Danny Masterson Rape Retrial Begins: Prosecutors Claim ‘That 70’s Show’ Star ‘Drugged’ and ‘Sodomized’ Women

variety.com:

Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior Correspondent After a mistrial was declared with a hung jury last year, Danny Masterson’s second rape trial began with a more aggressive and pointed approach from the prosecution who repeatedly told the new jury that they will present evidence that proves the former star of “That 70’s Show” drugged women before he forcibly raped them. “The evidence will show they were drugged,” said Los Angeles deputy district attorney Reinhold Mueller in his opening statement on Monday, speaking of the four women who will testify against Masterson during the trial. “The symptoms that they’re going to describe,” Mueller told the jury, will include “lightheadedness, loss of vision, loss of motor skills, loss of strength, inability to control their body, vaginal pain, anal pain, all occurring after the defendant had given them an alcoholic beverage and all occurring within a matter of minutes.” Speaking of one of the Jane Doe’s, the deputy D.A.

told the jury she was “drugged and sodomized while unconscious.” In Mueller’s opening statement, he claimed Masterson anally raped many of the women who will testify. “When she awoke in bed, she was confused, she was disoriented, she was in a lot of pain. … She asked, ‘What happened last night?’ … He laughed at her and said, ‘Oh, I had sex with you there.’ She questioned him if she was unconscious.

He said ‘yes,’ that she was unconscious the whole time.” In Masterson’s first trial, prosecutors strongly suggested that Masterson drugged the women he allegedly assaulted, but they never outright claimed that he put drugs into drinks that he offered the women.