. I thought, ‘How am I gonna get my lines out?’ I had to be on stage with this man who drugged me and raped me and was … emotionally violent to me the whole week. And at the end when the audience was applauding, he looked at me and he said, ‘Fooled them again.’ “
Lili played the role of the “zany Mrs. Minifield,” an enormously pregnant patient of Cliff Huxtable’s who’s driving him crazy with all of her questions. After I got to know Lili and found out what she was going through when she was filming that role, I was even more impressed with her as an actress. I’ve no doubt she could have had an extraordinary career. Which is yet another tragic consequence of Cosby’s actions.
Another is what happened to her afterward. She fell apart. She was having night terrors and panic attacks. She became suicidal and had to be hospitalized. All of these are among common effects of sexual violence, according to RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network).
After she was released from the hospital, Lili continued seeing a therapist five days a week for several months, telling her all about the abuse and how it made her feel.
And when the Cosby case began hitting the news again after comedian Hannibal Buress’ bit about Cosby drugging and raping women went viral in the fall of 2014, it triggered a relapse and she had to be hospitalized again.
But as she recovered, more and more women began going public about Cosby drugging and sexually assaulting them. As they did so, Lili’s friends were urging her to do the same. She was terrified but, in May 2015, she finally did, at a press conference with attorney Gloria Allred, the day after she spent five hours being interviewed by the Atlantic City police, armed with a mountain of evidence supporting her claims.
Since then, Lili has been one of the most outspoken and visible Cosby survivors. She became one of the go-to women the media gets reactions from when Cosby cries racism, which he has frequently done while his criminal case played out. This is something she feels passionately about because she’s a black Latina. Not only that, she’s experienced backlash from the Black community for speaking out against Cosby.
"Of course it's not about race," she told me last summer. "Where it is about race is this – about 6.5 percent of the U.S population is black women so Bill Cosby disproportionately targeted black women because one third of his known accusers are black women. That’s the only place where I see race plays into it."
Last July Lili traveled to Philadelphia, along with fellow survivors Stacey Pinkerton and Victoria Valentino, to protest the Pa. Supreme Court’s June 30th decision that overturned Cosby’s conviction for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand and freed him from prison the same day. The event was put together by activist Bird Milliken, who administers the We Support the Survivors of Bill Cosby Facebook page.
That decision by the court is what led to Lili filing the lawsuit against him Thursday.
“When Cosby was released, this was a gut punch to survivors everywhere,” Lili said. “How could a man with over 60 allegations of sexual violence be walking free? I’m not just pursuing justice for me; I’m pursuing justice for all survivors.”
She wishes there was some way for him to be held accountable in the criminal courts, but for now, this is all she has.
And it’s more than most sexual assault victims get.
Nicki Weisensee Egan is the author of the book CHASING COSBY, host and executive producer of the podcast based on the book, coauthor of VICTIM F and an investigative journalist. You can see more of her work at https://www.nicoleweisenseeegan.com/