That ’70s Show star Danny Masterson (pic) could get as a lot as 30 years to life in prison at his sentencing Thursday for the rapes of two girls two decades in the past.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo is about to condemn the 47-year-old actor after ruling on a protection movement for a brand new trial that she’s very more likely to reject, and after listening to impression statements from the victims.
A jury of seven girls and 5 males discovered Masterson responsible of two counts on May 31 after seven days of deliberations. Both assaults occurred in Masterson’s Hollywood-area house in 2003, when he was at the peak of his fame on the Fox community sitcom That ’70s Show.
The jury could not attain a unanimous verdict on a 3rd rely, an allegation that Masterson additionally raped a longtime girlfriend.
The verdict got here in a second trial after a jury failed to succeed in verdicts on three counts of forcible rape in December and a mistrial was declared.
Prosecutors alleged that Masterson used his prominence in the Church of Scientology – the place all three girls had been additionally members at the time – to keep away from penalties for decades after the assaults.
The girls blamed the church for their hesitancy in going to police about Masterson. They testified that once they reported him to Scientology officers, they had been informed they weren’t raped, had been put by means of ethics packages themselves, and had been warned towards going to regulation enforcement to report a member of such excessive standing.
“They had been raped, they had been punished for it, and so they had been retaliated towards,” Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller informed jurors at the trial. “Scientology informed them there’s no justice for them.”
The church mentioned in an announcement after the decision that the “testimony and descriptions of Scientology beliefs” throughout the trial had been “uniformly false.”
“The Church has no coverage prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting legal conduct of anybody – Scientologists or not – to regulation enforcement,” the assertion mentioned.
Masterson didn’t testify, and his attorneys referred to as no witnesses. The protection argued that the acts had been consensual, and tried to discredit the ladies’s tales by highlighting modifications and inconsistencies over time, which they mentioned confirmed indicators of coordination between them.
The girls whose testimony led to Masterson’s conviction mentioned that in 2003, he gave them drinks and that they then turned woozy or handed out earlier than he violently raped them.
Olmedo allowed prosecutors and accusers to say immediately in the second trial that Masterson drugged the ladies, whereas solely permitting the ladies to explain their situation in the primary.
Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there was no toxicology proof to again up the assertion. The situation could be an element in a deliberate attraction from the protection of Masterson’s conviction.
The Associated Press doesn’t sometimes identify individuals who say they’ve been sexually abused.
Masterson starred with Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace in That ’70s Show from 1998 till 2006.
He had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy The Ranch, however was written off the present when an LAPD investigation was revealed the next 12 months.
While that investigation started earlier than a wave of ladies shook Hollywood with tales about Harvey Weinstein in October 2017, the conviction and sentencing of Masterson nonetheless represents a significant #MeToo period success for Los Angeles prosecutors, together with the conviction of Weinstein himself final 12 months. – AP
