Date-Rape Suspect to Face 1st Hearing

After months of delay, the great-grandson of cosmetics king Max Factor is scheduled to appear in court today on charges that he used a date-rape drug to render women unconscious before videotaping his alleged attacks on them.

At his preliminary hearing, Andrew Luster will face 88 counts of rape, sodomy, oral copulation, poisoning and sexual battery; 38 of those were recently added. Among the charges are five counts of possession of a deadly weapon, because police confiscated a cache of guns from Luster’s seaside home in Mussel Shoals.

Luster has vigorously denied all the charges, saying that every sexual act captured on videotape was photographed with the consent of his partners.

“The public will have a very different perspective of this case,” said attorney James Blatt. “Mr. Luster is a law-abiding citizen, not a predator, and what this case really involves is the very fundamental right to privacy in the bedroom and intimacy with one’s partner.”

Luster, whose net worth prosecutors have estimated to be as much as $30 million, was arrested last July after a 21-year-old Santa Barbara woman told authorities she suspected Luster had sedated her with the date-rape drug gamma hydroxybutyrate, known as GHB, and sexually assaulted her.

The woman, whose identity has not been released, said that she and a male friend met Luster in a bar in Santa Barbara and that he offered both a glass of water. Shortly afterward, both reported, they felt extremely intoxicated, and both ended up at Luster’s home, where the woman says she was raped.

During a later search of Luster’s home, authorities uncovered dozens of videotapes that they say show the 37-year-old heir engaged in sexual acts with various women who appeared unconscious. Authorities were able to identify two of the women on tape, both of whom told investigators that they had no idea the videos had been taken.

Luster, however, has said all the women knew what they were doing and that the two women identified on tape were long-term girlfriends who regularly took GHB, which in smaller quantities can produce a high similar to alcohol. It is also considered an aphrodisiac, Luster’s attorneys said.

“These were two girlfriends who had long-term sexual relationships with him, and as part of that, they took GHB on a continual basis,” Blatt said.

Defense attorneys have argued that the women are only now cooperating with authorities because they are scorned lovers out for revenge. And the woman who reported she was raped, they say, is a young woman ashamed of her outrageous “party girl” behavior.

Today’s hearing won’t be the first time Blatt has gone up against prosecutors alleging that GHB was used to commit multiple acts of rape.

In 1999, Blatt successfully defended a Santa Monica investment banker and his girlfriend against charges that they drugged and raped two women at their Bel-Air mansion. Prosecutors dropped charges that could have brought the pair 120 years in prison after the alleged victims, under intense cross-examination from Blatt, admitted they voluntarily drank large amounts of alcohol and used cocaine before the alleged sexual assaults.

Blatt is hoping for a similar outcome today, when three alleged victims are scheduled to take the stand. A judge will also review the tapes confiscated from Luster’s home, one of which, according to court documents, shows Luster saying into the camera, “I dream about this, a strawberry blond passed out on my bed, waiting for me to do with her what I will.”

At the end of the hearing, which is expected to take about four days, a judge will decide whether there is enough evidence to order Luster to face trial.

In December, Luster won a court battle to reduce his record $10-million bail to $1 million, which he posted after agreeing to remain on house arrest until the conclusion of his case. He is now confined to his home, where he must wear an electronic monitor and agree to drug tests and random searches.

Blatt said he hopes the case doesn’t make it to a jury. But if it does, he believes jurors will be sympathetic to Luster.

“Even in this conservative community of Ventura County,” Blatt said, “I think people understand there are alternative lifestyles. And what this case involves is the privacy of a relationship.”