The third accuser in the Danny Masterson trial took the stand on Wednesday, telling jurors that he violently raped her after ignoring her repeated pleas and left her feeling like a “rag doll.”
The woman, who prefers to be known as Jane Doe #2, testified that Masterson invited her to his house sometime in late 2003. She said that he gave her a glass of wine to drink and then ordered her, “like a drill sergeant,” to remove her clothes and get in his jacuzzi.
She said she began to feel “heavy” and “numb,” and that she found herself in the jacuzzi with Masterson kissing her.
“I didn’t want any of what was happening,” she said. “I did start saying to him, ‘We cannot have sex, Danny. We cannot have sex.'”
She said that Masterson told her to get in his shower, and that he penetrated her there against her will. He then told her to go the bedroom, where they were kissing on the bed. She said she was “pleading” with him that they could not have sex, and that Masterson appeared to acknowledge that, saying, “OK.”
But she testified that at a certain point, he said “That’s it,” and “he flipped me over on the bed — fast — and he started pounding me from behind.”
“He was raping me,” she said. “I was shocked and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what are you doing? I told you not to do that.'”
She said he was pounding so hard that it hurt and that she had to suppress an impulse to vomit on his bed. Asked how she felt afterward, she said, “Awful. Out of it. Scared. In pain. Just a rag doll — not totally in charge of my faculties.”
Masterson is an active Scientologist, and Jane Doe #2 was a Scientologist at the time. She said that she initially could not process what happened to her as a rape, because of the consequences she might face.
“I couldn’t think of him that way,” she said. “In the church, he was more important than me at the time. That would have made my life horrible. You’re not allowed to accuse someone of anything that’s against the law.”
The two other accusers in the case previously testified that they feared that if they reported Masterson to the police, they would be declared to be “suppressive persons” and would be excommunicated.
Jane Doe #2 said that afterward, she tried to “recontextualize” the incident to make it seem more romantic.
“I was gaslighting myself,” she said.
She called Masterson about a week later to ask why he hadn’t called her, saying she liked him and thought that he liked her. He said he had been busy and hung up. She said she only spoke to him a couple times after that.
She has since left the church, and said she now understands the incident was a rape.
“He was like a predator,” she said. “And as an adult woman, you have plenty of time to see these distinctions between someone having affinity for you and someone targeting you as a piece of meat.”
Jane Doe #2 testified that she never reported Masterson to the Church of Scientology, because she knew it would not be well received. She said that she had tried to report a former boyfriend who had raped her, and that a Scientology chaplain had made it clear that “I was not under any circumstances to think that about another member, or to accuse another member of that or to report it to law enforcement.”
Asked what would have happened if she had reported Masterson, she said, “I would be expelled. I would lose my family and friends, be declared a suppressive person and seen as evil.”
She ultimately went to the police 13 years later, after connecting with the two other accusers in the case. In her testimony, she said the three women had relied on each other for support. She also said that she had ignored a detective’s admonition not to talk to the other witnesses in the case.
After she went to the police, Jane Doe #2 became concerned that the detectives did not seem to be interviewing her witnesses or making progress. She said she felt that there was something “shady with our case,” and that the three accusers were in danger. It took more than three years for prosecutors to file charges after the women went to the LAPD.
Like the other two accusers, she said that she had suffered harassment and intimidation since going to the police. She said that has caused her to experience anxiety and panic attacks.
