Global Courant 2023-04-26 03:36:40
LOS ANGELES (AP) — An actor’s ex-girlfriend Danny Masterson testified Tuesday that he had become increasingly violent and controlling during their five-year relationship when he raped her in their bed in November 2001.
The woman, a model who began dating Masterson in 1996, shortly before he rose to fame as the star of the sitcom “That ’70s Show,” said there were previous times she woke up in the night to find Masterson on top of her . , and had accepted sex with him so as not to anger him.
However, on this night she clearly said she did not agree and resisted.
“I told him ‘no, I don’t want to have sex’. He didn’t listen to me,” said the woman, the first to take the stand in the Los Angeles courtroom Masterson’s retrial on three counts of rape.
She spoke faster and became more emotional as the story progressed. “So I kept begging him, like ‘please get off me, no.’ And he kept going. And it hurt. And I remember trying to push his chest away from me. I couldn’t get him off.”
She said Masterson raised her arms above her head to keep her down. As she struggled, she remembered Masterson’s clearly established “rules” that no one touch his hair or his face, which she had previously heeded.
“If I did this, I knew it wouldn’t be right. But I thought it might stop him.”
She said she managed to free one arm and yanked on his hair at the back of his head. She said he then hit her on the jaw with a partially closed fist, spat on her, and stormed off.
master sonwho is accused of raping three women between 2001 and 2003 is being prosecuted tried again after the jury with him first trial was stuck on all three points. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers have denied all allegations in the trial, saying the women’s accounts are riddled with inconsistencies and lack credibility.
Masterson, 47, faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted on all three charges.
The Associated Press usually does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.
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Masterson’s former girlfriend said on Tuesday that the rape was a particularly dark moment in a series of ugly incidents in their relationship.
She said that after a happy freshman year, he began trying to take control of her life and personality, often invoking the principles of the Church of Scientology. She had joined the church at the behest of Masterson, a lifelong member, when their relationship became serious, cutting her off from her Alabama family and nonmember friends.
She testified that he became increasingly sexually aggressive towards her and became physically violent, once dragging her naked out of the bedroom by her hair when she refused to have sex.
She also testified that about a month after the November rape, she and Masterson went to dinner at a restaurant they frequented near their home. She said she drank a glass or two of wine with dinner, then had no memory between getting up to leave and waking up alone in bed in pain well into the next day.
She said that when she tried to explain the pain, Masterson admitted that he had sex with her while she was unconscious.
“He started laughing at me,” she testified. “I asked him if I was unconscious the whole time, and he said yes.”
That’s what Chief Prosecutor Reinhold Mueller said Monday in his opening statement that Masterson drugged her, as did the other two accusers, though there would be no physical evidence of an investigation that did not begin until about 15 years after the alleged assaults. Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo allows the prosecution to make the allegation at the second trial when it was only implied in the first trial.
Masterson’s attorney Philip Cohen said in the defense’s opening statement Monday that those allegations are all the prosecution has, telling jurors, “There are no charges of drugging in this case.”
Masterson is not charged with raping the woman the night she believes she was drugged. Prosecutors didn’t share their reasoning for leaving it out, but without her ability to tell the moment and without forensic drug testing, it would have been difficult to prove within the law.
But the night finally led her to report him to her Church of Scientology Ethics Officer. She testified that she was told that what Masterson had done to her was not rape, that given the status of their relationship, it was not possible. She said she was also told it was against Church policy for her to go to the police and report a fellow Scientologist like Masterson.
The church vehemently denied having such a policy in a statement after similar testimony at the first trial.
The woman went to the police in 2016, long after she had left the church.
She will return to the stands on Wednesday for more questioning during the trial, which is expected to last four weeks.
