Ashton Kutcher has stepped down as chair of
Thorn, an organization he co-founded to combat child sexual abuse, after the
actor and his wife, Mila Kunis, drew criticism for writing letters to a judge
seeking leniency in the sentencing of their “That ’70s Show” co-star Danny
Masterson, who was recently sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for rape.
اضافة اعلان
The couple’s support of Masterson started a
firestorm that prompted them to respond in a video posted to Instagram last
weekend. Kutcher announced he had resigned from Thorn in a letter to its board
dated Thursday and shared on the organization’s website.
“I have determined the responsible thing
for me to do is resign as chairman of the board, effectively immediately,”
Kutcher wrote. “I cannot allow my error in judgment to distract from our
efforts and the children we serve.”
In May, Masterson, 47, was found guilty in
a Los Angeles court of raping two women in the early 2000s, at the height of
his career. A judge last week sentenced him to the maximum penalty, 30 years to
life. He will be eligible for parole in 20 years, according to the Los Angeles
County District Attorney’s Office.
“Victims of sexual abuse have been
historically silenced, and the character statement I submitted is yet another
painful instance of questioning victims who are brave enough to share their
experiences,” Kutcher wrote in his letter to Thorn. “This is precisely what we
have all worked to reverse over the last decade.”
Thorn is a nonprofit co-founded in 2009 by
Kutcher and actress Demi Moore. The organization has developed technology to
help identify victims of child sex abuse online, according to its website.
The representatives for Kutcher and Kunis
could not be reached Friday evening, and a request for comment to Thorn was not
immediately returned.
“We would not be the Thorn that we are
today without Ashton’s contributions,” the organization said in a statement
posted to its website. “He has played a significant role in the impact we have
made, and we are grateful for his participation over the last 15 years.”
The public outcry against Kutcher and Kunis
began last week after their letters to the judge in Masterson’s case, Charlaine
Olmedo of Los Angeles Superior Court, were published on Substack by journalists
who had covered the trial.
The letters detailed the couple’s
relationship with Masterson.
Kutcher, 45; Kunis, 40; and Masterson, 47,
were longtime co-stars on the hit sitcom “That ’70s Show,” which aired for
eight seasons from 1998 to 2006.
In a letter dated July 27, Kutcher told the
judge that he did not believe Masterson “is an ongoing harm to society” and
called the prospect of Masterson’s daughter being raised without her father a
“tertiary injustice in and of itself.”
Kunis vouched in her own letter to the
judge for Masterson’s character and the “tremendous positive influence he has
had on me and the people around him."
In a video posted to Instagram last
Saturday, the couple explained that Masterson’s family had asked them to write
the letters “to represent the person that we knew for 25 years so that the
judge could take that into full consideration relative to the sentencing.”
“They were intended for the judge to read,”
Kutcher said in the video. “And not to undermine the testimony of the victims
or retraumatize them in any way.”
In the letters, Masterson was described as
an “exceptional older brother figure” by Kunis and as “among few people that I
would trust to be alone with my son and daughter” by Kutcher.
In his resignation letter, Kutcher
apologized to victims of sexual violence and members of Thorn “who I hurt by
what I did.”
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