Nine women in Nevada sue Bill Cosby for alleged sexual assaults after state drops statute of limitations

Nine women accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault in a lawsuit filed this week in Nevada, alleging he used his “enormous power, fame, and prestige” to coerce them.

The suit, filed in federal court, alleges that Cosby drugged and assaulted the women on separate occasions in hotel rooms across Las Vegas, Reno, and Tahoe between 1979 and 1992.

The nine women — Lise Lotte-Lublin, Lili Bernard, Janice Baker-Kinney, Rebecca Cooper, Janice Dickinson, Linda Kirkpatrick, Angela Leslie, Pam Joy Abeyta, and Heidi Thomas — are a mix of models, actresses, and private citizens who publicly accused Cosby of assault in the past.

Bernard, who guest-starred on The Cosby Show, sued the comedian in December over a separate alleged assault in New York. In the Nevada case, Bernard alleges Cosby lured her to Las Vegas in the fall of 1990 under the pretense of a meeting with the producers of A Different World. Instead, she contends, Cosby drugged and raped her in his hotel room during what she claims he called a “mentoring session.”

Dickinson, a supermodel who testified about her sexual assault in Cosby’s 2018 Pennsylvania criminal trial, alleges he raped her in Lake Tahoe in 1992. According to the Nevada lawsuit, Cosby offered Dickinson a pill for her cramps during a work dinner before forcing himself on her in his hotel room. Dickinson said Cosby ignored her pleas to stop.

More recently, “lookback laws” that lift statute of limitations in states like Nevada, New York, and California have helped other Cosby accusers and victims get a shot at justice.

The Nevada suit is moving forward because of a new law that lifted the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases involving adults. This is the second time this month Cosby has been sued because statutes of limitations were relaxed: Linda Valentino, a former Playboy model, filed a suit June 1 that accuses Cosby of sexual assault and sexual battery, stemming from an incident that she says took place in Los Angeles in 1969.

And in 2022, Cosby was found civilly liable of molesting Judy Huth — who was 16 years old at the time — at the Playboy Mansion in 1975. Huth was awarded $500,000 in damages.

Lotte-Lublin, one of the nine Nevada plaintiffs, advocated for the state’s new legislation because of Cosby’s alleged assault.

» READ MORE: Bill Cosby is facing another sexual assault lawsuit

“For years I have fought for survivors of sexual assault and today is the first time I will be able to fight for myself,” Lotte-Lublin said in a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Lotte-Lublin accused Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in a Vegas hotel room in 1989. During this encounter, the lawsuit alleges, Lotte-Lublin met Cosby in his room for an improv lesson, where he gave her two drinks to “help her relax.” The beverages left her disoriented, the lawsuit says, when Cosby first placed her hands near his genitals while he masturbated and then dragged her into the bathroom to assault her.

Cosby spokesperson Andrew Wyatt accused the women in the lawsuit of being motivated by an “addiction to massive amounts of media attention and greed.”

“From this day forward, we will not continue to allow these women to parade various accounts of an alleged allegation against Mr. Cosby anymore without vetting them in the court of public opinion and inside of the courtroom,” Wyatt said in a statement.

» READ MORE: Bill Cosby's 2018 sexual assault conviction overturned: A timeline of the court case

Cosby, 85, has now been accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment by more than 60 women. He denies all sex crime allegations.

Cosby was the first celebrity tried and convicted of sexual assault during the #MeToo era; a Pennsylvania jury found him guilty of assaulting Temple employee Andrea Constand at his Cheltenham home in 2004. That conviction has since been overturned, and Cosby was released from a Philadelphia prison in 2021 after serving a little over two years of his sentence.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.