(Los Angeles) American actor Danny Masterson, a prominent member of the Church of Scientology known for his role in the series That ’70s Show, was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison for two rapes by a Los Angeles court.
The 47-year-old actor, who was found guilty in June, received the maximum sentence he faced.
During his trial, three women, also Scientologists, accused him of raping them at his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003. The jurors agreed with two of them and were not unanimous. necessary to pronounce a verdict on the third.
“Mr. Masterson, you are not the victim”, hammered the judge Charlaine Olmedo, pronouncing the sentence in front of the actor who has always proclaimed his innocence. She also ordered him to be placed on the sex offender register.
At the hearing, the prosecution had found that the actor had “drugged and raped” his victims.
One of them reacted in court on Thursday, saying that the world is “safer” now that the actor is behind bars.
“You like […] hurting women,” added the victim, whose anonymity was preserved during the trial. “You lived your life behind a mask, as two people. But the real person is sitting here. »
This affair, triggered in 2017 in the wake of accusations against ex-producer Harvey Weinstein which caused the birth of the movement
Two of the complainants notably assured that the organization, very well established in Los Angeles, had dissuaded them from contacting the police.
Mr. Masterson’s defense, on the other hand, insisted that the plaintiffs’ story has evolved over the years and suggested that bias against Scientology may have motivated the trial.
During a previous trial in November, a different jury refused to rule, unable to reach unanimity.
Danny Masterson is married to actress Bijou Phillips, with whom he has a 9-year-old daughter. He rose to prominence in the late 1990s for his role in That ’70s Show alongside Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher.
He also appeared more recently alongside the latter in the Netflix series The Ranch, but was dropped in 2017 after the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed they were investigating sexual assault accusations against him.
After the actor’s arrest in June 2020, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced that it had dropped two other sexual assault charges against him due to lack of evidence and because the facts were statute barred. .