Last time on Navigating Narcissism, I sat down with Lily Bernard, who shared never before heard details of her harrowing encounters with Bill Cosby.
There were three druggings and three sexual assaults, and in the first one, the betrayal was so profound that was an Atlantic city and just made absolutely no sense that I was actually able to block it out. I had a huge confrontation with him. We were yelling at each other in his brownstone. He was telling me that he would erase me, and I interpreted that that he would kill me.
This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people.
The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in this podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Here is part two of our conversation.
When Bill Cosby drugged me and raped me in Las Vegas. I still didn't understand that he had drugged me. Oh, I just thought that he accidentally made me drink a whole glass of champagne.
Ah yeah.
And so afterwards I went back to the studios and I confronted him about it. I was like, mister c was I drunk? And I still couldn't say the word did you rape me? I couldn't say that because still in my mind I didn't want to think that he would have done that. But I confronted him, did you give me the wrong glass? And I was hoping that when I confronted him like that that he would say, oh, yeah, yeah, and I raped you. Of course he didn't say that, but so him not mentioning for me was like fine,
that it didn't happen. You know, I knew that I was drugged and rape by Bill Cosby. I told my agent at the time that it happened. I told my best friend, I told therapists at the time. It was very easy for me to remember Las Vegas that last time in the apartment, but I kept blocking out Atlantic City. So back in nineteen ninety two, from the trauma of the cosby drugging and rape. I was very suicidal and
I was hospitalized a lot. And then again in twenty fourteen when this resurgence happened, when Hannibal Buris inspired so many survivors to come forward, the same thing happened to me. I went through a crisis of PTSD crisis. This is December or November twenty fourteen. I'm in the psych word with this Russian psychiatrist and he's asking me questions. And as he was talking to me, all of a sudden, right there in front of him, all that Atlantic City
trauma just came fulllooding into my hand. I started sobbing. It's just amazing how a brain can do block memories in order to function.
In order to function, it's a protection our trauma system. Strangely enough, as much as they impair us and throw us off, they're meant to be protective systems. That protection is walling stuff off. So the moment it floods out of us, it's a tidal wave. It's an absolute tidle wave, and it overwhelms us. But you don't know what the event is that will pull it out. In this case, it was talking to this particular psychiatrist. You know, it's not lost on me, Lily, that Atlantic City was so buried.
It was the first event. At this point, he was still very firmly a safe person in your life, other than the moment in his brownstone where he had grabbed your breast and your gas slighting. There was actually quite fascinating because and this speaks to all the things that even happened in childhood to you. You touched my breast, No, you didn't, back and forth, back and forth. So he's denying it happened. And then what happens is you're the one who's saying, what is wrong with me? That's the
gas slighted piece. But you were doing it to yourself, which is not uncommon in people who have survived many years of trauma, especially in systems like families as well.
I was taught to do that, Romney. My father was an upstanding man, engineer, former professor of mathematics, a beloved individual, and so when he did stuff to me, it just didn't happen, you know, like we weren't abused my whole life, doctor Romeney. I carried that lie to protect my father. It's really weird, as the victim of violence to know that this is happening to you, but the people who do it and whom you regard highly are telling you it didn't happen, so it mustn't happen. So it makes
your reality really confused. They're telling me it didn't happen, but I know it happened. But I'm gonna get my ass whooped if it does happen. So I'm just gonna say it didn't happen. You're right, okay, m hm, okay, mom bop, Okay.
Bill Cosby, it didn't happen.
It didn't happen, okay, because it makes things easier.
That betrayal blindness. It does make things easier because and the relationships can maintain the status quo, and he can remain this icon right, all the things that almost make life easier. But you now are carrying it all on your back.
Yeah, and as a black woman, it's a whole added burden because not only like it was embarrassing and shameful to me that I went through all that with Bill Cosby, but then also like I can't let the world know that Bill Cosby's really liked that, because what's that going to do for the black mail image. Yeah, and you know, there were other black celebrities who were who were mentoring me concurrently. While Bill Cosby was mentioned me, Spike Lee, Eric LaSalle, Ving Raims. I would go to their homes
with them. They would help me on my lines for a place that I was in for my audition. Not once did it ever cross the line of professionalism. Not once. So this was an anomaly. But I felt like it was really huge that the most lauded, the most revered, the most beloved Black male in the world at that time is a monster.
What did that pressure feel like to you? Because that is pressure. This isn't even just about someone who's an entertainment icon. This is the experience of a large swath of the population who has been waiting for this moment for the media to regard black excellence rather than black pathology. Like this was more than just Bill Cosby. You felt the responsibility of your race. How did you manage that?
It's hard and it still is hard. Yeah, I get attacked still by black men, unfortunately kind of a black woman. Are you bringing Bill Cosby down? He's an old man. Let him rest. It's the past. All these lies that are perpetuated. Why'd you go back to Barbara Zivi is psychiatrists whom they bought on both in the Cosby trials
and in the Winstin trials. As an expert witness, really edified the jury to understand that over eighty something percent of rapes occur through intimate relationships with people whom we trust. Whether it's a mentor like Bill Cosby was to me, or an uncle or a priest, or a boy Scout teacher, whatever, colleague.
These are familiar relationships that idea of somebody jumping out of the bushes is so much less likely, right, And this idea, if a person ever has further contact with that person, it's as though, well then they didn't, right, because you went and talked to them again, which is absolutely ridiculous. So you're in this trauma. It's happened multiple times. You've now even said I'm going to confront you, and he did something that perpetrators do all the time. You
say anything, I'm going to destroy you. That's right, it's the silencing, many people say. Obviously the assault was traumatic, but the menace that would follow weeks, months, years, that was almost worse because you had to carry this within you and even wonder who is he going to do it to next.
I had already told my agent, and my agent was confrontational about it. Nancy Brown. She kept trying to tell me, go to the police, Go to the police. We have to go to the police. I said, no, Nancy, we can't because he threatened some very serious consequences to me. I don't want him to ruin your career. I don't want to kill you. We cannot do it. And she kept trying to convince me, trying to convince me, and then she called me and said, hey, you're on. You know they made that.
Role for you.
You're gonna work. So I figured that he probably kept his word about the job because I was so confrontational about it. Maybe he feared that I would go to the police. Maybe he went ahead and gave me that job to silence me. I don't know. But that week, the way the Cosby Show was taped is a tape on a Thursday, right, and we were arguing that whole week on set. I was confronting him about what had happened. He was making me have every meal with him in
his dressing room, like sequestering me. My boyfriend at the time was with me on set every day, and he was very abusive to me during his stage directions. So when I had to say a line, like if he wanted me to say milk, he'd make me hit the note. He'd say, no, say milk. And now I'm a trained you know that, you know micromanage, you know a little notes, and so I'd say milk. He said no, but not
I said milk, and he would insult me. And then finally at the end of the dresser her so it was time to go, and he said it's a rap and everybody, all the crew started like wrapping up their wires and I start heading out. He's going, no, Bernard, we're not done. You're not through yet. You're not hitting that right note. You're coming to my house and we're going to continue rehearsing. Yeah, And I was like, I'm not coming to your house, mister C. He's like, yes
you are. He's like, I'm not coming to your house, mister C. So now so now he starts to have like he was. He was racheful on set. Sometimes he would explose in these rages. Interesting, So now everyone, all the crew is starting to get red faced. I'm like, I'm not going. He says, you're going to my house. Bernard. I'm like, i am not. He's like, why not? It's because you know what happened last time I went to
your house, mister. See, I'm not going again. So he starts yelling at me, and in front of everybody, he cused, this ain't about me trying to fuck you. Bernard. I already hit that you ain't shit, You're ass ain't shit. You're going to my studio right now. So I was like, I'm not. He's like, well, if you don't go, you're fired. So he said you're fired, Bernard. This is the day before we're before we're supposed to tape. So he stormed into his dressing room. I store them out after him,
and we're yelling and screaming. And I was so traumatized during that whole that whole week, and I want to say, Okay, this is these are details that are embarrassing to talk about. Okay, I'm gonna I'm just gonna let it all out. We were arguing and he was still saying, you're fired, You're fire. So I'm like, okay, well, the only way I'll go
to your house. So still this now, still me, knowing that I had been raised, I'm still going to take the risk to go to his house, right, So I said, is if I call my boyfriend and let him know where I am because he had met him. So he's like fine. So he gives me the phone and we're in his in his dressing room, and I call Franklin is his name? I have to go. Mister C says that if I don't go to his house and continue rehearsing,
I'm fired. He's like, don't go, don't go. I never told the details to my boyfriend about what happened, but I told him he was a leech. I told him, I told that he did some inappropriate things, but never told me the details. Don't go, don't go. So I was like, well, here's the phone number, call me when i'm there. So Cosby sends a car to his brownstone and when I get there, only his butler is there.
And I'm sitting at the table and I have the script and there's cake and a drink, and I'm just waiting and waiting, like, oh my god, I have to rehearse, and this is I'm not gonna drink anything. I'm not gonna eat anything, but I worked so hard for this role. I'm gonna do it. So Cosby comes in a few moments later. He sits down at the table and he's like, eat Bernard, I'm not eating anything, mister C. Is it drink? I'm not drinking anything. Are we gonna rehearse or not?
So the phone rings and it was my boyfriend in the kitchen, So mister C goes into the kitchen to take the call. He sits back down and I'm like, okay, well, are we gonna rehearse? So we open the things and we start rehearsing. He's like this, literally like this reading the life like this, blah blah blah blah. And I'm looking at him like this, and I'm like, am I doing this or not? He's like, blah blah blah, you're fire burner. I get your ass out of here. So
I leave like that. I go home safe. I didn't eat anything, I didn't consume anything. And I'm like, I'm fired. I can't believe this. And I just went home and I cried, and I spent the whole night just crying. I wake up in the morning to a phone call and the car's outside waiting for me to do the job. So that's how I went into it. Crazy. But you see that even in my mind, I felt that I still want it. Like a dummy, I still went to his house.
Okay, I'm gonna call you out on that, Lily. You were not a dummy. Okay, that's how people view it. You call yourself a dummy. Other people call you a dummy. You weren't a dummy. You were a person who experienced trauma. You your brain, all of it was confused. You endured trauma as a child, and on top of that, you had spent your entire adult life developing a craft to be an actor, and you wanted to do this. How much of a damn life is someone that has to
keep sacrificing. How many women's careers in media and entertainment have been destroyed. So you said, I don't even know what to do. I don't know which way is up. I don't know if I'm responsible. You were not a dummy. You went in there because you had been through trauma and simultaneously you were still trying to survive to preserve yourself as an artist. There was nothing dumb about that. You went back in there, and you held your ground. I'm not drinking, I'm not eating.
I did all right, I'm going to didn't drug narrate me.
That no, And I made to tell my boyfriend I'm gonna let people know. I'm going to have a plan in place. And then on that day, you were no longer an appealing target anymore. Done tell me more about that, because you wouldn't drink, you wouldn't eat, you couldn't be broken. You see the anger that was coming out up till that. It was like, let's celebrate you, Bernard, Let's have a drink, Bernard,
Let's celebrate your career, Bernard. That was all that right. Well, then mister rage is in the house because there's no more overpowering you, right, because that's what perpetrators are. That's what these malignant narcissistic types do. They cannot fully subjugate you, own you. They don't want anything to do with it.
Fool you, fool if it wasn't fooled anymore.
Yeah, you weren't fooled anymore.
But I still put myself in that dangerous position.
I understand that, I understand that I wouldn't get hurt, but that's still the trauma. I think that that's the piece that people forget, and you know it to this day, all of us who are trauma survivors, we still find ourselves in these positions and even afterwards just saying why did I do that? But what we have to break out of is that that's not dumb. That is how nervous system working the way it does. But unfortunately the narrative is then, well you went back that time, right
and work in this show. We're killing that damn narrative.
I was used to being treated back to Yeah, I like my sense of self worth was so low, Like to me, that was all normal. Violence was normal to me, Like, this is my lot in life. Men whom I love are just going to treat me like shit and I have to navigate that right, right, So try to make the best out of it, you know.
Try to make the best out of it. And what's also striking to me, Lily, I don't even know what you were channeling to be able to do this, To have gone through three incidents of abuse, the amount of fear that was involved, the amount of vigilance, of anxiety of being on edge, to deal with all of that, terror, and I still have to show up and be a performer and actually play a role. How did you do that?
Yeah, that's just as part of my life, you know. Like there was this one time when I was in fifth grade and my dad beat the crap out of me so badly with the belt that I had these you shaped bruises all in my legs, right, and so I had to like lie to myself basically that everything is okay and normal. And I remember being in the girl's locker room and terrified to take off my pants and wear the shorts because the kids are going to know that I'm being abused at home and I want
to be normal. They ended up sending me to the principal's office, and the principal called my mom. You know, they saw all these bruises, and the Principal's like, what happened to you? And I was like, I knew what happened, but I said, oh, my pony kicked me. And when I got home, my mom's like, why did you lie to the principle that you had a pony? You don't
have a pony. And I couldn't even tell my mom, Well, what else was I was supposed to tell her about all these bruises, you see, So we kind of lie to ourselves, yeah, to normalize it and to like destigmatize ourself because I don't want anybody to know that Bill Cosby drugged me, and I don't want anybody to know that I was so vulnerable that I trusted him and I ended up being drugged and sexually assaulted by him three times. What a dummy, you know, Like, how could I let that happen?
You know, let that happen, right, let that happen. I'm a dummy. The survivorship shame is huge, and it's real when you were talking about the pony kicked me bruises. How much the traumatized child is invested in looking normal to the world, right. The fantasy for the traumatized child is my family is normal, We're happy like other families. No one is harming anyone. And Judith Hermann's work on
trauma really gets at this idea. How much the traumatized child has to become this almost like an expert storyteller who writes the justifications. And then the child in all of this is the bad one. The child is the one doing things. The child is clumsy, the child is getting in the way, the child is listening. That's how they internalize it, because the alternative is to believe that the parent is a monster.
Wow, it's a really important thing, because that's exactly I didn't realize that You've helped me and my siblings understand a lot about why we behave the way we do. But in retrospect now, when I look back, the last contact I had with him was actually on my birthday, February of nineteen ninety two. This is after the three drugging assaults happened. I went back to the offices. He was in his dressing room with some celebrities, and I went there because I had picked up a letter of recommendation.
After I did all my acting gigs, I always got letters of recommendations, like any professional would. I'm still thinking, Okay, I had that trauma, but okay, I'm still a professional. He told me I was gonna be in the different world. You know. He was sitting on a couch with these celebrities, and I said, I'm getting ready to go to you know, to LA for pilot season. Are you going to introduce me to the people in different world? And he yelled at me in front of them. You were done Bernardi's
You're done. You're dead. To me, I don't want to ever see your face again in front of these people.
In front of these people.
Oh yeah, And so that was it. That was the last time I saw Bill Cosby. And to see all those people in the studios with whom I had been, you know, speaking and talking like. I did not want all these actors and producers and directors to know that I had gone through this unbelievable trauma. So I wanted to maintain a source of normalcy. Yeah, okay, so everyone's looking at me. I have to say goodbye to Bill Cosby.
So I wanted to maintain like that sort of functionality is like a performance almost, you know, like to perform this normalcy just so that I don't know. Part of it is so I could survive, but also so that people wouldn't know, you know, like to protect the perpetrator, to protect the lie.
Right to also to avoid the shame, the shame, the cast such a cold shadow. The shame is that we're not like everyone else, We're not normal in a way. We all want to be invisible when it comes to that. No one wants to be the one who sticks out in terms of having had a difficult backstory, a shameful, bashing story, and that is a huge piece. When you add additional layers to that, like race, like gender, that shame gets multiplied.
Yeah, and it was really shame because I remember feeling like I'm stupid. I just remember, I'm so stupid. I'm how could I be so dumb to trust its people think? How could this have happened three times? You know, like I'm dumb, like no one's gonna believe me, and and like I'm I just felt like stupid.
And there's such harm in that because not one stupid thing in it. It was almost as though it was a formula for how trauma systems work in the brain and the body. In terms of how you behaved. There's nothing stupid about it, but that stupid narrative is what's forwarded. It's forwarded by the media, it's forwarded by the justice system, it's forwarded by how attorneys question people. That's really what it is, even if they don't say it in as
many words. It's like you went back, well, this isn't the implication, and that is that you were stupid, You wanted it you must have wanted it, you went back. It's never the question is why did you rape this person? We don't ask the perpetrator that, by the way, but we ask the survivors repeatedly, why did you go back? We never ask those other questions. We don't. We all we wanted determined in those damn where it slowly is did this person do this? They did, But we never
asked these bastards, why did you do it? We will be right back with this conversation, Soudent. You never saw him again ever again. I never spoke to I never saw him ever again. What was your life like after this?
Immediately after the assaults, I was highly suicidal and terrified. Of course, my career was derailed because of the trauma. And then also he threatened that he would blacklist me. So I don't deny that he did that. And so I went from a really successful crew. I don't want to, I really don't want to focus on that aspect because the trauma is much greater. But I was, I was, you know, like started a BBC film co started in a Stephen King's CBS mini series. I was written in
a variety for that. So my career was going up and up and up and up and up, and then the trauma boom. Everything was derailed. So I felt that that was over, and then the betrayal of the father figure, and I felt that if I spoke to anybody about it that I would die because I think I reasonably
interpreted his threat of erasure as killing me. So to the people to whom I did confide about it, like my therapist at the time and my agent at the time, it was with great fear and like, don't tell anybody, And because I couldn't speak, there was a lot of silence. The boyfriend that I had at the time blamed and shamed me for it, violently tried to silence me, the one who confronted Bill Cosby with me, and I still married him. So I ended up in an abusive relationship.
But I gave birth to these six beautiful kids. And during this marriage, Yeah, I had all these symptoms of trauma, but I didn't even understand that it was PTSD, but I thought, Okay, I'm going to heal from this. I continued to have flashbacks, night terrrist, panic, attax galore, like
I can't even to this day. I can't drive the freeway on most occasions without going into a big sweat, sometimes to the point of my I don't realize I'm hyperventilating, and so my fingers turned into like claws, like chicken claws, like they freeze and I can't breathe. Pillows are hard for me. Showering is hard for me. Lights coming from the corner is hard for me. But I was like, that's just my life. But then in twenty fourteen, when that came full bloom PTSD, I was driving my kids
to school. My youngest was like five, and you know, all over the internet is Bill Cosby, this Bill Cosby, that all these women coming public. My friend's calling them liars, and I'm cool, And all of a sudden, I'm frozen, and I swear Bill Cosby is in the car with me because my mommy, mommy, mommy. I managed to get into the school. Thankfully, my doctor was just a few blocks away. And I'm like, because the suicidal ideation starts coming, you know, like, oh my gosh, Bill Cosby's theory, he's
gonna rap me. I'm gotta have to kill myself because he's gonna kill me. I want to beat him to killing me. My career is over. My life is over. I deserve to be dead. No one's gonna believe me. So all that suicidal ideation came in. I know I was a danger to myself. I got myself to my doctor and I was in a hysterical, full blown PTSD mode.
The doctor called a fifty one to fifty on me, made me go to the psyche ward and I spent like three weeks in the sideboard as a full time patient, group therapy all day.
I think from a survivor perspective, it's a lot Hannibal Burist comes out, you know, and everyone was just sort of snapped too. And around that time, now it's not just a comedy bit. This, this is getting out to the world, and then you have people now speaking out, like the dots almost started very very quickly kind of connecting. For you, this was very unsettling. I hear that there's a risk of simplifying the story and saying, oh, somebody, see people are speaking out. Now it's out there. I'll
be okay. But in fact your experience was that it was shattering.
It was shattering, and I felt also really conflicted because as a visual artist, I'm known for being a black feminist. I felt like, what kind of a hypocrite would I be to be known in the fine art world as a black feminist painter and not be courageous enough to speak out like these women. But again, I had thought that if I spoke up, I'd be dead, and I didn't want to relive the whole trauma. And now it
was coming full force, physically in control. I'm telling you, doctor Ramene, I was twenty four to seven dissociated flashback, was critically ill. I couldn't even function.
It was a very destabilizing experience. That's something I want survivors to hear is that there's a range of responses when other people come forth.
So I have all this happening at home, a violent husband trying to silence me and blame me and shame me, six kids who love Bill Cosby because you know who doesn't love fat Albert, and I'm like, I can't go public, like their dad wouldn't even tell my kids why was
in the hospital. It's like, you can't tell the kids that you were drugged and raped by Bill Cosby because if you tell them, they're going to think you're a slut and a horn that you did it, which is bs and they're going to tell their friends and then their friends are going to slut shame you and all this crazy stuff. And then so we were arguing and he was yelling at me and you know, slamming stuff and throwing his fist in the air and punching holes
through walls. And then my kid are oldest at the time, seventeen. He comes down the stairway to this argument. He's like, Mommy, what you mean you're one of Bill Cosby's victims. Yeah, Rapha, it's like mommy. And he's like, is this why you were in the hospital. I'm like, yeah, he's a mommy. You got to speak up. You got to speak up, Mommy, you got to join the other women. So his response was exactly the opposite of what his dad had expected. And because of that, son, Raphael I was like wow.
I started listening and Beverly Johnson, knowing that I was a victim, came to my house and she was trying to convince me. I was showing her all my evidence, of which I have a lot, and she was like, Lily, you gotta be public, and I was like, I can't. I spent from November until I was ready to come public in May, saying no way was I ever going to go to public. No way. So Beverly Johnson tell some of the survivors, so I had, so some of the survivors, a couple of them started to contacting me,
whom I didn't know. I heard your victim, you have to come public. I'm like, no way, no way, no way, no way, And then finally found the courage to do it, and it was terrifying. There's like sixty four or five of us who've gone public so far about Bill Cosby's sexual violence towards us, But at that time, I was like, maybe number forty seven. If it weren't for those women, I would have gone public. So I came back home
that day after having spoken to the public. There was a van parked outside of my house, and I was like, so paranoid at that. I'm sure Bill Cosby sent somebody to kill me.
I would completely understand. I don't think that's paranoid. You know, that actually feels like a realistic fear, given all you've been through. Again, it's always language matters, right, talking to yourself as though you're stupid or dumb or paranoid. No, I actually think that everything you were doing made sense from a trauma response and the realistic fear when somebody threatens you in such a fundamental way and still has that power, and then you're seeing the reach of how
much harm. Sixty five women may have come forward. That means there's probably at least double that many who aren't coming forward.
I know some who haven't gone.
Yeah, I would say it was white women might have actually felt that may would have been heard more than black women would have heard coming forward as well, not just because women of color are often less likely to be heard by any system, law enforcement, justice systems, society at large if they talk about sexual assault or sexual abuse, but that this was a black icon, so if they came out, they were going to endure much worse from
the black community than white women would. White women would face a different series of accusations, but the fact is is that the black women would be almost get in a worse way. So you were being disloyal totally.
And I thank you for mentioning that, doctor Raminey, because I want people to understand that out of the sixty five of us who have come public, a third of us are black women. Black women, we make up like five and a half percent of the population of the United States. So that means he was actually targeting black women.
Correct the way he would perpetrate, the way he would groom targets, and all of that was so intentional because he was so convinced that there's no way these women are going to speak out. I'm an icon. Just the audacity of it, you know, the emboldenedness with each time it happened. It was like doubling down, tripling down, and nothing is going to happen. You know, nothing's going to happen to me.
Before I went public, I said, well, the only reason I would go public is if anything that I could do or say would help change these antiquated laws, these statue limitations, these arbitrary time frames, and so yes, So I very quickly began working with a woman named Caroline Hellman and other copy survivors, and we testified, we lobbied, we campaigned, and we went to Sacramento and we abolished that statue limitation law. It was like, in sixteen months,
six hearings of unanimous votes. So yes, there's that. So that now opens up a window. So now the States are changing in the sense that they're opening up these what they call look back windows. Right. So the reason I have a case in New Jerseys because they opened to look back so cow survivors have the opportunity to hold their rapist accountable in a court of civil law. It wasn't until that day that he was released from prison.
Earlier I was like, Okay, I have to take advantage of that New Jersey law and follow lawsuit against Bill CONSTI so that I can see my day in course, so this evidence that I have can be presented so he can be held accountable. But even then, even knowing that New Jersey had changed their laws, I didn't want to do anything with it.
That's so so common, Lily. I've worked with survivors of rape and sexual assault. They'll get about two thirds, even two thirds is the way down the track, and then there's that moment when they find out that they have to face their perpetrator in court, and we work through it in therapy from a trauma in foreign perspective, the most important thing we can ever tell someone we're working with is you always have choice. You always have choice.
But it's such a complicated space because survivors will say I don't want to do this. I don't think I can handle this. I literally feel I'm going to die and if people need me alive. But in the same breath they'll say, I'm so worried. If I don't do this, then this person's going to get away with it and other people are going to be harmed by them. It's almost like, no matter what direction a survivor turns in,
it's the wrong direction. They're letting other people down, They're letting themselves down there, and the vast majorities, vast majority of rape trials do not end up in a guilty verdict.
That's right. Only less than two percent of rapists ever see a day behind bars.
So that's my point. Do you go through all that, even with rape kits exactly, So, you go through all of that and then still that person then could be out in the world who can still harm you. If the survivor is a woman of color, forget it. Then there's an attitude of this is too big a risk. But then the person who doesn't take it to trial often feels a sense of moral injury, as though I've done wrong by not pushing this point.
Yeah, I felt like that too. I felt like guilty, like I have to speak out.
So Andrea konstant that was definitely a turning point. I actually think Beverly Johnson was also a turning point in this too. Remember when she spoke out and I thought, Okay, there are more and more people because some of us did not know the names of the survivors, even though some of them had really excellent careers, they may not have been household names. Beverly Johnson was, and when she spoke out, people started sitting up straighter and saying, what
the heck is happening. Then we have Andrea Constance trial. What was it like when Andrea Constance spoke out and when her case went to trial?
For you, Well, there's this survivor's siblinghood. I say siblinghood because I'm friends with or I become siblings with survivors of famous predators who are men. So there was the survivor's sisterhood that played a key role because they were there in the courtroom with us. But it was also really scary being in that courtroom because, like a lot of courtrooms, it was small, and so that was the first time I had seen Bill Cosby in person since
nineteen ninety two. There were multiple times where he'd passed by me within just a few inches that I could smell the raunchy cologne or the tobacco on his breath and hear his breathing, and it was triggering. And there were sometimes where a number of us Cosby survivors we
were actually triggered into flashbacks. By that time, I had learned through my hospitalizations for the PTSD and my therapist that there's certain things that I can do to help get me out of the dissociation, out of the flashback, such as open up an orange. So I kept an orange with me, and then they had a trauma therapist at the courthouse who had a dog whom we could pet to help bring us out of dissociation. But a number of us we would have flashbacks and sobbing, and
that experience happened to me. And then black arbitrary men on the street were coming up and attacking me. It was nuts. I mean literally just like coming up, pulling up their cars in front of me and sometimes you know, lunging at me with their fists raised. At the courthouse, this was happening. It was scary, but I knew that I was healing in this sense that I didn't pass
out from hyperventilating. Like even to this day, when I'm on the freeway and I have panic attacks, sometimes it's so severe that I could actually pass out from the hyperventilation I have to pull over. But during all the times that I was in the trial as an audience member, I'd never passed out. I want to give deference to all the women on the stands, and if you could have seen those women on the stand really stand firm
and strong and while they're being attacked. I have never in my life seen so much victim blaming and tolerating the courtroom that it's just like, how do they allow this? And they were really revictimized. I'm hoping and praying that at some point I'll have that opportunity to present my evidence in court, so I'll have to find the stamina and the strength to not dissociate and to answer the questions like as well as they did.
Thing that was being foisted on so many defendants in these cases was well, you're an actor, so she knows how to act. And that's what the lawyers were always hitting back with, Well, she's an actor, she knows how to cry the tears at the right time. First of all, he is an actor too, and he was out acting everyone, charming and charising them and being so charismatic and drawing
people in and then harming them. Called actor gaslight defense that oh, the tears are fake, because actors can fake tears. She's performing like somebody who's been harmed by a crime would be.
It's really like a three ring circus the way these victims are slut shamed on the stands. So to see that, to see my survivor systems attack like that, was so saddening. And then when the verdict finally came in guilty, guilty, guilty, so stunned that I gasped and I cried, and I felt vindicated. I felt like I was dreaming. I had hope.
And then similarly, when he was released from prison on a so called technicality early right, he had a ten year sentence and after two and a half years or so he was released, that was also like a stab in the back. I felt deeply betrayed and that I didn't understand it because we were in court and we heard that this so called agreement that was made between the former prosecutor and Bill Cosby. There was no court
record of it. Going to believe two men saying that there was some kind of a backdoor agreement.
Can you talk about the survivor community, because I think that's that's really important. You're in a very unique space. So I think that anyone who's ever experienced sexual assault or rape already feels isolated from the world, as though you are different. Some people feel that they're sully damaged, they feel bad about themselves. Society piles onto that. It's not talked about. It makes people uncomfortable, So it's a
very isolated feeling for survivors of these experiences. Then you add on to that when the perpetrator is somebody who's very well known, and that's a whole different space. People are even more likely to doubt, to blame, to shame, how dare you bring down my hero kind of thing?
Right, the survivor's sisterhood or what I call the survivor's siblinghood is definitely the silver lining out of all the trauma, and like even though like when I get the call like, oh, we have to stand and support of the Weinstein survivors who are part of the sisterhood, I'm longo, No, I have to be in a courtroom with Harvey Weinstein and it's just a few feet away, and I'm like, But when you're in that courtroom with the Weinstein survivors and
they're sitting beside you, and they know that you took time out of your day to support them, and you're holding them through their crying and you're crying, it brings so much meaning to the whole thing, you know. And part of the sisterhood is also the R. Kelly survivors.
I've met the R. Kelly survivors, and they I think have it the worst because they're all black women and they were disbelieved, and I think that they have strength like no other survivor does of a iconic perpetrator in their case R Kelly, who sang songs made people believe
that they could fly. It's comforting, it's empowering. One of the difficult things I must say about is that I get a lot of calls and emails from people all over the world who thank me that because of you speaking out, I was able to hold my priest accountable or tell my daughters that my teacher rape me or this or that. But then Also, some people look at you as if you're some kind of therapist and you're not.
Can you talk to my niece who was rare? Can you talk to my That's tough and it's really hard because I'm not a therapist and it's triggering, so I have to work on. My therapist taught me how to, like, you know, tap on certain parts of yes. Right before going to the Cosby sentencing hearing and September twenty eighteen, I was on a busy road that was like a freeway when I started to have a panic attack and hyperventilate.
I had to pull over the road really quickly to get safe, and a cop was behind me and he stopped me, and I couldn't speak because I was hyperventilating, and I managed to get my therapist on the phone through the police, and he was threatened that he would take me to jail if I didn't cooperate and get the registrat. But I couldn't even speak. I couldn't move my fingers because I was so hyperventilated, so much COTO
in my brain. And finally my therapist got on speakerphone and she talked me through the deep breathing and I calmed down and I was sobbing, and the police it was really nice because I'm so sorry, ma'am. Do you want me to take you to the hospital. I'm okay, And then like the next day, I went to the sentencing hearing. So it's real. You know that TSD is debilitating.
But I'm sleeping the night terrors terrifying because you're in your subconscious and all of a sudden, I think I'm being suffocated by a pillow and I can't breathe them, and I wake up gasping. And sometimes my poor kids, if they're in a room in the morning and my daughter comes in and wakes me, and I, you know, scream Sometimes I wake up screaming and I'm like, I'm I'm sorry, baby. You can go right back to it
pretty quickly. I guess like any war veteran has PTSD, except the war waged upon us was waged upon the landscapes of our bodies and not overseas.
It's different, but it's similar. Not all PTSD is the same. It has to do with how severe and how protracted and how close the person was to trauma. But the one thing we're really learning about too is the difference between relational trauma and trauma that happens in war. If you look at some of the military PTSD literature, there are people who went through it and it was in this context if you were doing something that was supposed to be for a greater good. But depends on what
the war was. World War two vets had different profiles and for example, Vietnam era vets because of how those two conflicts were differently framed. So it's very complicated. But when we come to rape survivors, and particularly rape survivors, the majority who know their perpetrator, this is relational betrayal trauma.
It goes beyond the actual violation of body, but violation of trust and betrayal of a human relationship a person you held up as a father figure, as a spouse, as a partner, as a parent of your children, as a mentor whatever that perpetrator is. It changes it. And I think that the problems we say PTSD we think it's a uniform entity, but it behaves and looks and feels differently to the survivors depending on the context in
which the trauma took place. It's always terrible, but it's different kinds of terrible, and it has different influences on this. My conversation will continue after this break. I'm going to put on my little Freudian hat for a minute. You did something so interestingly when you were talking about the survivor's sisterhood, but you slipped and you called it your survivor's system instead of your survivor's sister Here's what's interesting
about that. I actually think that that's a good thing because I think that it is beyond just the survivor's sisters. It has become this social support system around you that is helping you with the process of healing and the validation you need that. Like you said, you're not a therapist, and it can be a lot when people ask you to be one. But when we feel we're paying it forward, that idea of taking our pain and our suffering and converting it, there is a lot of healing energy in that.
So that takes me though to my question, how is your healing going.
It's hard because I'm still in a legal battle with Bill Cosby. I still live in fear. I still deal with feelings of self loathing, yeah and worthlessness. My day to day life is difficult in the sense of the triggers that I always have to deal with, they come out of nowhere, even my daughter whispering in my ear or something, because Bill Cosby whispered in my ear after he raped me in Las Vegas. You know, damn, you're so strong, Bernard. People telling me I'm strong, So I
have to deal with those things. People even just like telling me drink. Sometimes I'm in the street and people recognize me and I'm trying to have a really good day, you know, just just having a good day, and someone will come in the street and, bless their hearts, they want to be supportive, but oh, I know you. Or I'm taking my dog to the vet and there's this big, gigantic poster about that documentary of Bill Cosby's. Before you'd google my name and just my acting and my fine
artwork would come up. Now this horrible mugshot Bill Cosby comes up. So there's this day to day difficulty. Yes, sleeping is difficult, showering is difficult. But the survivor's sisterhood is like, I really don't know if I could survive without it. But we don't want to pity myself and say like, oh, like I'm as little fragile little thing. I'm pushing through. I'm surviving, but it's not easy. It's like,
really really not easy. I do have these feelings of I'm stupid and a fear of what's going to happen when and if we make it to court. I want to be strong for my children, but then at the same time, when I fail, I've done them wrong. When those days were I just want to like cuddle up in bed and disappear.
But I think that that's an important answer you gave, because we always want to hear like I survived and now I'm thriving and all my days are great, and then other survivors are saying, well, this is not my experience, and when they hear from someone like you who has been walking this walk, there's going to be good days. There's going to be bad days, there's going to be things that remind you of it. Then there's going to be a good week, and then there's going to be
a bad week. And I also want to even reframe what you're calling resilience or lack of resilience. I think we have this sort of simplistic version of resilience of like every day I get out, but I fight the good fight, and you were saying, oh, I'm not so strong. Some days I stay in bed. The staying in bed days are resilient days. That's a repleating of your nervous system. Your nervous system took a hit. It's almost like getting an injury when you're young and then having to put
that leg up. We think that if I'm not getting out there fighting every day, I'm not resilient. Quite the contrary. If anything, you're honoring your body, a body that was harmed, and now you're honoring it by giving it the rest it needs. He's a free man right now, I.
Know, and that gives me a fear. I'm really afraid because if he says that he's well enough to tour and do stand up comic routines, I don't doubt that he'd be well enough to do what he's done pretty much with impune his whole life, which is drug and rape girls and women.
If someone did approach you and said, hey, something like this happened to me. I was sexually abused, assaulted, raped by someone. What would you tell them?
That's a great question. I would tell them what I told my friend. She's an actor. From Scotland and she came to me about this famous French director who sexually assaulted her. She asked me if I should speak up and go public and I was like, well, first of all, that's your choice, but I want to let you know that there's great, great, great, great burden that comes with speaking out. And if you're going to speak out publicly about a beloved individual, get ready for backlash, get ready
for your life being made much more difficult. Then you have to keep reliving the trauma. Like, on the one hand, pause and think about the effects of speaking out against someone beloved publicly. On the other hand, there's the empowering. I think that speaking out was the best thing that I could have done for my healing because I broke the silence.
It's actually a fantastic answer because survivors need realistic expectations. So as a final question, what is one thing that you would want people to learn from your story?
I would say to know that in your path of silence breaking and healing that you will encounter disappointment. You will find that even though you may have a rape kit or a police report and go through a trial,
that your rapists will still be found not guilty. There's literally a ninety nine percent chance that your rapist will be found not guilty, and to not let that disappointment discourage you from pushing forward, because there's political or culture shifting power in your voice, and there's healing to be found in the survivor siblinghood. Trust that you're speaking out in the end will heal you.
That is it's incredible wisdom, and I cannot thank you enough.
You're amazing.
I appreciate that, and I need to learn to take that in, especially from someone as sort of powerful a storyteller as you are. So thank you for that.
Do you realize the influence that you've had on modern culture? Really?
I think so, But I'll be very open with you. I've had my own history and in a strange way, not always wanting to be seen and wanting to be small. And yet I also recognize that I was blessed to be educated. I'm the child of immigrants. Education was everything, and I was told it was the only way I could be seen in this culture. So all of that said,
I guess I do. I think it's a conversation. I'm angry at the field of mental health for not having had this conversation soon, right, and people need to know that this is a thing so they can protect themselves and above all else blaming themselves. So that's all I've ever wanted to do is get that message out because I know it silenced me for a very long time. I didn't find my voice until I was over fifty and so ben at that point, I thought, Okay, you know,
I'm going to do it. And I came from again generations of women who were silenced, so I thought, you know, for no other reason but for the ancestors, I was going to do this.
So I'm really sorry for the trauma you and door, and I'm so thankful that you are speaking because you represent so much to so many people as a woman of color. And then you're just so beautiful. Oh my god.
What you've done for me and my family is that you've provided us because my sister Georgie is always sharing in my sibling my real blood sibling group chat doctor Rominey videos, You've got given us this roadmap for that really helps us and me understand why did I act that way and why did this perpetrator act like that towards me? That it's just kind of normal and when we learn from you the narcissism, it is like a system.
It's like principality of evil or personality fact that like everybody acts the same, like Harvey Weinstein was saying the same kind of things that Bill Cosby says. You've given me tools to really understand my own healing process.
I really appreciate that, because that's what this is about, is to give resources to people. Because you have found your voice. But when we think about all the people out there who are marginalized, who don't have voice, who
have no societal power, and need some guidance. My hope was to create resources that as long as you had an Internet connection somewhere, that this would be free, because most people will never get into a therapist room, or can't afford to get into a therapist room at a minimum. I wanted to at least make sure that there was some knowledge out there to at least bridge some of that pain, because that's always been my concern is how
many people can't access help. So thank you. What I really appreciate you about your voice is how realistic it is is that you know, I get a little burned out on people who just sort of scream all this positivity. I'm like, is that feeling when we temper these stories with what it looks like in the dark knights of the soul. That's what survivors need to hear because otherwise
they feel shamed again. So I really appreciate you sharing not only you're the triumph of getting up in the morning, but also the underbelly of healing which isn't always pretty and make us feel like we're not doing it right. But if it hurts, it means you're doing it right. Thank you. These are my takeaways from my conversation with Lily first love bombing that early idealization and seduction can also look like a process of intel gathering, a time
when a predatory person intensely learns about someone else. In this case, Lily shares that Cosby learned about her love of music, the abuse that happened in her family of origin, her Afro Cuban heritage, and her love of art. This interest and acting as a father figure reflect the predatory elements of love bombing, which is often an exploitation of a person's vulnerabilities. Cosby not only learned her vulnerabilities, he exploited her strengths as an educated young woman with ambition
and aspirations. In my next takeaway, when we view Cosby's behavior through a narcissistic lens, it all fits. Manipulative behavior, arrogance, the future faking when he'd say, just come meet me here and we can talk about this role I am writing for you. Down the line, he's violating the rights of others, his entitlement, contempt and dismissiveness once he gets
what he wants from someone. The exploitative behavior, the rage, and an utter lack of empathy while being able to put on a false mask for the rest of the world. Narcissism is a driver of this kind of abusive, dehumanizing behavior. For my next takeaway, Lily's experience and the fallout of the narcissistic abuse she experienced is consistent with what we see in all survivors of narcissistic abuse. Self blame, anxiety, shame,
post traumatic reactions, confusion, fear, panic attacks, hopelessness, helplessness. It's all there. It's the betrayal which occurs within what is supposed to be a trusting relationship that leads to this fallout. This goes above and beyond the consequences of the assaults. This is about being slowly drawn into a false web of trust which is ultimately and horrifically betrayed. In my next takeaway, enabling is such a toxic dynamic in narcissistic relationships.
It is the emboldening of narcissistic behavior by people around the narcissist, their friends, families, people who benefit financially from them, even society at large. Well, what if society is the enabler. That is a bigger fight than any one person can take on. In Lily's case, she was not only shouldering the burden of being abused and assaulted, but of the recriminations from society at large and particularly the black community
for calling out someone who had been depicted as a hero. Sadly, in all of these cases, it is the survivors who are shamed for dismantling the delusion of the false hero, not the perpetrators who brought themselves down. For this next takeaway, we're going to talk about doctor Jennifer Fried's concept of institutional betrayal, which takes the idea of betrayal trauma and elevate it's to an entire organization or institution like, for example,
the entertainment industry. This is a high stakes industry with a high bar of entry that attracts young people who lack societal power and is a set up for institutional betrayal. This particular case is a galling example of how an entire industry stood by while women were harmed for decades and in essence betrayed them, blame them, silence them, and
did not give them any safe spaces. In my next takeaway, Lily talks about her survivor sisterhood or system of other women who had been abused and silenced by publicly powerful people and is a space where it is very difficult to find people who have had a similar experience. These survivor spaces are essential for people. They may be support groups, online groups, or groups of people who show up for
each other. There are few more important tools for survivorship than support, especially for survivors of narcissistic abuse, a pattern that is often not recognized by systems and professionals. For this next takeaway, Lily raised the issue of rape myths. These are myths that are upheld by society and even by systems like law enforcement and judicial systems. Overall, rape myths serve to blame the victims of rape and sexual assault.
Most common among these are that if it happens more than once, then that is not rape because a person agreed to the second time, or that a person liked it.
Other rape myths are that no can mean yes, or that agreeing to meet in a private place means that a person is agreeing to sex as well, that dressing provocatively means that a person asked for it, that most rapes are perpetrated by strangers, that if a person does not report it right away, that it is not a rape, or that rape only happens to young people who are
considered to be attractive. These myths are deeply dangerous, silence survivors and result in systems that continue to retraumatize survivors. And in my last takeaway, sometimes our takes on healing
and resilience are a little bit too feel good. We want it to be easy, We want to hear the stories of the phoenixes rising from the ashes, but that blocks us from seeing the reality of healing and survivorship, which is often initially two steps forward, two steps back, and then every so often a few more steps forward. Now Lily has gone on to do wonderful things in her career, has raised six children, survived a painful marriage, and has succeeded in changing the statute of limitations on
sexual assault reporting. She also still has panic attacks and experiences of being triggered. This is the reality of survivorship and it is a daily process.