Los Angeles County prosecutors charged actor Gabriel Olds with five more counts of sexual assault on Monday, raising his total number of charges to 12, after three more women came forward following media coverage of his original arrest, according to officials.
The 52-year-old actor, who has acted in TV shows such as “Six Feet Under” and “NCIS” as well as the film “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” is accused of assaults between 2021 and 2023. He faces a dozen felony accusations involving six victims. The charges include rape, rape of an unconscious person, sodomy, assault with intent to rape, and injuring a girlfriend or significant other. Prosecutors claim his crimes date back to 2013, and they’re looking into allegations from his time at Yale.
Since his original arrest on August 4, he has been held in detention on $3.5 million bail.
According to the new allegations, Olds sodomized one woman in September 2021, raped another in May 2022, and sexually attacked another in May 2023.
Olds’ attorney, Leonard Levine, said in a statement that “Mr. Olds has pleaded not guilty to all of the allegations.” He maintains that every sexual contact he had with the complaining witnesses was consensual. “A fact that the defense intends to prove in court.”
According to LAPD Detective Brent Hopkins, the new victims contacted investigators after seeing a Times piece about Olds’ case. The women were all in dating relationships with the actor when he reportedly raped them. Prosecutors claim the assaults took place at his residence, one of the victim’s homes, and an L.A. hotel. Hopkins said that none of the women knew each other and that several of his victims were from the entertainment business.
Police began investigating the actor in January 2023, when a 41-year-old woman said that he had raped her at her Los Angeles home, according to LAPD sex crimes investigators familiar with the matter. Detectives eventually discovered that two additional women had made similar complaints dating back to 2013. In each case, the ladies claimed that their dating encounters with Olds turned into violent sexual assaults.
According to court filings, the woman filed a restraining order against Olds last year and described her encounter with the actor. The Times did not identify her because it does not name victims of suspected sexual offenses.
In her restraining order request, she claims that on January 7, 2023, Olds filmed and photographed nonconsensual sexual contact with her.
She further claimed that two weeks later, on Jan. 19, 2023, Olds started choking her during sex and she “asked [him] to stop.”
“I blacked out.” “I believe he slapped me [to] wake up,” she stated in the court complaint.
She claimed she awoke to see Olds putting on a condom and attempting to “open my legs” and that he only halted the assault after she vomited on him.
Hopkins stated that the claimed attacks were “very similar” and that these parallels back up the victim’s claims from last year.
“We heard the same story again and again,” Hopkins explained. “Mr. Olds started charming, but then used brutal violence.”
“Some of these survivors suffered in silence for years before finding the strength to speak up,” according to Hopkins.
Hopkins stated that because there is such a large gap between the initial two reported assaults in 2013 and the one last year, detectives believe there are additional victims.
“There was a time when there wasn’t as much understanding about sexual assault. … Post #MeToo, there is much more awareness, especially with the Danny Masterson and Harvey Weinstein case,” Hopkins said on CNN. “People are more aware of what is OK and what’s not and are more willing to speak up.”
Authorities say Olds, a New York native with screenwriting credentials and acting roles dating back to the 1990s, used his Yale-educated reputation to seduce the women he met through dating apps. Police claim Olds lulled the victims into a false feeling of security during their first interactions before becoming sexually violent.
Olds is due back in court on September 25. If found guilty of the charges, he risks decades in state jail.
+ There are no comments
Add yours