Kathy Griffin reflected on what she called a “haunting” personal experience to highlight why people are so disgusted with Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher’s support for Danny Masterson.
In a video recently published to her TikTok account, the comedian said that she was also close with someone who ended up being a sexual predator.
“My brother, who’s now dead ― his name was Ken Griffin ― was a pedophile,” Griffin said. “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.”
Last week, Masterson was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for raping two women at his Hollywood Hills home in the early 2000s. Soon after news of his sentencing broke, it was reported that Kutcher and Kunis, who co-starred on “That ’70s Show” with Masterson, had written letters asking the judge for leniency in his sentencing.
Kutcher and Kunis, who are married, received widespread backlash for writing the letters, and they posted an odd video trying to explain their actions. But their response, which didn’t include an actual apology, only resulted in even more public scorn.
Griffin talked about how she responded to her brother’s alleged crimes to illustrate why she agrees with the avalanche of criticism Kutcher and Kunis are now receiving.
Griffin said in her TikTok that two of her brother’s girlfriends “confessed” to her that her brother had “physically abused them very violently.”
“My brother was a super of a building, and that’s how he gained access to his victims,” Griffin said. “He was the manager of an apartment building in Hollywood, so he had keys to all the units.”
She said that by taking advantage of his access, her brother “allegedly ― because he never went to prison for it, he went to prison for something else ― molested a boy and a girl” who lived in the building he managed.
Griffin said she called the Los Angeles police about Ken’s alleged assaults twice, but to no avail. According to Griffin, police told her that they couldn’t do anything about her reports unless “your brother personally walks into the station and confesses, or if one of the kids confesses and goes to authorities.”
“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,’” she said. “And so nothing happened.”
Griffin said that Ken eventually got arrested for a different crime, but that her decision to report her brother to the police badly damaged her relationship with her family.
“This has been something that caused a giant rift within my family,” Griffin said. “For many years, I was shunned from my own family, because I was trying to get my brother Ken arrested.”
“I was in and out of my family,” she continued. “Sometimes they would write me letters saying I’m not a Griffin anymore, and all this nonsense.”
Still, Griffin said, being ostracized by her family was nothing compared to the knowledge that she never succeeded in getting her brother arrested.
“It’s always haunted me that I could never do anything about it,” Griffin said. “And I think about those children every day.”
Griffin said the point of her TikTok is that she feels that “blood was not thicker than water in my case.”
“And if you know that somebody is committing [sexual assault], you should do something if you can,” she said. “My God, at least try.”
According to “Good Morning America,” more than 50 people wrote letters to the court in support of Masterson ― including Debra Jo Rupp and Kurtwood Smith, who played Kitty and Red Forman on “That ’70s Show,” as well as actors William Baldwin, Giovanni Ribisi and Masterson’s wife, Bijou Phillips Masterson, per People.
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.