A woman has tearfully told a US judge she was slipping in and out of consciousness on the night 18 years ago when she says she found actor Danny Masterson raping her.
“When I came to, he was on top of me,” said the woman, identifying herself on the witness stand only as Jen B. “The first thing I recall is grabbing his hair to pull him off.”
She testified at a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court, where a judge is deciding whether there is probable cause to order a trial for the That ’70s Show actor, who is accused of raping three women.
Masterson has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, has said he would prove his client’s innocence.
Jen B testified that she and Masterson were part of the same group of friends who were tied to the Church of Scientology in the late 1990s and early 2000s and that she had gone to Masterson’s house to pick up a set of keys on April 25, 2003.
She said Masterson had given her a drink with vodka in it at her request — her first of the night — but said she was “blurry”, weak and queasy about 20 minutes later and had no strength to resist as Masterson threw her in his jacuzzi.
She said when she got out she could not even sit up. A mutual friend, Luke Watson, tried to help her.
“I couldn’t walk or stand, so he put me on the tile on the ground,” said Jen B, who began crying but remained composed throughout her testimony.
“I said, ‘Luke I can’t see’, and he said, ‘Open your eyes’, and I didn’t know my eyes were closed. I couldn’t open my eyelids. I felt really, really sick.”
She testified that Masterson carried her upstairs, where she vomited, then put her in his shower.
She said she began losing consciousness but was awake to find Masterson soaping her bare breasts. She tried to punch him in the face but was too weak and only landed lightly on his chest, she said.
She testified that he put her on a bed and raped her, and that she has only flashes of memory from the minutes that followed. She said that after she failed to get Masterson off her by pulling his hair, she put a pillow in his face, but he pushed it back on her.
She said he pulled a gun out of his nightstand drawer to threaten her.
Mesereau repeatedly asked Jen B about inconsistencies between her 2004 police report and a 2003 “knowledge report” she filled out about the incident for the church as it tried to mediate between her and Masterson. She acknowledged there were differences but said she tried to be truthful in every case.
Jen B testified that in the following days, bruises appeared on her wrists and neck area and that she had severe pain in her genitalia.
She said the leadership of the Church of Scientology, of which her parents and all her friends were members, strongly discouraged her from going to the police, pointing out that by policy she would be declared a “suppressive person” if she made a report against a member in good standing like Masterson.
“I would lose my family and everyone I knew,” she said, though in June 2004 she decided to go to the police anyway.
In a lawsuit that the three women filed against the church and Masterson, the church denied ever engaging in any harassment.
Masterson, 45, has been charged in Los Angeles with three counts of rape by force or fear over attacks women said occurred in 2001 and 2003.
