Danny Masterson legal news brief: Victims' gut-wrenching statements revealed, Bijou Phillips spotted for 1st time since sentencing
The full statements from the three women who helped put away the actor for decades are released.
The full impact statements from the three women who accused Danny Masterson of rape have been released, just days after the That '70s Show star was sentenced to decades prison. The gut-wrenching accounts from Masterson's accusers shed light into the emotional testimony that helped put him behind bars for 30-years to life. The news comes as Masterson's wife, Bijou Phillips, was spotted out for the first time since Thursday's dramatic hearing.
Here's the latest in the aftermath of Masterson's sentencing.
Masterson belongs "behind bars for the safety of all women..."
Jane Doe No. 1, identified only as Jen B., was a second-generation Scientologist like Masterson. They went to Scientology school as kids and their families were close.
"It was the only community I knew my whole life until I was raped by Mr. Masterson," Jen B. shared, adding: "I didn't choose to be born into Scientology and their rules, just as I didn’t choose to be raped by Danny Masterson."
Jen B. testified she was raped on her father's birthday in 2003. She dropped her daughter off at her parents house met up with a friend, who was Masterson's assistant and fellow Scientologist. While there, she said she was drugged and violently raped.
Jen B. eventually reported the assault to the church "just as their strict policies demanded and I was trained to do." For a year, she did what Scientology allegedly told her to do, which included meeting with Masterson. A Scientology executive "claimed he would apologize and make a promise to never repeat such a crime on any woman if he would just hear me describe in detail how awful and violent the assault had been for me."
"I naively believed in the possibility of redemption, and I agreed to speak about the whole ordeal. However, it soon became clear this wasn't real," she told the court, claiming Masterson "laughed and treated the situation as a big joke, showing no genuine remorse with no intention to change. It was heart-breaking, the realization that the defendant's callousness and lack of empathy and everything I said made no difference."
One month later, after hearing of another alleged victim, Jen B. reported the rape to police. "I knew Danny wouldn't stop, couldn't stop," she told the judge.
Masterson has denied wrongdoing, but refused to speak during either trial or at sentencing. The Church of Scientology refutes claims they've harassed and threatened victims and deny the have policies against reporting rape to police.
"What makes this situation even more distressing is the defendant's refusal to acknowledge the gravity of his actions, not just to me but to so many. He's not shown an ounce of remorse for the pain he caused me," Jen B. declared.
"Instead, he chose to laugh at my suffering and the horrors I told him about. To compound matters, he utilized our shared faith, our community, our religion as a means to cover up his crime and silence me," she continued. "It's deeply troubling that an institution of faith which should stand for justice and compassion was manipulated to shield a perpetrator from accountability. The second time he laughed at me in that final meeting as I was describing reaching towards the nightstand, I still remember him laughing and saying he was afraid I might knock over the lamp on his nightstand and he loved that lamp."
Jen B. stated that Masterson needs to be locked up should any woman "come in contact with him in an isolated setting, isolated from those who could protect them from, him isolated from those who now so easily claim they never saw that kind of behavior of the defendant."
Another disturbing part of Jen B.'s victim impact statement involved her daughter. While at school, Masterson purportedly enlisted one of her daughter's classmates "to shame her and say her mommy was a liar and Danny didn't rape her mommy."
"I still remember the day I picked her up from school and from the back seat my child asked, 'Mommy, what is rape? She was nine years old," Jen B. claimed, asserting Masterson admitted to arranging the interaction during one of their meetings within the church.
"He smiled when he explained that he bought the little boy's entire box of fundraiser candy bars in exchange for that message being delivered to my child," she continued. "That was like a hundred dollars."
Jen B. detailed the emotional and physical trauma she's endured since the incident. She no longer has parents — her father passed away more than a decade ago and her mother, who is still in good standing with Scientology, disowned her in 2020. ( "She had warned me ahead of time she wanted to see Danny Masterson brought to justice for raping me but not at the expense of her religion — their religion, Scientology.")
"I lost my family. Our lives were destroyed. He took lives," she said of the actor.
"Your emptiness and cowardice will be your true legacy."
Neisha Trout, initially named as Jane Doe No. 2 but who authorized her identity to be released after the sentencing, told the court she's "been terrorized, harassed and had my privacy invaded daily by the cult of Scientology for almost seven years now" since reporting Masterson to the LAPD. Although she was raped in the early 2000s, Trout went to authorities in 2016 after learning about more alleged victims.
"The lasting effects of rape are pernicious as they hack silently away at the daily efforts one tried to make toward a life with meaning," Trout declared.
"Even though it was so long ago, what you did to me by emotionally, mentally, and physically injuring me in this brutal manner still reverberates and lives on in my body as corporeal pain," she continued. "The body is a relentless witness. I still have to contend with what you did to me that night, to take a life's worth of therapy of repair because every time I think I'm OK, that rape comes back to throw that night around me, around in me as actual physical pain to say Hi... you're not done with me yet."
Trout honed in on Scientology, calling the organization Masterson's "enabler and protector." She claimed she was a "brainwashed member for seven years at the time of the sexual assault."
"When you raped me, you stole my ability to create any sort of real stability in my life in innumerable ways for well over a decade, Danny. My relationships with boyfriends, family, friends were increasingly fraught and suffered from the distortion this event made of me," she stated.
"My life became cut with an invisible tension that made no sense to anyone around me. No one and nowhere felt safe. In hurting me this way, you also hurt the people who love me because everything is delicately connected," she continued.
Trout said that Masterson takes "pride in hurting women" and claimed he hurt his victims "intentionally." She stated that "emptiness and cowardice" will be the actor's legacy.
"I'd never want you to be raped or attacked in any way where you're headed now. I wouldn't wish rape on my worst enemy," she added. "I only wish for the impossible, for you to see yourself with searing clarity, to see all of your actions and sit there with the unassailable deafening truth for as long as it takes to rehabilitate."
"I was regularly mentally and emotionally abused and raped repeatedly."
Masterson was convicted of raping Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2, but a jury could not unanimously decide on the third count of forcible rape involving Jane Doe No. 3 (jurors were deadlocked 8-4 in favor of conviction), who has since come forward as Chrissie Carnell Bixler, the actor's girlfriend for six years in the early aughts.
"I understand that, for many, it's difficult to believe that anyone would stay in a relationship like the one I was in with Danny Masterson," she began in a written statement read by the prosecution.
Carnell Bixler, who like the other women is an ex-Scientologist, claimed she was "repeatedly" raped by Masterson. She said she was "extremely naïve and trusting" when she started dating the actor at age 18.
"I believed him when he called me stupid, untalented, embarrassing trash. I believed him, but I never stopped trying to make him proud of me. I never stopped trying to think of ways to earn his kindness. When he was kind to me, it gave me hope," she wrote. "It gave me promise that maybe if I can just endure what I cannot forgive now that maybe he could return to the person he showed me at the beginning of our relationship."
She continued, "I now know that was his game, the cycle of abuse. He'd hurt me. He'd ignore me. I'd grovel at his feet apologizing to him for what he did to hurt me, then he’d show me kindness."
Carnell Bixler detailed the trauma she has endured in the decades since her and Masterson's relationship.
"I had been diagnosed with PTSD, general anxiety and panic disorder. I have also developed severe trichotillomania. I haven't been diagnosed agoraphobic, but I can count on two hands the amount of times I’ve left my home in the last few years," she wrote.
"I have physical health issues. I throw up. I started getting blinding migraines accompanied by visual auras. I go through phases where I have severe body pains like my nerves and part of my body are on fire," she continued. "This and so much more is the life sentence Mr. Masterson and Scientology have given me."
Bijou Phillips pictured with brother-in-law, as her sister asks for prayers.
The Daily Mail obtained photos of Phillips being consoled by Masterson's brother Jordan while out to lunch in Santa Ynez, Calif. The actress was with her and Danny Masterson's 9-year-old daughter. It's the first time Bijou, who's also a Scientologist, has been pictured in public since the sentencing. The outing came as Phillips's older sister Chynna, 55, shared a cryptic post on social media asking for "prayers."
Masterson "always thought he was going to get away with it," says prosecutor
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller told People the judge's prison sentence was "absolutely the right decision."
Mueller said the actor was "consistent in the manner in which he forcibly raped each of his victims."
"He surreptitiously drugged the victims using an alcoholic beverage as the vehicle for administration, and then forcibly raped them as they became incapacitated," he said in an interview. "This afforded him the opportunity to obtain control and dominance over his victims as he carried out his forcible assaults."
Mueller noted that "it's been a long time coming for" the women "to get their justice."
Masterson's attorney told Yahoo Entertainment the actor will appeal.