Danny Masterson lawyer challenges new details in rape story

LOS ANGELES (AP) – An attorney for Danny Masterson challenged his ex-girlfriend during cross-examination Wednesday that her trial testimony accusing the actor of raping her in 2001 included several new details that differ from those accounts. were missing which he had initially given to the authorities. Investigation.

“Is today your testimony that you can now remember things in 2023 that you could not remember in 2017?” Masterson’s attorney, Shawn Holley, asked the model and actor who is the first witness to take the stand in a Los Angeles courtroom at Masterson’s trial on three rape charges.

The woman replied that her memory had not improved, but that she “opened up more than before” when she described the assault by Masterson, her boyfriend of five years, at their Hollywood-area home the day before. .

She testified Tuesday that she awoke to find Masterson on top of her and raping her, that she screamed for him to stop, that he put his full weight on her and lowered her arms, and that finally he Pulling her hair stopped. He responded by hitting her in the face and spitting on her.

Holley noted each of these elements in her cross-examination, asking why she had not mentioned in her initial interviews with Los Angeles police detectives and a prosecutor in 2017 that she had said she met Masterson when She was only trying to sleep. trying to have sex with her.

“It’s the same thing to me,” she replied, “I’m Southern, we say you’re doing it when we mean it.”

Holly also suggested that her testimony meant nothing when she said that Masterson was looking at her with “dead eyes” the entire time while also putting his entire body weight on her.

“I’m trying to understand how a person’s dead weight can be on your body and how can his head be hanging above your head?” Holly said.

The woman replied that “I just remember seeing his face and feeling him on me. I don’t remember where his hands were.”

Holley also asked why there was no mention of Masterson pinning his arms above his head in the hours he spent talking to police and prosecutors in 2017.

The woman explained that she had not disclosed every detail in those early interviews, and that she did not understand at the time how precise and careful she would need to be. Now that she’s interviewed several officers and testified in court at both Masterson’s preliminary hearing and her first trial last year, she knows better.

The woman said, “I wish I could understand that the first interview you give with a detective or a prosecutor, you have to make sure your words are very literal, and you have to give every detail.” “Because, respectfully, someone like you is going to challenge me on that. I don’t like to talk about things and it takes me a long time to talk about things, and I was doing my best and I was honest.” Was.

She breathed uneasily, apologized frequently, and became emotional at times under cross-examination, but remained calm.

The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.

The model and actor was in a relationship with Masterson from 1996 to 2002. She first went to report it to the police in late 2016.

Masterson was eventually accused of raping three women in his home between 2001 and 2003, when he was at the height of his fame as a star of the sitcom “That ’70s Show.”

If convicted on all three counts, Masterson, 47, could face up to 45 years in prison.

He has not pleaded guilty and his lawyers have said the decades-old stories told by the women are full of inconsistencies and not credible.

A mistrial was declared at the end of his first trial in November, with less than half of the jurors convicting him on any of the three counts. When the women agreed to testify again, prosecutors chose to retry them.