Scientology church looms over actor Danny Masterson rape case
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Danny Masterson was an actor, a successful musician, a father and a former Scientologist. But he lost track of his personal life years ago, when he took the church’s tenets to an extreme.
On March 21, 2011, Masterson and his then-girlfriend were attending a friend’s birthday party. Masterson’s mother was going to the hospital in the evening, and she asked him to keep an eye on his mother for her, but he also had a date with his girlfriend. So he ran a few errands, met his girlfriend, dropped by his parents’ house to pick up his child and then he went to the birthday party.
As he left his house, he says he saw someone he knew from the Scientologist church. The man, who was “probably in his 20s or 30s,” offered to give the teen a ride. It was Masterson’s first time with a member of the Church of Scientology, but he took him up on the offer and the two went to the party.
They were having a drink, which Masterson felt obligated to attend, when the man said, “I’m sorry, but I haven’t got time for you right now. And then he got up and left.
Masterson asked the man if he had just met him, but he said he had. He asked the man who he was. The man, who was “probably in his 20s or 30s,” said he was a member of Scientology’s Sea Organization. Masterson asked why he was there and the man said he was there to help his fellow Scientologists “get rid of” the people they considered “unwanted,” Masterson said.
He took the man for a ride to a secluded spot where he stopped so that he could talk to him and offer him a ride home. Masterson says he never suggested that the man should leave the Scientologist church. He didn’t want to get kicked out or go to jail. And he certainly didn’t tell the man he planned on raping Masterson or any of his friends.
But in the days that followed, Masterson says it was difficult for