Danny Masterson trial: Woman accusing 'That 70's Show' actor of rape has panic attack on stand
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- One of the three women accusing actor and Scientologist Danny Masterson of rape had a panic attack on the witness stand.
Jane Doe 3, who has publicly identified herself as Chrissie B., cried that she couldn't breathe, she was afraid to go out into the courtroom hallway and told the jury she has endured harassment and stalking by Scientology since she reported her alleged rapes to the police six years ago.
Chrissie B. dated and lived with Masterson for six years before the two alleged rapes in November and December 2001. Masterson is not charged with the December 2001 alleged sodomy-rape. Instead, prosecutors charged him with the November 2011 alleged rape, which Chrissie B. testified about last week.
On Tuesday, Chrissie B. testified that her "mind started to shift" after a fight in October and the November alleged rape.
"I'd been blind... I didn't feel like I was in love with him anymore."
On direct examination, Chrissie B. told the jury that in December 2001 she and Masterson went to La Poubelle Bistro in Hollywood. She testified that she had one or two glasses of wine and doesn't remember anything after getting up to leave the restaurant.
She says she woke up the next day naked and her anal area was "torn and bleeding."
"I was in a lot of pain, I couldn't sit down," she testified. "It hurt to go to the restroom."
"I was really confused why I didn't have any memory and why I was hurting down there."
Chrissie B. says she asked Masterson what had happened the previous night and wondered if she had fallen. She testified that "he laughed at me and said he had sex with me there."
"I asked him if I was unconscious the whole time and he said, 'yes,'" Chrissie told the jury. "It broke my heart."
Masterson pleaded not guilty in 2021 and has always maintained the sex with his accusers was consensual. His attorneys have argued that the three women colluded on their stories and destroyed their credibility by talking to one another and other witnesses in the case.
Chrissie B. was a Scientologist at the time but has since left the religion. She testified on Tuesday that after the second alleged rape, she reported Masterson to the Church of Scientology, the ethics officer and a chaplain at Scientology's Celebrity Centre in Hollywood.
Chrissie B. says she never considered going to the police because she thought that Scientology "had all the answers and I thought they would help him."
Chrissie testified that she told the Scientology ethics officer, Miranda Scoggins, that Masterson had raped her.
"She told me not to use the word rape and she explained to me that you cannot rape someone that you're in a relationship with... and I believed her."
"Jane Doe 3 said she was put through an ethics program and she was told that she was at fault for her own condition," said journalist Tony Ortega, who writes about Scientology and is covering the trial at his Substack, The Underground Bunker.
"In Scientology, they use the words - 'you pulled it in.' And we've heard this from multiple victims now that Scientology tried to convince them that they were at fault for being victimized," Ortega tells Eyewitness News.
The Church of Scientology has said that while it "will not comment on a pending criminal matter, we know the women's slanderous allegations about the church are completely and utterly false."
"As to the statements Jane Doe #3 claims were made by Church staff twenty years ago, this never happened. Jane Doe #3 never reported a sexual assault to the Church as she testified and Church staff never made the statements attributed to them by Jane Doe #3," Karin Pouw, International Spokesperson for the Church of Scientology, said in a statement.
Chrissie B. testified that as part of her ethics program, Scoggins had her read some Scientology materials about "suppressive acts and high crimes."
"It like almost put me in a state of terror and I understood I needed to do as I was told and not tell anybody," Chrissie told the jury.
Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller asked Chrissie B. what she worried was going to happen if she didn't follow their direction.
"They would destroy me," Chrissie B. responded.
"After what me and my husband and babies have been through the last six years, I understood it would be bad, sorry. I didn't understand how bad it would be."
At this point, Chrissie B. had a panic attack, crying and gasping for breath. Judge Olmedo excused the jury and asked if Chrissie B. wanted to take a break outside the courtroom.
"No, I don't want to go out there," she said. "I'm trying to control my panic."
A victim advocate from the District Attorney's Office went to the witness stand to comfort Chrissie while she cried, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe."
Once testimony resumed, Chrissie testified that she was directed by Scoggins to write a "Things That Shouldn't Be" report about the alleged rape.
"Did she tell you certain words you could not include in that report?" asked DDA Mueller.
"That would be rape," Chrissie replied, adding that she subsequently underwent about a month of Scientology "ethics handling."
"I was done," Chrissie said of her relationship with Masterson.
She testified that she and Masterson were told to report to the Scientology Celebrity Centre to "go over the terms of our break-up" and she signed an agreement that included a provision that she would not sue him.
In the year or so after their break-up, Chrissie says she and Masterson reconnected three times. Once she says they started to become intimate, but she started crying and he stopped. Another time they had consensual sex. A third time, in New York, Chrissie says they were having sex in his hotel room when she saw "a flash of light, a camera flash."
When asked by DDA Mueller how she felt about that, Chrissie responded, "He did not change."
"I asked him to delete it and he refused," Chrissie testified of the photos. "I never did anything with him again."
Chrissie testified that she didn't tell anyone else about the alleged rapes until she told her husband a few years into their marriage - around 2010 or 2011.
"After you told your husband what happened, did you view what happened to you differently," asked DDA Mueller.
"Yes," Chrissie replied. "That it was rape."
In 2016, Chrissie says she called a rape hotline and what she learned helped to change her view on what had happened to her.
"I believed a crime did occur," she testified.
Chrissie and her husband were living in Texas at that point, and in December 2016 she made a report with the Austin Police Department.
"Because of Scientology, I was terrified," Chrissie testified about contacting law enforcement.
Chrissie told the jury that she continues to have concerns about testifying against Masterson and that she and her family have been stalked and harassed since she first reported the alleged rapes to law enforcement.
Mueller asked Chrissie about how recently she and her family have been stalked or harassed.
"Today," she answered.
Masterson's defense attorney, Philip Cohen, began his cross-examination of Chrissie B. late Tuesday afternoon by asking about her memory of the November 2001 alleged rape and pointing to what he says are inconsistencies in what she told police and prosecutors over the last six years.
"I've always been truthful," Chrissie testified about the November 2011 alleged rape. "I don't remember every single thing about it."
Cohen then brought up that while Chrissie had testified that Masterson discouraged her modeling career, she was still doing some local modeling jobs and appeared on "That '70s Show."
Got a tip? Email ABC7 Investigative Producer Lisa.Bartley@abc.com
