DELANO, Calif. (AP) — “That ‘70s Show” actor Danny Masterson has been sent to a California state prison to serve his sentence for two rape convictions.

Authorities said Wednesday that the 47-year-old Masterson has been admitted to North Kern State Prison, and they released his first prison mug shot. The photo shows him wearing orange prison attire, with long hair and a beard.

    • mhague@lemmy.world
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      Aston Kutcher, a celebrity famous for his philanthropy, says a man guilty of two rapes should have his charity taken into account.

      In other words: A man with excess money, and who gives some of that excess to charity, says a person’s charity should balance out that person’s crimes.

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        I think it’s the personal connection that makes him find reasons to consider Danny’s side of things more charitably. I sort of accept that he is just a dumb Hollywood guy with a soft spot for a friend. Except for one thing…

        He’s involved with fighting human trafficking which ought to give him a pretty clear perspective regarding sexual assault victims. That’s what I can’t reconcile.

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            That’s exactly the perspective I consider in the first paragraph and then dismiss in the second. I feel like you’ve just asked, “But why male models?” for the second time.

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          Involved in? You mean his accountant and manager got together and made a list of charities to give to that would be good for his image.

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          10 months ago

          Let’s have some devils advocate! Everybody loves devils advocate. Just real quick before I start cooking, I just want to say that rape is bad and there’s no excuse. That’s important and I’m not going to use it in my examples. Murder though - that’s basically fine, I think.

          A lot of crimes amount to one bad decision. A life of being a really good person and then one time you murder someone, then jail forever? (Well, yes, but actually no - first time offenders don’t get life in prison, even for murder.)

          Even if you have a dark side that you’ve been keeping under wraps, that’s actually good! If there are people with dark sides, what we want is for them to not act on it - sociopaths, pedophiles - like, if we take for granted that these are conditions which occur in people and there’s no cure, what we want is for them to not act on it.

          But, one day, you fail, your dark side gets out and you do one of the horrible things you’ve been trying not to do; then it’s easier to do it again, and again, and suddenly you’re a serial killer. 40 years of being good despite a very difficult challenge, to suppress that darkness, but the rest of your life, you’re judged for the few bad decisions you made in moments of weakness.

          Let’s talk about Ebeneezer Scrooge. Tis the season after all.

          That dude was a total dick for like 60 years, but, in the end of the story, he’s changed - it’s a redemption story. But his name, Scrooge, is a commonplace synonym which characterizes him as a villain; fuck his redemption, he lived most of his life as a dick, and we remember him that way.

          So which is it? Do we judge based on most of their lives, or do we judge based on a recent set of decisions which severely depart from that? Or do we just go with whichever was worst?

          When it comes to Ashton Kutcher, like, even a serial killer isn’t murdering literally every moment of their day. They have jobs, they go to the store. All that time, that person is being a good person, they’re suppressing their darkness. It’s easy to see a person in that light when that’s how you’ve seen them for basically your entire adult life.

          That said, Ashton Kutcher is a rich TV star so basically all his opinions are invalid. He probably only helps victims of sex trafficking because his PR team thought it would be a good fit for his brand. Not to say he doesn’t like helping - I’m just saying fuck that guy. Fuck all those guys.

          • MagicShel@programming.dev
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            That was quite a journey, my friend. To address your central point, I’m certain a scenario such as you propose happens. However, the reality is most people commit far more crime than they are ever caught and tried for. Especially when it comes to rape which is one of the most under-reported and under-prosecuted crimes. I’m going by memory here so I might be wrong, but something like 3% of accused rapists get convicted. So worst case scenario, you or I could go rape someone right now and be virtually guaranteed of getting away with it.

            It’s vastly more likely that this wasn’t a one-time thing, but the tip of the iceberg. Of course, we can’t be sure but statistics tells us Danny likely isn’t someone waging an internal war with a rapist who lost once. It’s also the case that once you commit a crime once, it becomes easier and more comfortable to do it again.

            Of course if one of my friends was accused of rape, I’d say that doesn’t sound like them at all. After all, if I thought one of my friends was a rapist we wouldn’t be friends for long. But in terms of keeping people safe, it would be irresponsible of us to give people the benefit of doubt and hope they’ve learned their lesson. We would almost certainly be wrong.

            But ultimately, Ashton should know that already. I will grant him that the statements written by him and Mila were given months before all the details were made public.

            • restingboredface@sh.itjust.works
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              But ultimately, Ashton should know that already. I will grant him that the statements written by him and Mila were given months before all the details were made public.

              I think this is the most likely factor in why both Kutcher and Kunis wrote statements. They knew a friend was in court (who probably told them it was all crap and that they were innocent) and that their friend would benefit from a reference from someone well known who could vouch for their good character. So they did it to help a friend who they likely believed would be cleared of wrongdoing.

              Then all the details came out and it became clear that he was probably guilty and statements were already sent. They could have requested them back but probably thought it wouldn’t make a difference in the result of the case and either didn’t worry about it for that reason or just tried to rationalize that they were standing by a friend because of the good old days when he wasn’t doing terrible things.

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              Yeah I think my final point about Ashton should’ve been more prominent - he’s just a TV star, he shouldn’t be our moral compass.

              It’s great he’s contributing to this cause but his efforts are a tiny candle when compared to the efforts of the people his money is going to. He sits on a stage, looks handsome, and talks into a microphone about how you shouldn’t kidnap people and sell them into sexual slavery. He’s not holding anyone’s hair back while they vomit.

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            I’m not reading this whole novel, but

            A lot of crimes amount to one bad decision.

            Rape isn’t “one bad decision,” it’s a continuous string of bad decisions the entire time it’s happening. Two rapes is certainly not “one bad decision.” Dude raped two women. That’s a pattern. He’s a serial rapist. He needs to die in prison before he inevitably rapes again.

            • jeremyparker@programming.dev
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              I’m not going to read what you wrote, I’ll just assume I know what you’ve said based on the first part.

              Thanks.

              My example was murder, which can be one bad decision. I talked about serial crimes and remorse and all that later - but none of my post was about forgiveness, it was about, specifically, why Ashton Kutcher might say what he did about Masterson.

              What interests me about the topic, and why I made that post, is the interplay between redemption (eg Scrooge) and … whatever redemption’s opposite is (eg Masterson).

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        a celebrity famous for his philanthropy

        I mean, that’s kinda selling Aston Kutcher short. It also downplays his hypocrisy in this matter.

        Aston Kutcher quit acting to start an organization that fights human trafficking. That’s a bit more than just a philanthropic celebrity. Which is why his defense of Danny is a big slap in the face. It sort of goes against everything he claims to stand and work for. Yea, it wasn’t technically human trafficking, but rape is so adjacent to that it’s hard to not see the hypocrisy.

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          I mean I personally feel most people like to think they’d immediately disown any friends that do stuff like this but I’d bet in reality a lot of people would do the same thing.

          It’s a lot easier to pass judgment when you’re not emotionally involved. Same reason why people stay in abusive relationships. On the outside it’s cut and dry but sadly emotions are a thing.

          I’m not defending Masterson nor am I saying Kutcher isn’t in the wrong by defending him. I’m just trying to bring to light that humans are emotional before they’re logical.

          • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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            Hell no, the dude wrote a letter to a judge saying “I know he raped two women, but cmon dude be cool.” Fuck that guy, fuck his wife, and fuck everyone else who asked the judge for leniency.

            • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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              Like I said I agree.

              I just feel like a lot more people would resort to something like that if it was more personal.

              Basically people are hypocrites and always say they’d do the right thing until they’re in that circumstance and then all of a sudden it’s not such an easy decision

              • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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                Idunno. There’s a difference between not doing the right thing, and going out of your way to do the wrong thing. I can understand someone not wanting to provide evidence against their friend in court, but I cannot fathom writing a letter requesting leniency for my friend after I find out he raped two women. If he continued to question whether his friend actually committed those crimes, I could maybe understand it, but he acknowledged Masterson’s guilt. I would be too upset with him to do that, especially if I were involved with an organization that exists to bring an end to sexual violence.

                And you’re going to say “that’s easy to say until you’re in that situation,” but it would also be easy to do if I were in that situation. I’ve dropped long-time friends for less. I would be a wholly different person if I were capable of requesting leniency for a rapist.

                • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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                  And hey good on you. I’m glad you have the resolve and self respect to push those people out of your life. I’m that type of person myself. I’ve just seen the opposite happen so many times that I’m surprised people are still surprised when it happens

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          Yeah. He’s had to look at reams of CASM as part of this for some reason. He also opposed encryption. He does these things for the children so that may might… Get unmolested? I don’t know. He’s kind of fucked.

      • The Barto@sh.itjust.works
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        If using a charity is something Ashton thinks you can use as a get out of jail free card, then what fucking shit does he do, he’s been helping with that anti sex trafficking thing, that’s a big ol get out of jail free card in Ashton’s mind.

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        I really don’t like how much hate they got for this

        If someone you love does something horrible, the emotions don’t just disappear. It’s like grief, people have to work through it, and it happens in different ways.

        For them, their long time friend has done something to (for them) hypothetical victims. They asked for leniency in a non-public way…

        It’s an extremely human thing to do. It doesn’t live up to their ideals, but it doesn’t invalidate everything they’ve done

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      Are those two on a speedrun to be the most unbearable couple?

  • Davel23@kbin.social
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    To clarify, North Kern is an intake facility. He’ll be there for a few weeks undergoing psych evals and other testing to determine which facility he will be sent to for permanent incarceration.

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      i’ve heard the racial stuff is really intense… so you either end up an Aryan Nation type, or you end up being bitched out by everyone else…
      but, since he’s rich and famous, he’ll probably get special treatment and be able to buy protection (like Jared Fogle)
      i’ve also heard that prisoners all hate rapists

      • Llewellyn@lemm.ee
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        i’ve also heard that prisoners all hate rapists

        Such noble creatures these prisoners are…

    • Jagger2097@lemmy.world
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      Seeing people actually punished for crimes like this should always be celebrated as many rapes go unreported

  • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    This is the first I’m hearing of this - Yes I’ve been living under a rock. Can anyone give me a brief rundown of what he did? The article said it happened in the 2000s but didn’t give specifics.

    • nfh@lemmy.world
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      Talk about a dramatic way to put him in a place nobody knows who he is

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    “But… but… Ashton!”

    “Ashton did this, Ashton did that!”

    Keep it classy at the lunchroom table, bitches.

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    Tangentially related but I rewatched Face/Off last night and realised he has a very short role, extremely foreshadowing.

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    He’s lucky we live in a civil society.

    I’d have voted to chemically castrate anyone convicted of rape and then put him in gen pop.

      • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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        Oh that’s easy the supreme Court already said it doesn’t matter. Being convicted is enough even if you are truly innocent.

      • Guy Dudeman@lemmy.world
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        Nobody is ever wrongfully convicted. We have the perfect system and it never ever makes mistakes.

        • BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
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          i just came from a post about OJ Simpson so believe me when i say everything this guy dudeman just said is true

        • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          “Just hormones.”

          Anyone who has ever seen someone on hormonal medication knows that it can profoundly change your outlook and personality. Even birth control can have emotional impacts on people, and they may not even notice it because the medication is so normalized that people don’t see it as a potential problem.

          • StorminNorman@lemmy.world
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            I edited that bit cos I knew someone would think that was my entire point. But as you said yourself “it CAN have” (emphasis mine) undesirable effects. Most medications, hormonal or not, CAN have these effects. But the vast majority of people on these medications don’t get these effects. And even if every person who was chemically castrated suffered these effects (and again, they don’t, we wouldn’t use it to treat some diseases if it did), the fact it’s reversible makes it infinitely better than the death penalty. Reality isn’t perfect. There’s always gonna be compromises.

            • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              My observation is that it seems like a significant percentage of people do experience the side effects, but either don’t connect the dots to the medication, or the benefit outweighs the problem. A quick google search has revealed that this is an issue that is getting increased attention over the last few years.

              “The study of over a million Danish women over age 14, using hard data like diagnosis codes and prescription records, strongly suggests that there is an increased risk of depression associated with all types of hormonal contraception.

              …the IUD was particularly associated with depression in all age groups is especially significant, because traditionally, physicians have been taught that the IUD only acts locally and has no effects on the rest of the body. Clearly, this is not accurate.”

              https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-hormonal-birth-control-trigger-depression-201610172517

              “Among contraceptive users aged 15–49 in 2018, female permanent contraception was the most common method used (28%), followed by pills (21%), male condoms and IUDs (both 13%).”

              https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-method-use-united-states

              I’ve been having a little trouble finding out how many women specifically in that range are sexually active, but I found a few articles that seem to show that the numbers for men and women are around 70% - 75%. For the sake of this post, I’m going to call it 72%.

              I looked up the census data for 2018, which showed that there were 164,730,000 women living in the US at that time. 72% are likely to be sexually active, so that makes 118,605,600. Because I can’t be sure if they differentiated copper IUD’s from hormonal, we’ll just look at pills. 21% equals 24,907,176. About 2% of women in the Dutch study said they experienced depression from the pills, so that gives us 498,143.52—nearly half a million—women who are likely to be experiencing depression from pill form birth control alone. This number obviously increases when you include the other forms of hormonal birth control that I couldn’t calculate here, plus all the other forms of hormonal medication.

              • StorminNorman@lemmy.world
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                Not sure why you’ve posted all of this given I’ve not once mentioned hormonal contraceptives and there’s not much data here to support your claim… 2% is an incredibly low number. Sure, when you have such a large population it involves a lot of people, but statistically, it’s stupid low. You’ve also misinterpreted the data given a bit, the risk of depression when on a hormonal contraceptives was 2.2%. The risk of depression when not on one is 1.7%. Again, that affects a lot of people, but it’s not the number you’ve calculated being caused by the contraceptive alone, and is still statistically very low. So, I’m just gonna completely ignore your anecdotal observations given at the start of your comment and rely on the hard data you’ve given. Which, admittedly, is only for one branch of hormonal medicine, but the data given does neatly support my claim that most people don’t experience these wild side effects you initially ascribed to the treatments.

                • bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml
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                  2 or 1% is a huge number when we are talking about hundreds of millions of people are you daft

                  An extra .5% is hundreds of thousands of people.

                  And the numbers are US only. There’s other countries that have this type of medication available.

                • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  I did my best with the resources I had to come up with something more concrete than asserting that it is or isn’t a problem without anything to back it up. I may have made some errors, but the fact remains that there was a significant amount of recent information about the growing awareness of hormonal medication side effects.

                  I bet it doesn’t feel statistically insignificant when it is happening to you and people won’t believe you due to the perceived rarity of side effects.

                  And, finally returning to where we started, all of this is simply to say that I don’t think we should be imposing hormone meds as a punishment for anything.

        • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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          I guess we’re all going to slide past the gen pop as a shortcut to capital punishment. Makes the chemical castration kind of irrelevant, doesn’t it?

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        In my scenario, the proof would have to be concrete so ideally there’s no such thing as wrongly convicted.

        Proof like caught in the act, semen / blood sample and / or video proof like with child porn.

        • jettrscga@lemmy.world
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          Literally all of that can easily be falsified, and historically has been to wrongly imprison people.

          Caught in the act by the judge and jury themselves? Or by a witness who promises they saw it?

          Video proof like what AI can easily fabricate these days?

          • Oderus@lemmy.world
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            It sounds like you don’t trust any evidence and think Danny was falsely imprisoned based on that lack of trust.

            Is everyone in jail innocent?

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              You’ve chosen to miss the point by taking my statement to extremes.

              If you demand harsher punishment, it’ll happen to at least one innocent person. It doesn’t matter who that innocent person is. You’re stating that’s okay with you.

        • bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml
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          Basically impossible unless people start raping people in the police station, even then good luck getting cops to collect evidence on eachother

          Also semen… If I creampie my wife she can go claim rape? What about every other woman I’ve creampied? Why do you think any single piece of evidence could be strong enough for this sentence? Even a video could just be roleplay on it’s own.

          You need to read up on how people are prosecuted before making suggestions how they should be sentenced.

          • Oderus@lemmy.world
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            If you creampie your wife and she uses that against you to charge you with rape, you married a cunt or you raped her. Or both.

            Great example Einstein.

            • Nelots@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              So your response to “this can be easily faked” is “guess you should have picked a better wife”??

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        And you’re basically valuing the quality of life of rapists over that if their victims.

        Unless you intend to rape somebody, what personal stake do you have in what form of punishment is appropriate for such a vile act?

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            Is the person you replied to worse than the hypothetical rapist in their argument?

            I don’t see your point. So yeah, missing it big time.

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        I’m admitting I’d support worse treatment for people who rape than what we do currently.

        If that makes me a shit person. I’m ok with that.