At a pre-trial listening to within the Danny Masterson rape case final week, Decide Charlaine Olmedo laid down a fundamental floor rule.
“This isn’t going to turn into a trial on Scientology,” she stated.
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However the function of the church will however be a key theme within the trial, which begins with jury choice on Tuesday. Masterson, the 46-year-old former star of “That ’70s Present,” is going through three prices of forcible rape and a potential sentence of 45 years to life.
Masterson is a Scientologist, and all three of his accusers had been members of the church on the time of the alleged assaults. Olmedo has indicated that she’s going to permit some testimony about Scientology and its practices, particularly to the extent that it helps clarify why the accusers delayed going to the police — for 2 of them, by greater than a decade.
At a preliminary listening to in Might 2021, all three stated they feared violating the church’s guidelines and being lower off from their religion neighborhood.
“When you’ve got a authorized state of affairs, it’s possible you’ll not deal with it externally from the church,” testified one of many accusers, who’s referenced as N. Trout within the proceedings. “You’ll be excommunicated.”
One other accuser, Jen B., testified that she apprehensive that she could be declared a “suppressive individual” if she went to the LAPD.
“My mother and father must disown me,” she stated. “My associates, everybody I knew would disown me. I couldn’t converse to them… I might be lied, cheated, stealed, harmed or destroyed.”
On the preliminary listening to, one in all Masterson’s legal professionals, Sharon Appelbaum, argued that the three accusers had fashioned a “sisterhood” to attempt to take down each Masterson and Scientology. She pointed to the involvement of Leah Remini, an ex-Scientologist who explored the case in opposition to Masterson on her A&E documentary collection.
The protection has additionally argued that the ladies are mendacity about consensual encounters as a result of they wish to extract a civil judgment. The three accusers filed a lawsuit in 2019 in opposition to Masterson and the church, alleging that they had been victims of “truthful sport” assaults after going to the police. After three years of authorized wrangling over whether or not the case ought to be determined via a church-run arbitration course of, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom denied the church’s enchantment on that case final week, and the case will go ahead in civil court docket.
One of many accusers, Jen B., additionally acquired just a few hundred thousand {dollars} in a settlement for her rape allegation in 2004.
Olmedo has predicted that the prison case will take lower than the allotted 4 weeks, and has tried to maintain the give attention to the three alleged rapes.
One of many accusers, Chrissie Carnell Bixler, dated Masterson for about six years within the late Nineties and early 2000s. In November 2001, she alleges that she awoke to seek out Masterson on high of her, penetrating her. She determined to battle again, and grabbed his hair, at which level she alleges that he struck her within the face. After she was capable of get him off of her, he alleges that he spit on her and referred to as her “white trash.”
Jen B. alleges that she went to Masterson’s home in April 2003. She testified on the preliminary listening to that he gave her an alcoholic drink after which threw her in a jacuzzi. After that, she began to really feel like she would throw up. She alleges that Masterson introduced her to a rest room upstairs, the place she vomited. She then remembered that Masterson put her within the bathe after which onto his mattress, the place she handed out.
“Once I got here to, he was on high of me and he was inside me,” she testified.
She stated she tried to push him away, however that he grabbed each of her wrists after which pulled a gun out of the nightstand. “Don’t fucking transfer,” he stated, in response to her testimony.
The next yr, she wrote a letter to the Worldwide Justice Chief inside Scientology, looking for “permission” to deliver a civil swimsuit and prison prices. She additionally stated she feared that doing so would end in “dropping all my family and friends who’re Scientologists.”
The justice chief, Mike Ellis, responded every week later, saying she must “determine for your self” whether or not to deliver a civil swimsuit. The letter didn’t handle the potential of going to the police.
“No matter your choices within the authorized area, you do want to use LRH expertise as the last word answer to any drawback,” Ellis wrote.
On the preliminary listening to, Jen. B testified that she took that to imply that “I couldn’t go to the police.”
Masterson’s protection legal professionals protested that the letter didn’t handle that, they usually argued that Scientology doctrine doesn’t really forbid members from going to the police.
Olmedo barred prosecutors from calling Claire Headley, an ex-Scientologist and church critic who was imagined to testify about church teachings. A lot of the theological parsing could also be left as much as the jury.
Jen. B did finally go to the police in 2004, however the D.A.’s workplace declined to file prices.
“They stated they couldn’t file as a result of he was a celeb — one woman wasn’t sufficient,” she testified. She stated she cried after the choice was made.
Years later, she could be put in contact with Trout and Carnell Bixler, they usually went to the LAPD, which reopened the investigation. Trout has alleged that Masterson raped her at his home someday in late 2003.
Requested on the stand final yr to clarify why she had not reported the incident on the time — even to church authorities — she defined that Masterson was a celeb and “his standing presents extra to the church.”
“All people was made conscious inside the church that sure people who find themselves of a celeb standing… are to be protected in a sure manner,” she stated. “They’ve much more energy by way of ethics responses from the higher-ups within the church.”
The accusers have now informed their tales many occasions, in police interviews, church proceedings, civil proceedings, and to family and friends. The protection — now led by attorneys Philip Cohen, Karen Goldstein and Shawn Holley — is predicted to attempt to expose discrepancies in these accounts, and to argue that the allegations have advanced to turn into extra violent and disturbing over time.
The prosecution, led by Reinhold Mueller and Ariel Anson, additionally sought to introduce as many as 27 separate incidents of harassment and stalking, which the accusers allege got here in response to their determination to go to the police.
As she did on the preliminary listening to, Olmedo stated she would permit some basic testimony on that topic to indicate the witnesses’ states of thoughts, however would hold in inside strict limits.
“We’re not going to begin going off into an entire bunch of various cases,” the choose stated.
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