Four women are suing Danny Masterson and the Church of Scientology claiming they were stalked and intimidated in an effort to silence them. Chrissie Carnell Bixler, Marie Riales and two unidentified plaintiffs filed a complaint Los Angeles Superior Court claiming the defendants harassed them and their families in an effort to halt their reports of misconduct against the actor.
Masterson was fired from the Netflix series, The Ranch, and dropped by UTA in 2017 after the LAPD confirmed it was investigating sexual assault allegations from multiple women. The actor denied the allegations at the time and said any sexual encounters with women were consensual.
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Masterson responded to the lawsuit in a statement released by The Hollywood Reporter, calling it “beyond ridiculous.”
“I’m not going to fight my ex-girlfriend in the media like she’s been baiting me to do for more than two years,” he said, speaking of Bixler. “I will beat her in court — and look forward to it because the public will finally be able [to] learn the truth and see how I’ve been railroaded by this woman. And once her lawsuit is thrown out, I intend to sue her and the others who jumped on the bandwagon for the damage they caused me and my family.”
According to the suit, Scientology forbids its members from contacting authorities to report a crime committed by any of its other members. They also claim that phones in certain church locations are incapable of dialing 911, and victims are mostly blamed for any assaults.
“Historically, when a member has complained of suffering sexual abuse, this disclosure has resulted in the member being forced to confront or apologize to his or her abuser and undergo a program to identify what ‘pulled in’ the abuse,” the complaint reportedly read.
Bixler claimed she met the actor at a party in 1996, they started dating and eventually moved in together with the actor’s siblings. She claimed he would regularly force her to have sex with him and became violent if she refused. She said she joined the church after he told her too, and she was told there that it was her job as his girlfriend to “give him sex whenever he wants it.”
Six years later, Bixler claimed she reported Masterson to the church after he had sex with her when she was unconscious and she was told not to use the word rape because “you can’t be raped by someone you are in a consensual relationship with.” Bixler said the couple split in 2002, and she was forced to sign a document saying she would never speak about him publicly or sue him.
She left the church in 2016 and filed a sexual assault report to the LAPD at the time. After that, she claimed her car was broken into, people parked vans outside her home and filmed her and her family after her security system was hacked.
The Church of Scientology has not responded publicly to the lawsuit.
