Anonymous wrote:

Do you believe most rapes have “recorded evidence”? By “recorded evidence,” do you mean a video recording preferably with audio where the victim repeatedly says “please stop this rape”? Because, well, that sure is how you’re coming across.

If “recorded evidence” means “contemporaneous police report of rape,” or “contemporaneous report of rape to a loved one,” or “contemporaneous report of rape to a higher-up in the victim and rapist’s shared religious community,” let me congratulate you! Because if that’s what you meant, there is a ton of recorded evidence of Danny Masterson’s habitual violent rapes!

None of you playing dumb can counter that Ashton and Mila deliberately emphasizing Masterson’s alleged distaste for drugs is anything other than them countering the victims’s reports that they were drugged by recidivist, habitual, violent, and now convicted, rapist Danny Masterson. Don’t be cute - cute is not a look you can hope to achieve.

No-I'm not "playing dumb" or "being cute." And of course I don't believe that most rapes have recorded evidence. I believe the victims, agree with Masterson's conviction and think Scientology is a cult. But I'm not a friend, family member or acquaintance of his (nor am I involved in the cult of Scientology). My point is that their perspectives (those who love and care about him and have spent years working with him, living with him, etc) are obviously biased by their positive experiences of him. How could they not be? I'm sorry, but I don't think it's fair to attack them for writing character references, not believing that he did it or being in denial. That's my opinion and obviously a lot of people disagree with me.

They are public people who made speaking out against sexual violence a part of their personal brand and PR.

If you are a private person, you could do whatever you want in this situation and there won't really be consequences because, most likely, no one would even know.

But if you are a celebrity who claims to care deeply about crimes involving sexual violence, then you should probably think long and hard before you sign your names to letters talking about what a fantastic person this guy is who was just convicted of two very violent rapes that involved drugging and threatening women.

They put themselves in this idiotic situation where they have spoken out against sex trafficking (and gotten a PR boost from speaking out about it) but now they want to endorse the fundamental goodness of someone who has been found guilty of truly horrible sex crimes. And they are rich and famous and all their money comes from people liking them and wanting to pay money to watch them act or consume things they endorse.

So yes, there are consequences for them that might not exist for you if you were in the same situation. That's just reality. They want the upside of fame but none of the downside or responsibility. Tough $hit for them.

Anonymous wrote:I read this on twitter and it seemed to really strike a nerve. With regards to people dismissing the character letters:

If Masterson had been a school shooter, would you have written a letter re what a nice guy he was to you, how trustworthy he is, in an attempt to help him get a lighter sentence?

There are key differences with a school shooter. Firstly, there is no doubt about what they did. It is all on video. Secondly, the prosecution happens swiftly after the crime. They are presumably still a danger to society, versus this where you have two decades lapsed since the crime with no subsequent accusations. Again, he should go away, but the situations are very different.

Lastly, yes, I can imagine people writing letters of character in any scenario no matter how barbaric. That is literally the point of character letters- to vouch for the nature of the person that, for whatever reason, seems inconsistent with the crime they committed. It’s not as black and white as you’re making it out to be. I understand that you, as a stranger, can’t separate these crimes from the rest of his life (and I wouldn’t either) but I don’t judge people in his life for having a more difficult time doing this without hard evidence and for writing character letters saying that they’ve had a very different experience with him in the two decades lapsed since the charges. That is literally why they exist.

Do you believe most rapes have “recorded evidence”? By “recorded evidence,” do you mean a video recording preferably with audio where the victim repeatedly says “please stop this rape”? Because, well, that sure is how you’re coming across.

If “recorded evidence” means “contemporaneous police report of rape,” or “contemporaneous report of rape to a loved one,” or “contemporaneous report of rape to a higher-up in the victim and rapist’s shared religious community,” let me congratulate you! Because if that’s what you meant, there is a ton of recorded evidence of Danny Masterson’s habitual violent rapes!

None of you playing dumb can counter that Ashton and Mila deliberately emphasizing Masterson’s alleged distaste for drugs is anything other than them countering the victims’s reports that they were drugged by recidivist, habitual, violent, and now convicted, rapist Danny Masterson. Don’t be cute - cute is not a look you can hope to achieve.

No-I'm not "playing dumb" or "being cute." And of course I don't believe that most rapes have recorded evidence. I believe the victims, agree with Masterson's conviction and think Scientology is a cult. But I'm not a friend, family member or acquaintance of his (nor am I involved in the cult of Scientology). My point is that their perspectives (those who love and care about him and have spent years working with him, living with him, etc) are obviously biased by their positive experiences of him. How could they not be? I'm sorry, but I don't think it's fair to attack them for writing character references, not believing that he did it or being in denial. That's my opinion and obviously a lot of people disagree with me.

Anonymous wrote:Where is Tom Cruise? The fact that he didn’t write a letter and is silent seems super weird.

Surely you are joking.

I read this on twitter and it seemed to really strike a nerve. With regards to people dismissing the character letters:

If Masterson had been a school shooter, would you have written a letter re what a nice guy he was to you, how trustworthy he is, in an attempt to help him get a lighter sentence?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

To the PP's who are being so hard on those who wrote character letters (and it wasn't just Ashton and Mila-it was many others as well). What if you had a convicted friend or family member who was very dear to you and who was currently (at least from what you were able to observe) being a good parent and citizen? You wouldn't feel at all compelled to write a character letter that could possibly reduce their sentence? I think it's very easy to judge from the outside but if you were in that situation you might feel otherwise.

PP you responded to. I think it would be (not only morally repugnant to the victims of violence IN THIS CASE but also) very stupid and ineffectual to say things that make it plainly obvious that I think the court reached the wrong ruling, as Ashton and Mila and YES MANY OTHERS have done. As I said in an earlier post, of course it is fine to testify to simply a person's character. That's not what this is.

Well, I'm sure that many of them do think that the court reached the wrong ruling. I think it would be very, very difficult to feel otherwise when it's someone you've loved and cared about for years and you haven't witnessed the behavior yourself and there's not DNA or recorded evidence. I'm not saying that Masterson didn't commit the rapes-I just don't think it's fair to attack people for writing character letters. They may understandably be in denial. For example-I think about what I would do if my brother faced similar allegations. Unless there was DNA, video evidence, etc I think I would have a really hard time believing that he did it based on my experience of being his sister for 35 years.