Actor Danny Masterson Drugged, Raped Women, Prosecutor Says

 Actor Danny Masterson Drugged, Raped Women, Prosecutor Says

Long Island-born actor Danny Masterson drugged three women before raping them at his house in the Hollywood Hills between 2001 and 2003, the prosecutor said in his opening statement to the jury on Monday in the retrial of the "That '70s Show" star.

 

Masterson is accused of raping three women: his long-term partner, and two women he knew through friend circles at the Church of Scientology, and all three were given beverages that contained drugs, according to deputy district attorney Reinhold Mueller.

"The evidence will show that they were drugged," Mueller assured the jury. Such evidence isn't accepted by the defense.

The first trial, which ended in a mistrial due to a deadlocked jury on all three counts, did not directly address drug use; instead, Mueller had to infer it from the testimony of the women, who claimed they were woozy, disoriented, and occasionally unconscious on the nights they claimed the actor had raped them.

Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo of the Los Angeles Superior Court, however, is permitting the direct assertion during the second trial.

The prosecution's only evidence, according to Masterson's attorney Philip Cohen, is those murky tales and allegations, and there is "no drugging charge in this case," he informed the jury during the defense's opening statement.

Because the police investigation that resulted in the two trials did not start until nearly 15 years after the occurrences, neither side's attorneys denied that Masterson may have given the women any drugs.

However, Mueller stated that he will contact a toxicology unit analyst from the police, "who will tell you how some of the most common drugs used in date rape work, how quickly they're metabolized, and what side effects look like."

A toxicologist "can come in and opine to whatever they want, but there is no toxicology report, there is no urine, there is no blood work, there is no DNA," Cohen retorted.

Olmedo chastised Cohen for saying so repeatedly, but Cohen insisted that he expected testimony at the second trial to demonstrate that one of the women Masterson is accused of raping witnessed him prepare the supposedly drugged drink he gave her.

Another woman, a young actress who spent an evening alone with Masterson at his home in 2003, made no mention of drug use at the time, according to Cohen's testimony to the jury.

She talked to her parents and her friends about how her date with Masterson went, but she never once admitted to taking drugs. Never," said Cohen.

Years after the investigation started, she would only bring up her belief that she had been drugged, according to Cohen.

The women's stories are similar in this way and in many other ways because they have spoken to one another and "cross-pollinated" the details of their accounts, Cohen claimed. They did this repeatedly despite the detective in charge of the case warning them that doing so might taint the case against Masterson.