This article discusses sexual assault and child molestation.
Last week, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher faced fierce backlash when it was revealed that they’d written letters of support for convicted rapist Danny Masterson.
All three actors first met when working on That ’70s Show together in the early 2000s, with Mila and Ashton getting married in 2015 and remaining good friends with their costar.
In May, Danny was found guilty of drugging two women before raping them at the height of his fame on the Fox series.
Earlier this month, a judge sentenced him to 30 years to life in prison, and just days later it was revealed that the judge had received over 50 letters asking for leniency.
Two of these letters came from Ashton and Mila, and they both surfaced on the internet on Friday.
In his letter, Ashton called Danny a “role model,” and said that he doesn’t believe that his long-time friend “is an ongoing harm to society.”
Asking the judge to consider a lesser sentence, Ashton said that Danny’s daughter being “raised without a present father would [be] a tertiary injustice in and of itself.”
In Mila’s letter, she told the judge that she can “wholeheartedly vouch for Danny Masterson’s exceptional character and the tremendous positive influence he has had on me and the people around him.”
She also praised his “dedication to leading a drug-free life” and called him “an outstanding role model and friend.”
People were horrified to learn of Ashton and Mila’s quiet support for Danny amid his crimes, and as the criticism grew online the couple uploaded an apology video to Ashton’s Instagram account.
In the post, the two stars appear somber as they insist that they truly “support victims.” They also say that they wrote the letters to “represent the person that we knew for 25 years” after Danny’s family asked them to.
Ashton adds that the letters “were intended for the judge to read and not to undermine the testimony of the victims or retraumatize them in any way.”
But the video just added fuel to the fire, and Ashton ended up turning off comments on the Instagram post after it was flooded with accusations that he and Mila were “only sorry because they got caught” and that the apology was “insincere.”
Twitter @jasminegalx / Via Twitter: @jasminegalx
Others have argued that there is no justification for the letters and — regardless of how good a friend Danny has been to them personally over the years — Ashton and Mila should never have supported a convicted rapist.
Twitter @Papi_B_Dubs / Via Twitter: @Papi_B_Dubs
And one person who agrees with that sentiment is comedian Kathy Griffin, who took to her TikTok page this week to share her own experience of somebody who was close to her committing heinous crimes.
Kathy explained that her older brother, Ken Griffin, was a pedophile and also physically abusive towards his partners. She called the police on him multiple times in a desperate bid to get him arrested.
“OK, I’m weighing in on the whole Danny Masterson, Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis thing,” Kathy began. “The notion that this guy was also convicted of drugging these women, that is such serious stuff that I don’t really care that when they were working on That ‘70s Show he was a good guy to work with.”
“My brother, who’s now dead, his name was Ken Griffin, was a pedophile,” she went on. “It was a horrible, horrible thing and I tried to get him caught. And that 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, and two of his girlfriends confessed to me he also physically abused them very violently and I called the LAPD about it twice,” Kathy said.
She then explained that Ken was a super of a building, which gave him access to his victims because he had keys to every unit. Kathy claimed that he molested a boy and a girl, and while he did go to prison for “something else” he was never convicted for these crimes.
“This has been something that caused a giant rift within my family,” she added. “For many years I was shunned from my own family because I was trying to get my brother Ken arrested.”
Kathy also said that it has “always haunted” her that she was ultimately unable to stop Ken, because the LAPD told her that unless he confessed or one of the children reported him then there was nothing that they could do.
“I think about those children every day, and I think about other victims he probably had,” she shared. “And the difficulty in getting a conviction in SA cases… The bar is so high that I tend to absolutely believe the victims when there’s even a trial.”
“I could never do anything about my brother and I felt so helpless,” Kathy concluded. “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.”
TikTok @KathyGriffin / Via tiktok.com