Kathy Griffin called out people who protect sexual predators after Ashton Kutcher and his wife, Mila Kunis, wrote character letters defending convicted rapist Danny Masterson.
Griffin referred to a personal experience about her efforts to have her brother Ken Griffin, whom she accused of being a pedophile, arrested.
“Blood was not thicker than water in my case,” Griffin said in a video posted to her TikTok and Instagram accounts. “If you know that somebody is committing [sexual assault] you should do something, if you can.”
Griffin accused her brother, who is deceased, of preying on victims who lived in the Los Angeles apartment building he managed.
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Griffin said she contacted police twice to try to have him arrested, which caused a “giant rift” in her family and led to her being “shunned.” She said that ultimately police told her there was nothing they could do without evidence. Ken Griffin never went to prison for the alleged crimes.
“It was a horrible, horrible thing, and I tried to get him caught. Now, this was my brother, so I don’t want to hear about Ashton and Mila and Giovanni Ribisi and people that feel like they had to stick up for Danny Masterson because he was their ‘bro,’ he was their buddy. This was my own brother,” she said, adding that she was “shunned” by some of her relatives over her attempts to have him jailed.
Unlike Griffin’s accusations against her brother, Kunis and Kutcher have said they were unaware of the crimes Masterson committed at the time. They came under fire after they wrote letters to the court describing Masterson as an “excellent” role model, an “outstanding older brother figure” and a “dedicated and loyal” husband. During his trial, victims told stories of how Masterson “drugged and raped” them at his Hollywood Hills home two decades ago and recalled the fallout from their having accused an “untouchable” member of the Church of Scientology of being a rapist.
“Throughout our time together, Danny has proven to be an amazing friend, confidant, and, above all, an outstanding older brother figure to me,” Kunis wrote in her letter. “His caring nature and ability to offer guidance have been instrumental in my growth both personally and professionally.”
Kutcher wrote that he did not believe Masterson was “an ongoing harm to society” and that he hoped his testament to Masterson’s character would be “taken into consideration in sentencing.” A judge sentenced Masterson last week to 30 years to life in prison for sexually assaulting two women.
Following backlash over the letters, Kunis and Kutcher said in a video explanation that Masterson’s family had asked them to characterize “the person that we knew for 25 years so that the judge could take that into full consideration relative to the sentencing.”
But Griffin said that is no excuse.
“I don’t really care that when they were working on ‘That ’70s Show’ he was, like, a good guy to work with and he worked actively to keep people off drugs because he’s a Scientologist,” she said.
Christina Ricci also joined the conversation, writing in an Instagram Story that “sometimes people we have loved and admired do horrible things.”
“They might not do these things to us and we only know who they were to us but that doesn’t mean they didn’t do horrible things and to discredit the abused is a crime,” she wrote. “People we know as ‘awesome guys’ can be predators and abusers. It’s tough to accept but we have to. If we say we support victims — women, children, men, boys — then we must be able to take this stance.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
