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| Ashton Kutcher with his rapist friend Masterson |
An interview with Tony Ortega in Variety about the arrest of Scientologist Danny Masterson on three counts of rape and what this means for the "religion".
I think Scientology’s influence in general has been waning, particularly in Hollywood. Hollywood was terrified of Scientology, and more recently it seems like every other show has put some kind of a Scientology joke in their scripts in the last few years. Partly it’s to say “You’re not the big scary bully anymore.” However I think there is still plenty of fear in Los Angeles in terms of Scientology. But they have lost influence I think.Asked about what took them so long to bring charges:
It was very clear that the managers in the office below Jackie Lacey were all for not only charging Masterson, but charging him with the most severe penalties. I reported in February 2018, more than two years ago, that the managers in the office had signed off on charging him under this California one-strike law that would carry a 25-to-life sentence.
Nobody else picked up that story. I think most people thought “Ortega must be exaggerating” or something. Now Jackie Lacey comes out and says she’s going for 45-to-life — even stronger than I had heard. It’s hard to know for sure. I had always been hearing for the last two years that the office itself was very strongly behind the idea of charging Masterson and charging him with very serious allegations and serious penalties, and it was just a matter of “When is Jackie Lacey going to make a decision?”
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Scientology is really intertwined with Masterson in this case. There were some news organizations that reported the story yesterday and somehow managed not to use the word “Scientology.” I’m kind of amazed at that. Because not only is Danny Masterson a lifelong Scientologist — not only is he a faithful soldier for Scientology, and would show up at events and make strong statements in the press about Scientology — but all three of his victims, the ones that the charges are stemming from, were Scientologists at the time. And at least two out of the three I know of went to the church, who discouraged them from going to the authorities.
So Scientology is very much involved in this story. My question for Rinder was, I’ve seen some things online, people were speculating that if Masterson was charged, Scientology would distance itself. But as Mike says, they’re so involved, it will be difficult for them just to drop him. Because he thinks Danny could cause them a lot of trouble. And I think he’s right. I think there are people that were helping him prevent this from being prosecuted earlier. That’s what I’m looking forward to finding out — is just how much of a liability Scientology has in all this, and how much that will be part of this case.
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This is definitely one of the biggest legal milestones in Scientology history, there’s no question. As far as criminal cases, the biggest criminal case that Scientology has had to face was the Snow White prosecution in 1979, that ended up involving 11 top Scientologists who were convicted and went to prison. Since then there have been a couple of other Scientologists that were very notably prosecuted criminally. One was Rex Fowler, who was a Scientologist who killed his business partner and went to prison for it. Then there was Reed Slatkin, who was one of the largest Ponzi schemers until Bernie Madoff came along and made everyone look like pikers…
This one is just sort of hard to gauge, because I’m not sure where it’s going. It’s a combination of really awful allegations. You combine that with celebrity. I know Danny Masterson is not the biggest celebrity in the world, but a lot of young people really remember him from “That ’70s Show.” You combine that with Scientology’s reputation for bullying and legal chicanery, and boy, what a mix. I think people are going to be really interested in how this turns out.
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