Kathy Griffin has told a deeply personal story regarding her brother as she weighed in on the fallout surrounding Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis’ character letters for convicted r*pist Danny Masterson.
Masterson, 47, was handed 30 years to life in prison for the r*pe of two women in incidents dating back two decades - and some celebs gave good character references for him during the trial.
Griffin didn’t mince her words as she addressed the controversy in a TikTok video: “I don’t really care that when they were working on That ‘70s Show, he was like a good guy to work with,” she said bluntly.
Then came her emotional reveal. “I wrote about it in my first book, and 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 that they had to stick up for Danny Masterson because he was their ‘bro’ he was their ‘buddy’ – this was my own brother,” Griffin said.
She added that two of her brother’s girlfriends had confided in her, claiming he physically abused them. “I called the [Los Angeles Police Department] about it twice because my brother was the super of a building, and that’s how he gained access to his victims,” she continued.
“So he had keys to all of the units, and he allegedly – because he never went to prison for it, he went to prison for something else – molested a boy and a girl because most p*dophiles don’t care about gender.”
Griffin revealed that not only did her efforts to bring her brother to justice go nowhere, but she also faced rejection from her own family for trying.
“And when I called LAPD they actually said, ‘We can only go and even do a door knock, like ask one of the victims about this, if your brother personally walks into the station and confesses or if one of the kids confesses and goes to authorities,’” she said.
Her frustration was palpable as she continued: “And both times, I said, ‘You think a 10-year-old is going to walk into the precinct on Bronson or whatever and ask for help?’ It doesn’t work that way in this crime. And so nothing happened.”
Griffin also took aim at the legal system and the massive hurdles victims face when seeking justice in sexual assault cases.
“Most prosecutors – well, all prosecutors – will not even bring the case to trial unless there’s an incredible amount of evidence because it turns into a ‘he said, she said’ and historically, juries are very trepidatious, to say the least, of convicting a guy about SA [sexual assault] because there’s still a lot of stigma about whether the woman asked for it, etc,” she said.
“So it’s always haunted me that I could never do anything about it, and I think about those children every day, and I think about other victims he probably had and the difficulty in getting a conviction in SA cases,” Griffin continued.
“The bar is so high that I tend to absolutely believe the victims when there’s even a trial because it’s so hard to even get to a trial.”
Griffin’s message was crystal clear as she closed out her emotional statement: “And I could never do anything about my brother, and I felt so helpless.
"And the women that he was with at the time were so physically abused, they were in that place, and I don’t blame them 100 per cent, but the point is: blood was not thicker than water in my case. And if you know that somebody is committing SA, you should do something if you can. My god, at least try.”