‘They knew about Bill Cosby but didn’t care’
As the comedian stands trial for sexual assault, one of his accusers tells Elizabeth Day his iconic status is the reason it’s taken so long
When Lili Bernard first met Bill Cosby, she was struck by his charisma. It was so powerful, she says, that it was “almost intimidating”. It was the late Eighties and Cosby was one of the most famous men in America: the creator and star of the hit sitcom The Cosby Show, which had redefined the United States’ attitude to race and class by depicting a comfortably off, tight-knit, aspirational African-american family in the full glare of primetime. For eight years, it was the most watched television show in the country.
Off screen, Cosby was renowned for both his celebrity and philanthropy, donating tens of millions of dollars to colleges and universities across the country and mentoring young people in their chosen career paths.
Bernard was one of those mentees: an aspiring actress whom Cosby took under his wing, promising her a role on The Cosby Show.
“He had this facade of joy and goodness,” Bernard says now, at home in Los Angeles. “But it was all a farce. Actually, he’s Saint Lucifer.”
Cosby will stand trial in Pennsylvania on Monday, charged with three counts of aggravated sexual assault.
Bernard claims that on three occasions during the early Nineties she was raped or sexually assaulted by Cosby, now 79. She alleges she was drugged on all three occasions. The second time, she says, was in the Elvis Suite at the Las Vegas Hilton, when she recalls Cosby offering her a glass of sparkling cider, in spite of the fact she did not drink alcohol. He was, she alleges, insistent that she have it and because she still viewed him as “a father figure”, she acquiesced.
After that, she remembers waking up, unable to move, with
Cosby on top of her. “I was screaming and yelling for help, and he was pushing a pillow on to my face as he was raping me. I thought I was going to die from suffocation.”
She thinks now that the drink must have been spiked. For years afterwards, Bernard suffered night terrors. She attempted suicide more than once. She considered going to the police but claims that Cosby threatened her. “He said: ‘I will erase you. You’re dead to me. You better watch your back.’”
Besides, she says, Cosby was America’s ‘dad’. Who was going to believe her?
Bernard’s story, and that of nearly 60 women who have come forward to accuse the comedian of sexual abuse dating back several decades, is about to be told in a new BBC documentary. Cosby: Fall of an American Icon explores why it took so long for allegations against the entertainer to be taken seriously, and hears testimony from the journalists, co-stars and accusers who fought for years for their side to be heard.
The director, Ricardo Pollack, sees some parallels with Jimmy Savile in the UK. Like Cosby, Savile enjoyed fame and a reputation as a charity fundraiser during his life. It was only after his death that he was unmasked as a rapacious sexual predator.
“Obviously there are some comparisons,” says Pollack. “There’s the same sociopathic behaviour and sense of entitlement. But one key difference is that there were rumours about Jimmy Savile before he died, but the extent of it only emerged after his death.
With Bill Cosby, 14 women came forward in 2005 [to accuse him of sexual assault; a civil lawsuit was settled out of court] and it had absolutely no impact on his status in America.”
Instead, Pollack says, Cosby was still welcomed into college campuses and television studios where he was greeted by “the sycophancy of liberal talkshow hosts; they must have known and yet they chose not to hear or care about that”. Pollack ascribes this conspiracy of silence to “the cultural significance of Bill Cosby”. “In America,” he says, “he was iconic in terms of what he did for race… It’s absolutely a significant fact that there was initially a squeamishness, I think, among white liberals to call him out for what he had done.”
As Cliff Huxtable, The Cosby Show’s fictional doctor and devoted family man, Cosby became a symbol of hope for an Africanamerican community frequently blighted by the stereotype of absent fathers and gang crime.
“People conflated Bill Cosby with Cliff Huxtable,” explains Pollack.
“Many people in the African-
‘White liberals were squeamish about calling him out for what he’d done’