Just days after Danny Masterson was convicted of two counts of rape, People Magazine had a curious exclusive about Masterson’s wife, Bijou Phillips. Sources close to Bijou said that she was devastated over his conviction but she had no plans to leave him. Crash cut to this month – Masterson was just sentenced to thirty years in prison for drugging and raping women. Bijou was in the courtroom for the verdict and for his sentencing hearing. Reportedly, Masterson showed little emotion (because he’s a psycho) but Bijou was sobbing during his sentencing. So, months later, is she hiring a divorce lawyer? Nope.
Bijou Phillips is “distraught” after her husband Danny Masterson was sentenced to 30 years in prison in his rape case last week, a source tells PEOPLE.
“She has had a very difficult time since the conviction,” the insider says. “She loves Danny and has no plans to file for divorce. She will be by his side for it all.”
The source shares that Phillips, 43, is “surrounded by family and friends” amid her husband’s legal troubles, adding, “She is in touch with his lawyer. They are planning appeals. She tries to stay hopeful.”
Masterson’s defense attorney Shawn Holley did not immediately return to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Phillips was in the courtroom — alongside members of Masterson’s family — for the sentencing on Thursday, according to Variety. The actor was seen blowing a kiss to his wife before being led away to prison in a court sketch. During the sentencing, two women he was convicted of raping gave victim impact statements and the Judge Charlaine Olmedo told Masterson, “Mr. Masterson, you are not the victim here. Your actions 20 years ago took away another person’s voice and choice. Your actions 20 years ago were criminal, and that is why you are here,” according to the outlet.
Yeah, this is a Scientology thing – I’m sure Bijou is being surrounded by “family and friends,” and all of them are Scientologists. Even if she waivered and considered divorcing Masterson and starting over as a divorcee, CoS probably wouldn’t let her. Their support is conditional, and the condition is that she stick with Masterson through a thirty-year prison sentence. As Leah Remini pointed out in her statement following Masterson’s sentencing, a few of Masterson’s victims were Scientologists too, yet CoS protected the rapist and not the victim. CoS threatened and harassed Masterson’s victims, what do you think they’d to Masterson’s wife if she ever tried to escape the marriage or this situation?
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
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- Los Angeles, CA – Actor Danny Masterson is in court once again as he stands trial on three charges of forcible rape. The jury in the case was unable to reach a decision after three days of deliberations and were ordered to return today. Judge Charlaine Olmedo replaced two jurors today after they had notified the court that they had tested positive for Covid. The judge replaced the jurors with two alternates and ordered that they begin deliberations again. Pictured: Bijou Phillips, Danny Masterson BACKGRID USA 28 NOVEMBER 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Los Angeles, CA – Jury deliberations resumed today in the rape trial of “That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson, one day after jurors were ordered to begin anew with two alternates added, following news that two panelists had tested positive for COVID-19. Pictured: Danny Masterson, Bijou Phillips BACKGRID USA 29 NOVEMBER 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: no byline@backgrid.com / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Los Angeles, CA – Danny Masterson is seen arriving in court today with wife Bijou Phillips, as jury is believed to be issuing their verdict today in his rape retrial case. The jury has been deliberating for over a week in the rape retrial after the first ended in a mistrial in December, with a jury deadlocked on all counts. Pictured: Danny Masterson, Bijou Phillips BACKGRID USA 30 MAY 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Hollywood, CA – **FILE PHOTO** Danny Masterson Found Guilty In Rape Trial. Pictured Here: Danny Masterson at the Olympus Has Fallen film premiere at The ArcLight Cinemas in Los Angeles, California. March 18, 2013. Pictured: Danny Masterson BACKGRID USA 31 MAY 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
She may be brainwashed as a cult member because she is married to a person who is a prominent figure in that cult. But how can you hear all the evidence and testimony of the victims and not be disgusted?
Because Scientology’s practice is that there are no true victims. If you are assaulted by someone within the cult, that person would be made to do certain steps to rehabilitate, and so would you. What did you do to “pull this in”.
And you are expressly forbidden to report any crime to outside law enforcement; that would have been more of a crime than the person who assaulted you.
And if you take that step anyway, you are very likely to lose your family and friends. Because they couldn’t control you, they are made to disconnect from you for their own safety.
That said, Scientology is having a difficult time right now. They have ramped up their efforts to neutralize the ex-members who are explaining this doctrine to the outside world. The entire Masterson family is involved with the cult, and if they don’t feel supported, they are at risk for the family taking their grievances public.
Scientology chose its course back when the assaults happened, by internally finding Masterson was guilty, and intimidating the women who spoke out. And their paperwork from that time proves it.
Leah has a very good podcast with Mike Rinder about this topic. She said that Danny is still in “good standing” with CoS because he didn’t admit anything to law enforcement and kept his mouth shut and didn’t badmouth CoS. The women? They were declared SPs and some had to disconnect with family and friends.
I feel no sympathy for Bijou. She’s been this POS’ ride-or-die for a while now. And Masterson’s family? Equally evil. In one victim impact statement, Danny’s sister was in the bathroom at the courthouse waiting for Jane Doe #1 but was stopped from harassing her by the ADA who had gone with her. Plus, Danny paid someone to go up to JD #1’s kid at school and tell the daughter, your mommy “lied.”
I hope Masterson dies in jail. And if the civil lawsuit is successful, he’ll be broke too. Bijou has her own money from Papa John Phillips, I think (his songwriting). She’ll be fine.
She’s totally brainwashed. I’ve been going on a bender with cult podcasts for months now and what we call “brainwashing” is a long-term thing where your whole value system gets shifted, all of your boundaries get pushed, and your ability to think critically is just…eroded away, if it ever existed in the first place. One thing I notice about Scientologists is that most of them are people who do not have a university education. Many don’t seem to have even finished high school, like Leah and probably Tom and Bijou as well. That’s not to say a uni education protects you from being manipulated, but a couple physical science/chemistry classes probably makes you a lot less likely to swallow the notion of an e-meter hook, line, and sinker (IMO this is a big part of why Scientology attracts so many actors).
Her sister is a born again Christian and her brother is a student of an Indian guru. It seems they have all turned to religious extremes to deal with childhood trauma. Bijou is accountable for her own behavior, but I can see why she was attracted to Scientology.
@Megan Oh right, I remember seeing her sister on Instagram and realizing she was just another religious extremist! I notice that people who grow up in very unstable environments are drawn to these rigid rule systems that are most often found in extreme religious ideologies. They like the black-and-whiteness of it. It. brings stability to them because they have no clue how to find that stability within themselves.
The Mastersons keep repeating this idea that their father left them and Danny had to act as the father in the family. The father left because Scientology declared him an SP and made the children disconnect from their father. He didn’t walk out; Scientology forced him out. This Masterson clan are all wackadodoodles and have been sheltered by Scientology for generations. They will not leave Scientology because they have enormous power in that cult. Danny acted like a cult leader. That is learned behavior.
@SciLiez, The letter his kids wrote were full of lies. The son claimed he was six years old and was abandoned by his father, Joe, when Danny stepped in as a father figure and raised him and his sister. The son was actually 19 years old when his father was declared an SP by Scientology and they cut off contact with him. Joe was also stepfather to Danny and helped and supported him including helping him to get a mortgage for his first home.
she also denies her sister’s rape at the hands of her father, so the rape denial goes deep, unfortunately.
Gonna be honest with you.. she’s known about this prior to the women going to the LAPD. She knows he’s guilty but she doesn’t care. His family believes he just slept with the women and the women are over exaggerating. Apparently CoS told one of the victims who was his girlfriend that it’s impossible for Danny to have forced her against her will because they were in a relationship and “it’s his right” to take her whenever.
All of this came out in court.
It’s not just that she’s brainwashed by a cult. I think it’s self-denial. I see this in women who are not scientologists, too, like pretty much every republican woman. They are in denial because they mentally/emotionally cannot accept the truth, which is that the men in their lives hate women. How hard is it to realize and accept that your very own husband, or father, or son, hates women, including YOU? Probably VERY hard. Denial is easier.
Mrs. Krabapple–yep, much of these women’s self-image and esteem is tied up in being the perfect girlfriend/wife/mother. And down deep, they know something isn’t right about the grinding emotional workload of selling themselves out to meet an impossible standard. But to hear all of that was for a man who still hates you, will always hate women, is just too unendurable to bear. He was supposed to be the knight in shining armor–he for God only, she for God in him, and all that…
I say, give it a couple of years, he’ll fade from memory, she’ll find someone new and that will be that.
Thats what I was thinking – CoS will marry her off to someone else.
from the recent pap photos Jordan Masterson seems to be sliding into that role. Watch she divorces Danny to marry Jordan. If she even has the strength to sever the trauma bond with Danny.
@Flamingo, I read Jordan’s letter to the judge and he stated he wasn’t a Scientologist. I think other brother Chris still is as their batsh*t crazy sister. I think CoS will play nice with Bijou until after the civil suit, then maybe cut her loose if they can’t bleed her dry of more money.
@H that was Will Masterson, not Jordan Masterson.
As far as I know, Jordan and his sister Alanna are still in according to their Father who left the church years ago. Who is also livid how he has been described about in the letters.
Also, Scientologists are known to lie, so Will may be in and was done with the blessing of the cult. You never know.
So is People mag an outlet for Scientology now? It wouldn’t suprise me given their garbage fawning over other questionable celebs.
And when are we getting an investigation into the police department’s favors for Scientology? That’s the longer con that we need to get to the bottom of.
People may not be an outlet for Scientology, but they also aren’t gonna be too critical because if they do, they know they’d lose access to Tom Cruise, and more than that, he’d sic the church and their lawyers on the magazine and burn it to the ground.
People Mag has been soft selling $cientology for years with their puffy profiles and non critical articles.
It’s one of the main reasons I stopped reading it years ago…
Exactly! I commented the other day about how the LA PD kept the investigation into Danny Masterson away from the LAPD’s Hollywood division because they knew they were compromised by Scientology. Because of Scientology‘s tax exempt status, they have billions of dollars and contribute generously to various LAPD Hollywood division causes. Bought and paid for.
She married a man just like her father and she’s in deep denial about both of them.
Yes. I read her wiki page and her life has been full of trauma and bad people. No excuses for defending a convicted rapist, but this woman is seriously damaged.
Absolutely horrific childhood is the word. But at least with John Phillips’ other children – they had mothers who weren’t as damaged in Chynna Phillips’ mother Michelle and McKenzie Phillips’ non- famous mother. Bijou was dealt a double whammy in her momGenevieve Waite was as messed up as John if you can believe anybody could be. Less the incest part anyway.
I was coming on to say the same thing. Her life has been awful from the get-go. It’s no wonder she ended up in COS and with him.
She and her brother were actually put into foster care for a few years because their parents were such terrible drug addicts. She emancipated herself at 14 but spiraled down into addiction just like her parents. She went into rehab at 17, and her brother Tamerlane, who had a brief acting career, became a devoted follower of a religious guru in India and has basically disappeared. Unfortunately Phillip’s daughter Chynna, who has become an evangelical Christian, still supports Masterson.
If you follow Aaron Smith-Levin’s YouTube channel (Growing Up In Scientology), it has become apparent from new victims coming forward that (a) Danny Masterson ALLEGEDLY continued to drug and assault women after getting with Bijou; and (b) Bijou was ALLEGEDLY very much aware of that fact. Also that Bijou herself is ALLEGEDLY a bit of a sociopath.
Edit: Whoops, looks like Aaron’s video from today has been taken down.
It’s pretty well-known that Bijou is, at the very least, a brat. Scoffs at other women, over nothing etc. This is NO surprise.
Bijou is a well documented a**hole. She doesn’t get a pass from me.
I saw Aaron’s video yesterday – it was taken down???
I watched his video yesterday — it’s still up and well worth a view. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xll_79BoVUw
yeah, no. Ever since the sentencing, I’ve kind of been going down the internet rabbit hole of listening to ex-scientologists talk about the case, and I have zero sympathy for Bijou Phillips. She has always known, and to hear the anecdotes about her from witnesses over the years (decades) of Danny being a serial rapist, she has also always had a screw loose and been a bully and a misogynist.
The one I feel sorry for is their kid, who at this moment is an innocent, but only has an extremely slim chance of growing up to be a good person with the parents she has and in the conditions she’s being raised in. The odds are against her. They certainly didn’t work in her mother’s favor.
After reading Mackenzie’s story I’m actually extremely concerned for this child’s wellbeing.
Isn’t Shawn Holley the lawyer who did some work for Lindsay Lohan when she was busy breaking the law repeatedly?
Beyond the CoS of it all, she had a very troubled family with her father being accused of abusing her older sister sexually for years and Bijou not standing with her sister on that. There was also rampant drug use in the family and I think she was a prime target for CoS, who “helps” people get off and stay off drugs and alcohol with some weird program. All of that is to say it isn’t surprising that she’s in denial and staying with him. It’s sad, but it’s not surprising.
I’m not sure where I read it, but another person came fwd after the sentencing. They said he drugged her but her friend was there, noticed something was wrong, and immediately got her out of there before he could hurt her more. They said Bijou was screaming cursing at them at they were leaving. She knew what was going on but blamed them. She’s one of those is always the other woman’s fault type. “He’s not a rapist, you’re a homewrecker!” type. She gets no sympathy from me.
It was from Tik Tok a woman who came forward and told her story from 2005. It was disturbing, to say the least. Even if Bijou was being territorial over Danny. Inadverntaly she stopped a potential sexual assault.
@flamingo, but Bijou didn’t stop the assault, the friend did. The friend noticed she was acting weird she removed her from the house.
If it is the same Tik Tok there wasn’t actually an assault. The woman went to the bathroom and Danny followed her and was hanging over her. But wasn’t doing anything (yet). The friend realized something was wrong and Bijou was screaming for them to get out. They had to sit in the cold in the front of the house for hours. Trying to find a taxi (this was pre-Uber years). Which is when Danny and Bijou came out. Not knowing the women were still there. And Bijou was screaming at him “I know” or something like that. I don’t feel she knew she was drugging them But she was screaming at him like she knew he was cheating on her. She is so damaged herself. Someone like Danny may have been her trauma bond she will never want to break free from.
Someone needs to get this person a de-programmer so she can get out of this cult and stop denying that your husband is a rapist.
Realistically all she has now is the Mastersons to lean on. They will never let her and their daughter out of the CoS clutches. Nor does Bijou seem to want independence. She wants someone to be her Daddy-Husband. And that is what Danny was to her. He was in full control of Bijou and their child. She was content being taken care of. It would be great if she woke up and found independence. But I don’t see that happening.
Just throwing another possibility in, maybe she thinks or knows he won’t make it 30 years and is holding out for life insurance or whatever.
Reading those letters basically, people describe Bijou as a woman-child that can’t handle anything. They did her no favors. I get it was trying to pull the heartstrings of the Judge. I also think she is probably buying into the CoS that are telling her they will get Danny out of prison on appeal.
She is just hanging on by a string from some of the recent pap photos. I just hope her child is well taken care of by someone adult around her.
I mean, it’s not really any different than the Catholic Church, beyond the fact that the abuse that occurred at the CC was far more wide-spread. Catholic priests who are pedos are no different than Masterson or Robert Hadden, the Columbia OBGYN who assaulted hundreds of his patients. These people rely on powerful institutions to insulate and protect them from any true accountability for their crimes.
Look, the Catholic Church is terrible but there is no comparison with Scientology. There is not the level of control over members everyday life.
Systemically raping and abusing children for decades is unconscionable, but the Catholic Church looks pretty sweet compared to Scientology. Please do some more research on Scientology.
Respectfully, look into the Magdalene Laundries before you say Catholicism is less terrible than Scientology. Not only were women and children raped, abused, and killed, but they were used for slave labor, kept prisoner in appalling conditions, and starved and tortured. This happened for decades. There is no lesser of the two evils here. Both are evil. Both prey on the weak and small, and both enrich themselves at the cost of generational misery.
I am going to rant a bit on this, so I apologize in advance.
Catholicism is much more far reaching than Co$ and if you think that it is not as bad, you need to do a lot more research into the Laundries, the abuse of nuns in convents for centuries, the abuse that nuns have perpetrated on others, Residential schools in Canada and the US, their treatment of young, unwed mothers in their parishes and, if you really want to go for broke, the history of the Thirty Year’s War and the Crusades. The Catholic Church has done so much damage to so many people for centuries, the world has just come to accept it as normal.
Co$ has been bat sh*t crazy from the start, and the normal world has known it, but the CC is just as bat sh*t. There is an Urban Dictionary definition of Christianity that I think sums up what a lot of non-religious people think about the CC, and others: “The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.” Sounds just as bonkers as alien warlords honestly.
-Signed an Ex-Communicated CC teen mom
@ Ama and Eden- Thank you both for saying this. A lot of religious folks love to cast aspersions on CO$ and that’s good and fine, but it means a HELLUVA lot less when those same people refuse to acknowledge the atrocities committed by powerful people who were protected within your own religious institution.
It absolutely blows my mind that anyone can earnestly say that CO$ is somehow worse than the Catholic Church but hey. I grew up in a Boston suburb and I remember the Spotlight scandal like it was yesterday. If you can minimize more than 1,000 children being sexually abused by 250 priests in the Archdiocese of Boston…phew.
And if you refuse to see the magnitude of that–the PTSD, the suicides, the utter obliteration of trust–not to mention the destruction of any semblance of a normal childhood, then you are just biased as hell. And that’s putting it nicely.
The older I get the more pessimist I am about our justice system. It seems as if, even at our local level, the bad guys have all the rights. I predict that he will appeal, get a retrial with a hung jury and will walk. Never underestimate behind the scenes power influence.
A hung jury in a retrial wouldn’t vacate a conviction would it?
To get a new trial- the Court (appeals) would have to toss the current verdict. So the new trial would start at ground zero.
Anything could happen.
Thanks for the explanation, and ugh. Surely it can’t be that easy to get a guilty verdict tossed. I admit, I’m skeptical someone rich and well connected will serve 30 years, but even this conviction and sentencing is a huge step forward in justice for assault survivors.
An appeal has to demonstrate a deficit of some kind in the original trial (i.e. jury tampering, ineffective assistance of counsel, etc.) You can’t file an appeal because you don’t like the verdict (well you *can*, but the court will yell at you and you won’t win.) I’d be surprised if an appeal goes anywhere.
It sounds like there have been more women coming forward with allegations. Another trial would hopefully bury him anyway. From what I’ve been reading, appeals in rape cases that have been decided by a jury are rarely overturned. But you can never tell.
Bijou was always a piece of work bullying her coworkers and being an out of control mean party girl with her bff Paris Hilton (anyone remember the time she cut some dudes finger off with a cigar cutter?). She of course had a traumatic childhood (but this doesn’t give her a pass). Then she met Danny and got clean and if I recall correctly got a kidney transplant. He got her clean (with scientology of course€ and probably gave her some stability in life but this obviously doesn’t give him a pass for his atrocities either.
Just came here to say the same thing. She’s been problematic as hell and knew early on that her husband was doing these horrific things. I’ve been watching some YouTube videos from a variety of people who made it out of Co$ and all say she knew exactly what Danny, Ashton and their gang of Hollywood bros were up to. One woman interviewed said she and a friend were hanging out at their house one night playing poker and Danny slipped her friend a drugged drink. Within a few minutes she’d nearly passed out but her friend got her out in the nick of time as Danny tried to lead her to a bedroom. As they were waiting at the foot of the driveway for a cab, Danny and Bijou came out of the house and had a massive screaming fight, not realizing the two women were still there. She kept screaming “I know what you’re doing you f*cking b*stard, I know what you’re doing!!” So no, she doesn’t get a cookie for being a devoted wife.
Beyond the Scientology disfunction, her half sister MacKenzie Phillips had an incestuous relationship with their father – she has been raised in disfunction so this scenario would seem much more acceptable to her than to people with a normal upbringing
Mila and Ashton are being called out for their BS, rightfully so. But I wonder what’s up to Laura Prepon and Ben Foster’s silence and hiding like rats. i know Prepon now states she’s out of the cult, and good for her if that’s true, but I really find hit hard to believe that’s 100% true, she was one of the hard core scientologists, always always in the company of the Mastersons, dated Danny’s brother for years, Prepon and Foster they both are very very VERY close to Masterson, so close that both have called him “brother”, used to hang out with him right when the rapes happened and Foster is even Masterson’s daughter godfather. Their silence is quite suspicious. Good for them if it means they’ve completely left the cult. Foster never admitted himself as a scientologist but he married one, is (was) close friends with many of them and grew up in a cult himself.
*An important distinction needs to be made here. He was not sentenced to 30 years in prison but rather 30 years TO LIFE. That means that the first time he’ll be eligible for parole is in 30 years but if the parole board doesn’t believe he should be released he can be in prison for the rest of his life. It’s the same sentencing scheme as first degree murder which is 25 years to life. Think this adds even more to the story that Phillips is staying with him when there is a very likely possibility that he’ll never be released from prison.
She’s thinking the appeal will get him out.
Wasn’t SHE harassing the victims during the trial? I get that Scientology is a cult and it’s hard to leave, but did they tell her to do that, or did she decide to that on her own? I have a feeling she’s staying with him because she’s an awful person, not because she can’t get out.
Yes, both Bijou and Danny’s sister Alana have harassed and tried to intimidate Danny’s victims. They are both POS.
Yes, Scientology absolutely tells them to do that. They even have a certain stare that they use to try to stare down and exert control over “suppressive persons“.
She has been accused of violence on another person, herself. She will go to the same hell he does, one day.
I mean Bijou’s father was a rapist and so is her husband, so doubt she’s leaving Danny now and getting help.