Las Vegas woman testified against Bill Cosby at recent retrial

“Convicted. On all three counts.”

The words came Thursday from her husband, Benjamin Lublin, but to Lise-Lotte Lublin, 51, they still didn’t seem real.

It had been four years since the Las Vegas teacher came forward with her allegations that 80-year-old comedic legend Bill Cosby had drugged and raped her inside the Elvis Suite at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1989.

On Thursday, it all came to fruition: Cosby was convicted Thursday of the 2004 sexual assault of Andrea Constand, a former operations director for the Temple University women’s basketball team.

“You did it,” Benjamin Lublin told his wife.

Her whole body shaking, the fifth witness to testify in Cosby’s retrial said she felt like she was living in a “surreal world” as she walked out of her sixth-grade classroom at Johnson Junior High School.

To Lublin, who wasn’t permitted to testify in the first trial, the new witnesses’ words were in sync with Constand’s testimony.

All the additional witnesses who testified at the retrial said they had been assaulted in Nevada.

Heidi Thomas, a Colorado music teacher, was a 24-year-old aspiring model when she met with Cosby in April 1984 in Reno, where she told jurors she was drugged and sexually assaulted.

Chelan Lasha, then a 17-year-old aspiring model and actress, met him at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1986, where she testified that she was drugged and raped by Cosby.

Former model Janice Dickinson, who was 27 in 1982, told jurors she had flown from Bali to meet the famous comedian at a hotel room in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, after he promised to help with her acting and singing aspirations.

Janice Baker-Kinney, a former bartender who testified against Cosby, alleged that the comedian drugged and raped her at a house party in Reno in 1982.

‘My mom’s free’

On Friday afternoon, Lublin’s 11-year-old daughter, Sabrina, had just come home from school.

“My mom’s free,” she said of the verdict. “Justice served.”

Lublin realized she had been assaulted by Cosby after the first allegations surfaced in November 2014. When she went to file a police report with Las Vegas police, she found out the four-year statute of limitations had run out.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “If I had an idea of what had happened, I would have filed a report.”

That’s when she joined forces with attorney Gloria Allred and decided to advocate for a bill to change that. In May 2015, Gov. Brian Sandoval signed legislation that extended the statute of limitations for rape charges to 20 years.

She and her husband still want to reform states’ sexual assault laws, starting with those in Nevada, where they were both born and raised.

Lublin said she sees no need for a statute of limitations for sexual assault.

“You can’t put a time frame on rape. A person has to process that,” she said.

‘I trusted him’

Lublin remembers her encounter with Cosby, who in 1989 had offered to help her with improvisation skills and acting. At the time, the 23-year-old pursued acting and modeling to pay for her bachelor’s degree at UNLV.

When she met Cosby at the Las Vegas Hilton, he offered her some alcohol, she said, to help her relax. Lublin said she didn’t drink much, but after Cosby insisted, she accepted.

“I thought he was a protector, not a predator,” she said. “I trusted him because he’s ‘America’s Dad.’”

The next thing she knew, she woke up at home, where she thought she had been sick and had a bad reaction to the alcohol.

“I thought it was something that I had done,” she said. “I blamed myself.”

When Lublin first came forward, she said she received death threats and scores of people challenging the validity of the claims by her and other accusers.

“The MeToo movement really tipped the needle to the other side, with celebrities coming out there saying the same stories that the Cosby women said,” Lublin said. “Now they’re taking them at face value.”

Facing Cosby

Walking into the Pennsylvania courtroom this month, Lublin said she felt nervous to testify in front of Cosby. In front of the judges, attorneys, detectives and jurors.

One of the lawyers present was Kathleen Bliss, a Las Vegas defense attorney who represented Cosby.

“We want to thank Kathleen Bliss,” Lublin said, referring to the defense attorney’s closing arguments that came under criticism as shaming the accusers. “She did perform just like the stereotype of victimizing the victim of a rape case.”

That, Lublin said, helped the prosecution.

Bliss declined a request for an interview but released the following statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Mr. Cosby has a constitutional right to due process and to a fair trial. I will never second guess my representation of him. That said, I hope that all movements for victim’s rights include the silent, and poor, and disenfranchised. They need our voices, too.”

During her testimony, Lublin said she spoke to Cosby directly at times.

“I wanted to see what he looked like again, in person, and it was just frail and sad and just a little bit kind of pitiful,” she said. “This man doesn’t even experience remorse. He doesn’t feel. He doesn’t truly understand the trauma he has caused so many people.”

Her husband said he locked eyes with Cosby from across the courtroom.

“I hope you go to jail for the rest of your life,” he whispered.

Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter.