Not sure if he came in earlier, but Chris Wadhams is now in the spectator gallery as part of the Masterson family overflow.
Wadhams, of course, is the close friend and Scientologist who donated a kidney to Bijou Phillips.
Jurors coming in.
Mueller continues: This is [Jane Doe 1.] In her early 20s, first met the defendant. She is a second-generation Scientologist. She was essentially born into it. It was the religion in which she was raised. She was in a tight-knit group of friends, all Scientologists, including Mr. Masterson. (Photo of Masterson and Brie Shaffer). Brie was his assistant. In her 20s, Jane Doe 1 met Shaffer as well, and they became best friends.
Sept 2002, JD1 went to a screening at Vista theater with friends. She met up with def., and had called Brie at some point afterwards and asked if Brie would be her designated driver. They had gone to Lucky Bar next door for drinks, and the plan was Brie would drive her, but Brie was going camping and couldn't be there.
JD1 went to the bar with Masterson, and he was aware Brie couldn’t make it. He said, you can sleep in a guest bedroom at my house downstairs, no worries. She then had a drink that Masterson ordered for her, and part of a second, and she started feeling drunk.
When she got to his residence, she was feeling the alcohol, she was dizzy and laughing.
Mueller describes some outdoor stairs, and JD1 broke a heel. When they got to the house, Masterson grabbed her wrist and led her to a bedroom. She was saying, this is stupid, why are we doing this? She had known him for some time and thought of him almost like a brother. They ended up kissing and having sex. At one point, JD1 felt pressure on her anus. He was trying to penetrate her anally. She grabbed the bed, pulled herself forward, and said no, no, no. And it stops. Then they continued having sex vaginally.
This incident caused some conflict among their friends. For a while there was tensions over it.
Several months later, night of April 24/25, 2003, JD1 had planned to sleep over at Brie's house. And the plan was that Brie and her boyfriend had an international flight early on the 25th. JD1 could stay over, and drive them to the airport that morning. JD1 agreed.
After dropping them off, JD1 was then going to her parent's house because it was going to be her father's birthday and they were celebrating, and then that same day getting on a flight together to go to Clearwater to continue the celebration. They had done this often, usually centered around his birthday.
But it didn't unfold the way she planned. On the evening of the 24th, she did drive to Brie's in her SUV. She had an overnight bag and some clothes. After getting to Brie's house, they decided, let's pop over to say hellos at a birthday party. The plan was they would return for Brie to pack for her trip.
So JD1 left her SUV, keys, bag at Brie's house and went with her to Electric Lotus restaurant, meeting up with several people, the defendant, also a guy named Luke Watson (photo of Luke and Danny). Luke at that time was one of Masterson's best friends. And he also lived in the same house with Brie Shaffer, and had keys at the house.
JD1 knew Watson as well. The other person there at the restaurant was Jenni Weinman (pictured), Masterson's publicist. At some point, Brie said she had to go home to pack, Weinman had some extra tickets to a DJ show nearby. JD1 said she'd stick around go with Weinman to DJ event. The plan was the JD1 would get keys from Watson and go to Brie's later and not wake up Brie.
So Weinman and JD1 went to DJ event, and at the end, Brie (sic) drove JD1 to Masterson's home to get keys from Watson. Well as it turned out, Watson didn't have keys to the house.
JD1 decided she would stay at Masterson's home, get up early, and call Brie, and they could take a cab over. At that point, defendant brought JD1 a dirnk, which he had mixed. Vodka with some kind of red juice. She consumed part of it.
Within 20 minutes she lost strength, she felt confused, at one point the defendant comes and grabs her by the arms and says, JD1 is going in the jacuzzi, you have ten seconds to drop what you don't want to get wet. She was saying no, no, no. He pulled her through the house to the jacuzzi, but she had no strength. She was becoming very light-headed and confused. He threw her into the jacuzzi. She then starts to get really sick, nauseous. What scared her was that she was losing control of her body and would slip under the water.
Luke helped her out of the jacuzzi and put her down on the ground. She just wanted to lie there. But defendant came by and said he was going to take her upstairs and help her throw up. She didn't want to move. But he picked her up anyway and carried her upstairs to a bathroom (photos inside house), and there he held her from behind, her head was hanging over the toilet, he put his fingers into her throat, and she threw up and also threw up on her hair.
She laid down on the cool tile floor and it felt really good. Defendant said You're disgusting. You need to go in the shower. She asked to be left alone on the floor. He lifted her up and put her in the shower, where she sat on the floor, naked, and the defendant started soaking her breasts. She's still very confused and dizzy at that moment. She had passed out and come to, lying in the shower. Passed out again. She remembers the water coming down on her, he's soaking her breasts. She took a swing at him but she has no strength. She then passes out again.
She does remember Masterson putting a towel around her and taking her to the bedroom. There, she comes to and he's on top of her penetrating her vaginally with his penis. She reaches above her head, very weak, she gets ahold of a pillow and uses it to push him away. He took the pillow and pushed it into her face. She couldn't breath and she passed out. When she comes to he's still insider her.
She reaches for his throat, he pins her wrists with one hand, and with the other chokes her. She passes out again. All the while, he's inside her.
When she comes to, she's looking again for something to hit him with. She reaches toward nightstand, and as she does, the defendant reaches over, and grabs a gun that's in the nightstand.
Really important, what the evidence is going to show, the def never used the gun to commit the sexual assault. he never pointed it t her. He never hit her with it. He never threatened her with it. She will say she never felt threatened by the gun. He merely reached for it and held on to it when she reached for the drawer. She knew he wasn't going to do anything with it and he never did.
Then there was a knock on the door, and Masterson put the gun back in the drawer, when she reached for the drawer, he slammed it on her hand and said, Don't fucking move. He went to the door, and she passed out.
When she comes to, the defendant is not in the room. She's very disoriented, she tries to get off the bed, rolls off the bed and crawls into a door which happens to be a closer. She gets behind a set of clothes, curls into a ball and passes out right there.
She comes to later, but the passage of time is a blur for her. She was drugged, and she was having a really hard time with the concept of time. When she comes out of the closet, she crawls back out at some point, and the defendant is there. What the hell are you doing? And she ends up back in the bed and sleeps until the next morning when she wakes up. She hears the defendant in the room. She's confused, disoriented. There's a very slight exchange between her and the defendant.
She doesn't remember how she got clothes on. She goes downstairs, where Luke is out front of the house. Asks him, what happened? Luke didn't tell her anything. She got a cab, and went to Brie's house. She got her car, her overnight bag, let in by someone else there at the time, and then went straight at her parents' house. She was late. She hadn't woken up until early in the afternoon. She was late for the celebration for her dad's birthday.
Still confused. She recalls some things, but she's struggling with the pieces. The family does fly out that evening to Clearwater, Florida.
Court reporter needs a moment. She appears to be having some kind of technical issue.
So they flew to this hotel in Clearwater. While there JD1 began to notice bruising. (Photo of JD1 a few days later, Apr 30, her in bikini with drinks). What JD1 and cousin Rachel will tell you is that at this point in time, JD1 was doing everything she could to be around her family. If she did go out she wore extra clothing. If she did wear a swimsuit it would be with a wrap around it. This is a photo of her on Apr 30. She will tell you that in this circumstance, with her father's birthday, she put on a happy face for everyone. She didn't want to be the one to, hey what's wrong JD1, oh I just got raped. This was not the time for that.
Rachel, her cousin, was 17 at the time, and she noticed the bruising, and she asked JD1 about it. It was hard for JD1 to say anything. First, Rachel was not a Scientologist, but also Rachel was only 17. But JD1 did tell her some things. That Masterson had given her a drink, that there was a struggle at the jacuzzi, and that "something really, really bad happened."
We have a couple of photographs from that trip, and they don't show the bruising very well. But Rachel will tell you the bruising was much darker than you can see in the photographs.
There was a phone call with Masterson after she got there. She asked what happened, he said that he had sex with her. Her reaction was no, no, no. She knew what happened that night, but she really didn't want it to be that way. She was really upset about it.
Shortly after getting back, JD1 reported as a Scientologist is supposed to do, to her ethics officer, just like JD3 had. JD1 had to report to Julian Swarz (photo). JD1 reported to the AOLA, remember JD3 had reported to Celebrity Centre.
Same thing. As soon as JD1 began to explain that Masterson had raped her, Swarz cut her off: You can't use the word rape. And you can't report this to law enforcement, there are consequences. This was very familiar to JD1. She was familiar with what happens if you go to outside law enforcement. He also told her she needed to write a report about what happened. So she did, and tried to describe how the defendant had raped her, and Mr. Swarz told her she could not use any emotional language, and cannot use word rape. He guided her about what she could and could not say.
So she provided a general statement, and she could not included every detail. For example, she told Swarz that at one point he had grabbed a gun and just held it. And she will say it wasn't a major detail because he didn't threaten her. But Swarz told her she couldn't include that, and Masterson doesn't own a gun. So in her report there is no mention of a gun, and no word rape.
In her report there's no human emotion. All of those things had to be excluded.
JD1 understood well the consequences of reporting to law enforcement. Despite the conversations with church official, she was struggling with it. So she was torn, there was tension. So then on Apr 13, 2004, she wrote to this person on the screen, Mike Ellis, his title is International Justice Chief, the person that you have to get permission from if you're going to do anything like sue someone, or if you want to go to some outside authority. The evidence is going to show that the church has its own internal justice system.
So JD1 asked permission from Mr. Ellis, in writing. And you'll see that letter. Can I go to law enforcement to report the rape by Mr. Masterson? I'd like to report this to the police without the consequences of being declared a suppressive person and losing all of my family and friends.
Mr. Ellis responded, saying that you need to review the consequences of your decision very carefully, and then he cites to a HCO Policy Letter, a citation dealing with suppressive acts and suppression. In other words, JD1 understood if she decided to do this, she would be declared.
It was a no, she couldn't report to law enforcement. This was a conflict for her.
Despite it all, on June 6, 2004, she did walk into the Hollywood police station and did report. She talked to Det. Schlagel, and she showed him the internal report she had written for Scientology. It had a full description, but without a mention of gun or rape. She told Det. Schlagel what had occurred.
Now, this was the first time of JD1 coming to report to the police, and she knew the trouble she could be in. She also provided a list of witnesses for officers to contact for corroboration, including the name of Julian Swarz, her ethics officer.
She provided a general statement of what had occurred. Officer Schlagel will be here to testify. And he will tell yo that he has no memory of the details in this report. None. There is no independent memory of any details given by JD1.
JD1 will tell you that she told him about Masterson pulling out the gun. It's not in the report. Off Schlagel will tell you that he doesn't remember any of the details, but he'll say that if she had mentioned that, he would put it in the report. And she will tell you she did mention it to him. But what's important to remember is that Masterson never used teh gun and she never felt threatened by it.
After JD1 filed this police report, something happened: She got a phone call from Julian Swarz. He told her he had been called by the police, you had given them my name? You are so fucked, he told her.
What she understood was that she was now in big trouble with the church for reporting it, putting down his name, and she expects she's going to be declared a suppressive person at any time.
Her father finds out about it. Her father is very upset about the incident. Her father gets a lawyer, and a draft civil complaint is prepared and served on Masterson's lawyer. For damages for the rape. Now, much of this, with complaint was kind of unknown to JD1. She was very young, early 20s, and her father was very prominent in the church. Unfortunately he died in 2010 and he prepared this draft complaint... (Obj, sustained).
So now there are lawyers from the church at her house, and they have prepared a non-disclosure agreement and thy tell her she has to sign it. If she says nothing about what happened, she will receive $400,000. Julian Swarz told her if she doesn’t sign it, he has a declare order waiting for her on his desk.
So she signed it and received $400,000. So now JD1 will tell you she wasn't confident. She had gone to the church for justice. She went to law enforcment to get justice. And here she is now being told, you need to sign this agreement or be declared. She was struggling with that.
In 2016, years later, law enforcement would come back to JD1 and resume the investigation of this defendant after additional victims had come forward. In particular the investigation from Austin by JD3.
What the defendant had done would get some media exposure, and did, and for the first time these women would learn they weren't other, that there others. That others had similar experiences, others in the Church of Scientology, others with the same issues of disclosure and reporting.
JANE DOE 2
This is [Jane Doe 2.] (Mueller said her full name. No admonishment from the court.) At 16, JD2 had suffered from some anxiety attacks. Her mom was a former Scientologist, and they don't believe in medications. She said what she should do is join the church, they can help you deal with the anxiety.
So, JD2 joined the church. Around 1999 or 2000. At that point she also began her acting career. Around 2000 (he said 2020) she was on a network show that had about 13 episodes. She was on other shows at that the time.
You're going to hear in 2003, she had been raped by an ex-boyfriend who was also a Scientologist. She had gone to the church, to a chaplain, to report it. The chaplain had told her could not report that incident to law enforcement, and that it was not a rape. The chaplain pointed out texts that prohibited reporting and that it could get someone declared a suppressive person.
So she knew from that what she could do, and it had a lasting impression on her.
Photo of JD2 and Ilaria Urbanati. They were living together in 2003. Urbanati was close friend to Masterson and lived close to him.
At some point the three went to a bar The Well, joined by Luke Watson. At this point JD2 was familiar with the defendant. Just something social. They traveled in the same circles. That was it, she was just acquainted with him.
In the bar, JD2 began noticing that defendant really took an interest in her. Staring at her intensely. To the point where JD2 was a little confused. But she noticed that he took great interest in her. Urbanati told her, hey, Danny looks like he's really liking you. And to some degree JD2 was flattered.
Def. at some point asked for her phone number, and then a few days later contacted her. She will tell you it was kind of demanding. You need to come over and get in this jacuzzi. If she didn't, he would come down to get her. Again, she was a little confused, thrown off by the tone. Ultimately decided that she would go.
It was close enough from Urbanati's, where she was staying, that she just walked to his house. She will tell you he was "not my type," but she was still interested in going. What she was hoping was that it might be a fun evening, maybe a romantic evening, maybe some kissing, but she wanted to keep it low-key.
She set boundaries. That if there was kissing, that's fine. But the one boundary she had set was, no sex. She got there 8 or 9 pm, and he immediately offered her a glass of wine and insisted that she drink it.
He showed her around a little and they ended up in the jacuzzi area. She will tell you she had had some small amount of alcohol, maybe vodka, before she came to his house to calm her nerves. But then she just had one glass of wine there.
He told her to take off her clothes and get in the jacuzzi. She had told him she wasn't going to go that. She said no. About this time, JD2 is not feeling right. She's feeling groggy, a bit dizzy, light-headed. The evidence is going to show she was drugged.
She has really no memory of how she got into the jacuzzi, but she knows she was in it. She's having feelings of being dizzy, numb, she thinks she may have blacked out at some point. She remembers heavy kissing, his hand touching her vagina. And remember these are things she had set boundaries on.
At some time he demands that she go upstairs and go into the shower. She has no idea how she got into the shower. She thought maybe this was to get the chlorine off, she has no idea. In the shower he again starts kissing her and inserts his fingers in her vaginally. She tells him no, no, we're not doing this. He then puts his penis in her vagina. She pushes him away and says, no I told you we're not doing this. And she's in this state, feeling drugged and she's confused.
He then demanded she go into his bedroom and she did. She remembers they were making out, and she was pleading with him, no sex, no sex. She thought she at this point she could control it. She had told him repeatedly, no sex.
At one point, he flipped her over, inserts his penis in her vagina. He's so rough, and she's saying no, no, no. And it's so rough she actually vomited in her mouth, pleading with him to stop.
At some point she realizes he doesn't have a condom on. She tells him, you're not listening to me, put on a condom. He didn’t stop. She will say it was painful, like a jackhammer. And despite the many times she told him to stop he flipped her back and forth. Her description is she felt like a rag doll.
After that, she stayed there in the bed. They were talking. She was trying to process what went on/ she'd been drugged. She was confused about the situation. in her mind, she was trying to make this something that it wasn't, because she feared this was rape from someone she had known and that was hard for her.
Afterwards she had contacted her mother. well, before that over the next few days she had expected him to call her and he didn't. So she called him, you didn't call me, what happened. He passed it off and hung up. She will tell you that at that point she was trying to figure out what happened to her.
She will tell you this was someone she knew. A Scientologist like her. She was confused by the incident. All the while trying to process it. She wanted answers. Within a week she called her mother, who will be here to testify.
Mother asked, how was the date? Mom, it was really rough. Told her about the jackhammer, about throwing up in her mouth, about telling him to stop and he didn't stop.
The mother will tell you she didn't associate what JD2 was telling her was rape. At that time she had an old conception of what rape is, that rape is when a stranger jumps out and puts a gun to your head. She now recognizes that rape is different.
Within a couple of weeks JD2 told her friend Jordan Ladd. They met in the late 1990s, they were cast in a film together. Jordan Ladd is not a Scientologist, but she will tell you that JD2 was shaking, that her breathing was labored. She will tell you that JD2 told her about being raped by Masterson, that JD2 had asked him over and over not to have sex with her.
She also told her friend Jordan Ladd not to tell anyone about it.
JD2 will also tell you that she called the defendant when she was drunk at a party and asked him to set her up with one of her friends.
You will also hear from Mariah O'Brien, who was friends with JD2 and with Masterson. O'Brien had JD2 over to her house for a dinner. Subject of Masterson came up, and JD2 got really upset, blurted out, "Danny raped me," and Mariah got really upset because her younger kids were at the table.
Afterwards, she had JD2 leave. O'Brien considered Masterson a friend, and she said JD2 had that outburst.
Mueller is about to go into the expert witnesses, but Olmedo says, breaking for lunch.
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Seems to be continuing strong! Can’t wait to hear what Mueller’s tone and delivery were like, and if there is anything to observe from the jury!
Thanks Tony. I wish we could hear Mueller’s delivery. Looking forward to hear your observations.