Woman Describes Alleged Rape by Bel-Air Couple

A woman who alleges that she was held captive and raped repeatedly for 19 hours by a wealthy Bel-Air couple told a judge Friday that she felt as if she were in a dream during the ordeal.

The woman was allegedly given the so-called date rape drug GHB before she was taken to the mansion of Joseph Simon Arsenault, 40, and Heather Lynn Moe, 24. Once there, the couple allegedly forced the woman to perform numerous sex acts, drink alcohol and use cocaine. Throughout the incident, the woman said, she was unable to get up and leave.

“It was like I was in a dream, and you can’t get out of a dream,” the woman, 22, testified at a preliminary hearing in Santa Monica Superior Court. “I’m not that type of person. I don’t do these kind of things.”

Defense lawyers, however, insist that Arsenault and Moe have been framed and want Judge Steven Suzukawa to throw out the case. The defense contends that numerous photographs taken of the alleged victim that night show that she willingly attended a sex party at the mansion. They said she had drunk heavily and used cocaine on her own that evening and said the same applied to a second woman who has accused the couple of drugging and raping her. Police say the couple used the drug GHB, or gamma-hydroxybutyrate, to sedate the women. However, drug tests failed to show evidence of GHB in the two women’s systems.

An LAPD narcotics detail raided Arsenault’s Sunset Boulevard mansion Oct. 5, kicking in a heavy master bedroom door that was braced shut by a couch. Police found a bedroom littered with bags of cocaine, mirrors, spoons, straws and pen caps. In a guest house about 50 yards from the main house, searchers discovered seven plastic bottles containing the drug GHB.

At the hearing, defense lawyers said the drug belonged to a renter, not Arsenault. The hearing is to continue Monday.