UPDATED with afternoon session: A Los Angeles police officer testified Thursday during Danny Masterson’s rape trial that while didn’t remember the specifics of an initial meeting with Jane Doe #1 in 2004 at the LAPD Hollywood station, he did take her claims about being attacked by Masterson in his Hollywood Hills home in April 2003 “to be a sexual assault.”
The testimony by the then-front desk officer, Alexander Shlegel, corroborates the testimony the alleged victim gave last week and came on a day when Scientology again came to the fore, with another Masterson accuser detailing the church’s alleged “terror campaign” against her fellow accusers.
Under questioning by Deputy L.A. District Attorney Reinhold Mueller for the last part of today’s hearing, Shlegel confirmed that Jane Doe #1, aka Jen B, said she was attacked by Masterson on April 25, 2003, answering the prosecution’s queries with frequent glances at his report of nearly 20 years ago.
“She couldn’t breathe and she thought she was going to die,” Shlegal said Jane Doe #1 told him of her experience, which included a pillow being pushed down on her face.
Like Masterson a longtime Scientologist and a member of his tight social circle, Jane Doe #1 testified this week at length and often in tears about the spring 2003 attack and a 2002 assault. Almost a year after first visiting a Scientology ethics officer over the 2003 incident, she went to the police with no small hesitation on her part, according to her own statements in previous court filings and in testimony.
In 2004, Jane Doe #1 referred to the 2002 incident as consensual though she “refused” Masterson’s desire for anal sex, which he allegedly went ahead with. Over the years, she as come to see the 2002 incident as non-consensual, she testified last week.
In terms of testimony, Jane Doe #3 concluded the bulk of her two days of questions Thursday with a re-direct from Mueller about the specifics of statements she gave to the LAPD and prosecutors in 2017, and potential inconsistencies. “Yes sir,” the witness said when Mueller asked whether she was having a “panic attack” during her interview with LAPD Detective Esther Reyes.
While a redirect from the harsh cross-examination from the defense that took up most of the pervious part of the day, Mueller’s 15 minutes seemed in many ways more a refocusing on Masterson’s allegedly persistent sexual violence, and putting Scientology center stage.
“There would be no asking, no loving … a lot of times, it would happen where I would be asleep and I would wake up to him having sex with me,” Jane Doe #3, aka CB, told the court of the couple’s sex life during their relationship. “That was normal. It was the only thing I knew …that was just how it was,” she said over objections from the defense.
As the witness spoke again of a late 2001 Hollywood event where her then-boyfriend allegedly let loose with diatribe against actress Jennifer Esposito and how it disturbed her, Masterson could be seen in the courtroom momentarily smirking before going back to the more neutral look he has had on his face throughout the trial.
The soft and sometimes broken voice she had for most of her testimony this week disappeared when Mueller asked her if a separate civil case against Scientology she and other alleged Masterson victims are a part of is about money.
“It was related to the terror campaign that this criminal organization has put upon me or my family,” Jane Doe #3, herself a former Scientologist, said in a strong tone. “No matter how many police reports, how many FBI reports we filed, no one would stop them, and they are doing it to this day,” she added before the judge put an end to the topic.
Point of fact, claiming that the alleged Masterson rape victims have been harassed, stalked and intimated since going public with the accusations, the currently paused civil trial does seek financial damages. In testimony last week, Jane Doe #1 told the court and jurors that “peace’ was the point of the case.
Before Shlegel took the stand this afternoon, there was a quick last round of questions for Jane Doe #3 from defense lawyer Phillip Cohen and another request for a mistrial, which was denied by L.A. Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo.
Today’s proceedings also saw Olmedo give a stern warning to an onlooker sitting in the public gallery to not speak during court nor point at Jane Doe #3 on the stand. The judge said she had little patience for such antics. Subsequently, the judge asked the man his name and made it clear she did not want him chatting with a man sitting next to him. Neither of the men returned to court after the mid-afternoon break.
The trial will resume Friday with more testimony from Shlegel. The courtroom will be dark Monday and Tuesday.
PREVIOUSLY, 12:45 p.m.: Determined to expunge almost any mention of Scientology from Danny Masterson’s rape trial, defense attorney Phillip Cohen told the jury from the beginning that consistency would be core of his client’s case. That vow was very much on display Thursday as the lawyer sought to spotlight the supposed inconsistencies in the testimony of Jane Doe #3.
Still, Cohen didn’t appear to be able to shake the witness’ conviction of what occurred with then-boyfriend Masterson in an alleged sexual assault at his Hollywood Hills home in December 2001. “If someone has sex with you when you are unconscious, that is rape, sir!” Jane Doe #3/CB said this morning, sweeping aside a discussion of whether she had too much to drink and frequently blacked out that particular night.
“I was hoping he would fix what he did, and he did not,” the witness added of the couple’s eventual February 2002 break-up.
Picking up where the downtown Los Angeles trial left off Tuesday, Cohen methodically went through the timeline of the alleged assault laid out previously by Jane Doe #3. To that end, the lawyer elicited a “I don’t remember” over and over from the witness, who was in a relationship with Masterson from 1997 to late 2001.
“I don’t know,” Jane Doe #3 answered when asked by Cohen if she ever told the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office or the LAPD if Masterson “ever peed” on her, as she testified earlier this week.
“It is your position you did not intentionally hide information …correct?” inquired Cohen, running down a list of law enforcement and prosecution officials the witness had communicated with over the years, as well as a Texas rape hotline.
“I just remember answering their questions honestly,” Jane Doe #3 replied in a halting voice, clearly aware her credibility was being challenged. With the exception of one incident between Masterson and CB, the lawyer made a point of grilling the witness over whether his client had hit her during their relationship and what she told Deputy Los Angeles DA Reinhold Mueller of such violence or lack thereof.
“Is it your testimony that sex between Masterson and you was never intimate?” Cohen then asked, seemingly catching the witness off guard. “I would say it was not loving, it was very rough, and forceful, and didn’t understand that a woman needs to be prepared and not just jump on someone and do it their way,” she countered, as Cohen paraphrased her own words of earlier this week of how good the first year of her relationship with Masterson was.
“At the time I didn’t have much to compare it to what a healthy relationship would be like,” the witness also said as the lawyer brought up that maybe Masterson just was “a really bad lover.”
As she had indicated before, Jane Doe #3 asserted that over the course of their relationship Masterson “never asked for sex” but rather demanded it.
Charged with three counts of forcible rape, Masterson sat at the defense table as the cross-examination continued with his hands clasped on his crossed legs, as he has every day since the testimony portion of the trial started October 18. The That ’70s Show star is looking at a possible maximum sentence of 45 years to life in state prison if found guilty in the criminal case, which is expected to run through November 19. He has said he has never had nonconsensual sex.
The pursuing of Jane Doe #3’s perspective of the couple’s sex life during and after their relationship earned Cohen another rebuke from LA Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo, who said after sending the witness and the jury out of the room that the line of questioning was “prurient.”
After the prosecution stated they believed the questions to be “irrelevant and improper,” Cohen also revealed in the exchange that the witness had untruthfully taunted Masterson in the early years of their relationship with the claim that she slept with his brother. That 1998 remark, upon Jane Doe #3’s return from a trip to Paris, is part of a sequence of events that led to Masterson dragging her along the floor of their Hollywood Hills home. Cohen argued to the judge that the mention of the brother in the argument shed some light on Masterson’s reaction.
Noting that there seemed to be aspect of “domestic violence” in Masterson and CB’s relationship, the judge essentially put the matter of the brother comment out to pasture before bringing the witness and jury back into the room.
For all of Cohen’s efforts to keep Scientology out of the courtroom — which Masterson is a member of and all of the Jane Does were once members — the church again made its way into the proceedings during the latter part of the morning’s cross-examination.
“Because of Scientology,” Jane Doe #3 answered when asked by Cohen of why she was “terrified” to meet with LAPD Esther Reyes in January 2017. Cohen did not follow up on why the witness was scared, or why she was scared of the church.
Circling back over and over to the witness declining for the most part to look at transcripts “to refresh your memory,” Cohen also brought up the civil case she and other alleged victims have against Scientology and Masterson. Never saying the name of the church, Cohen asked whether she had a lawyer in that legal matter, the witness said “yes.” When asked if that lawyer was in the courtroom, she said “no” – to Cohen’s obvious disappointment.
The defense lawyer also seemed frustrated when Jane Doe #3 said the reason she never mentioned years later when she reported it to Austin police any other alleged assault but the December 2001 incident was because “they didn’t ask me.” Alluding to previous testimony, the witness said “I was reporting what I told the church” when asked why she never mentioned an alleged November 2001 rape and only the December 2001 one to a Texas crisis center worker.
Cohen also tried to catch the witness on whether she knew her now husband, Cedric, had spoken with the LAPD earlier this month. “I gave Detective Vargas my husband’s phone number,” the witness responded, but she was unaware of when her husband talked to the police or the specifics of the conversation. Having first learned of the alleged Masterson rapes in 2011, Jane Doe #3’s spouse is listed as a witness in the trial
The cross-examination and more testimony from Jane Doe #3 will continue this afternoon.
