Danny Masterson sis-in-law Chynna Phillips after watching trial: Seeing the light?

[Chynna Phillips Baldwin]

On November 2, we put in our “morning break” report at the Danny Masterson trial that we were excited to see that Danny’s wife Bijou Phillips had arrived to court that morning with her half-sister, Chynna Phillips Baldwin, 54.

It was Chynna’s first appearance at the courtroom, and Day Thirteen of the trial itself, which began on October 11. Chynna’s husband Billy Baldwin. 59, had made a brief appearance in the Masterson family section in the first week of trial testimony, and we had wondered if Chynna would show up.

We’re familiar with her not only because she was a part of the vocal group Wilson Phillips and daughter of John & Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, but also because she has a YouTube channel, California Preachin’, that we keep an eye on from time to time.

Chynna is not a Scientologist. She’s an evangelical Christian, and at her YouTube vlog she uses fun phrases like “Holy Spirit, activate!” But the reason we check in on occasion is that she’s a classic social media oversharer, and a few times she’s spilled things about her family that have helped us keep tabs on what the Masterson and Phillips and Baldwin families have been going through since news of the investigation of Danny went public in 2017.

For example, at one point Chynna went to the home of Danny and Bijou in Santa Ynez, California, and interviewed Bijou about her husband. Bijou described Danny as a “Strong Island” type, a real macho man, which seemed like not the smartest thing to say while he was facing rape charges. (After we published a transcript of the interview, Chynna took the video down.)

For three days last week, Chynna was in the family section at the courtroom. And on Wednesday, November 2, she sat through some of the most brutal testimony in the trial as Jane Doe 2 described being “pounded” by Masterson like a “jackhammer” while she told him no, over and over.

The next day, November 3, Chynna recorded a new video for her channel, which was posted the next morning, on November 4.

In it, she said that November 3 was the four-year anniversary of the California Preachin’ show, and to celebrate, she decided to tell three stories of the things she most regretted in her life.

One story was about how she had witnessed a car accident and wanted to stop and see if people were OK, but the guy taking her on a date refused to stop and drove on to a concert. She said she regretted that she hadn’t stood up to him and demanded to stop and get out of the car.

The third story she told was about how she had been manipulated by an Italian professional photographer who, early in her modeling career, had convinced her to go topless on a beach for a photo shoot. She described being chastised by her agent, who told her she should have stood up to the man.

In the middle, she told another story that actually involved a sexual incident she greatly regretted. And once again, it featured a man manipulating her, and her regretting that she had not had enough self-esteem to stand up to him. We thought we’d provide the full transcript of this incident. And we have to ask, if she recorded these stories just a day after watching Jane Doe 2 talk about being raped brutally by Chynna’s brother-in-law, what should we conclude? Here’s her tale…

This next one is really, really, really difficult for me to talk about. It’s because it’s so personal and it is so ugly-embarrassing.

I had a best friend back in high school, and Jennifer and I were really very, very close. I mean really close. We spent every day at school together. Jen, she was my homegirl, my airbag, you know like we had those, you know, best friend necklaces. We were inseparable. And Jennifer had a very, very serious relationship with a guy named Dan.

Dan was, he was good looking. You know, he wasn’t exactly my type, but he was, he was fine. He wasn’t like unsightly or anything. He was, he was cute. I really liked Dan. I thought it was very sweet. I had never had a boyfriend like that, a long-term relationship in high school.

As a bunch of you already know I was already making bad decisions. I was smoking pot, I was drinking. If I could get my hands on some magic mushrooms, I would do magic mushrooms.

Jennifer was going out of town on a camping trip with her father, and he used to do that all the time. As a matter of fact, I went on some of these camping trips with her father and they were so much fun. I really missed Jennifer and I was bummed that she was gone that weekend.

I was hanging out with a couple of my other friends and we were up to our shenanigans of getting drunk and doing all of that and one night I was at my house and, um, I was with a couple of these girls. The doorbell rang and it was late, it was like 11 o’clock at night. So we go to the door and sure enough it was Dan.

He came in and I think he grabbed a couple beers out of my refrigerator and sat down and you know we were all pretty tipsy at this point. I was like, it’s getting late and I just want to go to bed. We had a downstairs little sweet area down in my house. So the other two girls, Liza and Emily, went downstairs and I was upstairs and Dan was on the phone.

So I’m putting on my pj’s and there’s like, the door kind of opens. I’m like, oh, oh, no, no, I’m changing. And he opened the door and I was like, Dan I’m changing, and he started giggling and laughing. And I’d already had like the bottom part on but I was just still putting on the top part he was like, oh, those are those are cute pj’s, and I was like, thanks, you know. And I said yeah, I’m gonna go to bed.

I’m kind of feeling tired. I’m just kind of feeling a little bit out of it. He said, oh just um, let me, let me just rub your feet. And I was like, what? And he was like, let me just, you know, rub your feet. I just want to rub your feet. You know, you’ve had a long day and like you’re tired. And I was like, um I don’t, I don’t need my feet rubbed. I’m, I’m fine, and he was like, oh no, I give the best foot rubs. Like my mom loves my foot rubs. You’ve got to try one of my foot rubs.

So I sat on my bed and he started rubbing my feet and, um, I let I let him rub my feet, which was mistake number one, and he did give a very nice foot rub, I have to say. Yeah so he’s rubbing my feet and he starts talking about how he’s always wanted to kiss me. I was like, oh this is not good. And I didn’t even particularly find Dan attractive, OK?

The way he was manipulating me, it was super coy, like he was being very calculated about how he was going about getting me to do one thing and then, and then succumbing to the next thing. I was just really wanting him to go and I knew that he was probably going to proceed to escalate with this whole thing, and I didn’t have the self-esteem or just the courage to be able to stand up for myself because I never had in the past. And so I was triggered and it was almost like I reverted back to that little girl who didn’t know how to get out of these really dangerous bad situations.

So he proceeded to start like, you know, going over around my shoulders and stuff. I’m not going to get too graphic but one thing led to another and before I knew it we were having sex. Me and my best friend’s boyfriend. Not proud and I just knew like oh my gosh I just messed up so royally and I felt so dirty and so sick inside I knew I had betrayed my best friend. Like it didn’t have to happen, all I had to do was kick him out of my house.

Now that I’m like unpacking it more as an adult and looking in retrospect, I mean I don’t think that Dan’s intention was to come over to my house and have a glass of water, if you know what I mean. I really think that he had this whole thing definitely planned out before he even got to my house.

So a few days later Jennifer came home from her trip and she said do you mind if I borrow a sweater? And I was like no. I’m gonna borrow a sweater. And uh so she’s in my closet and she’s kind of like going through the hangers and suddenly I hear like she’s just stopped sliding them, which, but she’s still looking into the closet. I just got this terrible, terrible feeling and she grabbed one of the hangers and she turned around and she had a pair of blue jeans in her hand she said, “Why are Dan’s blue jeans in your closet?”

And I said, I, I don’t, I don’t know. And she said, Chynna, if there’s something you need to tell me you need to tell me right now. And I just burst out into tears she was like I don’t even know how it happened it was crazy and I feel I feel so disgusted and I don’t even know what how to make this better, I don’t, I don’t know how to say I’m sorry because there are no words. And that was pretty much the end of mine and Jen’s friendship.

Anybody want to join me in this tub of shame? I found my voice after that experience and I never allowed myself to not speak up again when I was in situations where, um, I was being taken advantage of. Do you ever just stop and think about things in your childhood or like in your teenage years and you just kind of like roll around in bed like a rotisserie chicken going over it over and over and over again trying to change the outcome, and it just never changes?

We find the timing on these tales really interesting. And we’d like to ask Chynna about it, if hearing testimony from Jane Doe 2 about how she had tried to manage Danny’s expectations that night in 2003 but that he had brutally raped her, might have dislodged something in Chynna’s memory banks.

But we are being very careful right now. We don’t want to give the Masterson family an excuse to try to get us removed from the courtroom. So we won’t approach her with a question if she shows up again today.

Speaking of today, testimony resumes in the afternoon after some matters about witnesses get hashed out this morning in Judge Charlaine Olmedo’s courtroom. We’ll be sending you reports from the proceedings.

And as for yesterday, we sent out a short video message to our subscribers at the end of an eventful day in court. We’re releasing it to everyone this morning, and here’s also the version at our YouTube channel.

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