Former NCIS actor Gabriel Olds appeared in court shackled and with unkempt shoulder-length hair as he listened to harrowing testimony from an actress accusing him of rape.
The 53-year-old, who once cut a dashing figure on the red carpet, was unshaven, pale and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit during the three-hour hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
The Yale graduate who also starred in the Eyes of Tammy Faye is facing multiple felony charges of rape, sodomy and other graphic sex crimes on five women between 2014 and 2023 prior to his arrest in August last year. He has pleaded not guilty.
Over 20 former lovers are supporting him, however, and have praised the accused in favorable character letters as ‘such a gentle a** slapper’ and ‘the best sex I have ever had.’
Another wrote: ‘He taught me about a world of intimacy which was beyond my experience.’
Department 82 at the Airport Courthouse in Los Angeles heard testimony from Jane Doe #6 (JD6), an actress, film producer and nanny who claimed she was raped by Olds but afterwards remained bedazzled by his charm and intellect.
They dated on and off from March 2017, following the end of her nine-year marriage, to May 2022, but were sometimes on hold for up to two months. Despite the alleged rape and violence, she was ‘in love’ with the bachelor.
She was accompanied on the stand by a 10-year-old Labrador therapy dog called Skippy and his handler.
Former NCIS actor Gabriel Olds stared into the camera during a July 29 hearing over charges he raped and sexually abused a number of women between March 2017 and May 2022
Under questioning by prosecutor Yasmin Fardghassemi, she described how Olds would frequently punch her in the head, breasts and back during sex.
She testified that he demanded she called him ‘Sir’ and that she call herself ‘stupid’ and a ‘w****.’
Her face, she said, would have bruising which she concealed with makeup.
Olds would often video their violent encounters and she faked orgasms so the sex would end, the court heard.
The court heard that the violence culminated on September 25 in 2021 when the woman claimed she was anally raped in a room at the Hotel St. Lauren on Catalina Island, located 22 miles off the California coast.
The assault occurred just 30 minutes before they were to attend a film awards ceremony together where she won best actress for a short film she wrote.
Wearing a neat dark blue jacket and matching skirt, the petite witness, her voice at times cracking, described how Olds became jealous after she attended a party prior to the ceremony where other male actors, including one of his friends, were present.
Olds, she said, told her: ‘You’ve been a bad girl!’
The 53-year-old, who once cut a dashing figure on the red carpet, was unshaven, pale and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit during the three-hour hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Olds, then 52, appeared disbelieving of his arrest in his August, 2024 booking photo
Olds, pictured at the 2016 San Diego International Film Festival
He ‘grabbed me and threw me on the bed. He turned me over and before I knew it he was penetrating my a**. He didn’t stop until he was finished.’
He continued with ‘full force’ despite her repeated protests for him to stop the assault and his punches to her back and sides of her head.
‘I couldn’t move,’ said JD6, her voice raised with emotion. ‘He was right on top of me. He’s a big guy.’
She believed that if she had resisted then the abuse would worsen.
The attack left her ‘shaking’ and ‘shocked and in pain.’ She was bleeding from the alleged rape.
The incident, she said, was different for other times when they frequently had rough BDSM sex.
Olds at the premiere of Apartment 407 in Los Angeles in 2018, during the same time when he was in engaged in violent sexual encounters with Jane Doe #6, one of his rape accusers
Olds had acclaimed role as controversial preacher Pat Robertson alongside Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield in the 2021 indie film The Eyes of Tammy Faye
‘I was really panicked because he would not listen to me,’ recalled JD6 or her ordeal. ‘There was a different glint in his eyes…an aggressive look in his eyes.
‘That look scared me. It was a different person in there. This was really rape. This time it didn’t feel like the BDSM sex. It felt very violent. (I) felt very violated.
‘This was a rapist, not the Gabriel Olds that I know.’
She managed to compose herself in order to attend the ceremony and Olds joined her on the red carpet where they were photographed together, him with his arm around her waist, even though she was ‘in pain.’
She spelled out that she had ‘no choice’ and added: ‘(It was) one of the biggest nights of my life and my career and I’m not going to let him destroy that for me. I didn’t want him or anything to prevent me.’
She ‘felt really numb and disassociated from the whole thing’ and was overcome with ‘so many mixed emotions. I tried to erase what had just happened in the hotel room.’
Didn’t tell anyone at the time because she was ‘ashamed,’ especially because her film ‘had a message of female empowerment.’
Despite developing hernia from the incident, she did she seek medical treatment at the time, because she was ‘really embarrassed’ and ‘really ashamed’ and also lacked medical insurance.
Their fractured relationship, however, continued. JD6 admitted to still having strong feelings for Olds even after the alleged rape.
Catalina Island, 22 miles off the California coast west of Long Beach, where Old allegedly raped a friend, Jane Doe #6
Olds appeared alongside Rose McGowan in the popular Charmed TV show
Olds shown acting in an episode of NCIS
The journeyman actor has also appeared on popular TV shows such as Law & Order, Charmed and Broadwalk Empire.
In 2021, he won fans for his portrayal of televangelist Pat Robertson in the indie film The Eyes of Tammy Faye alongside Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield.
When asked by prosecutor Fardghassemi if she continued to love Olds following the alleged rape, JD6 exclaimed ‘yes.’
She described discussing her horror over the incident with him two weeks afterwards, both in person on on the phone.
‘It was very hard for me to process,’ she recalled. ‘I wanted to say the right words.
‘I didn’t want him to get hurt. I know that sounds crazy. I didn’t want to lose him as a friend.
‘There was Gabriel the friend and Gabriel the rapist who I hated.’
She told him that his rough physical treatment of her was ‘too scary.’
Despite her frankness with him, ‘he just sort of nodded. He didn’t say much.’
She continued to see him ‘romantically’ after the alleged rape due to ‘psychological manipulation’ by him but stressed her preference for ‘regular sex.’
Defense attorney Leonard Levine, who is representing Olds
‘I told him that that can’t happen again,’ she said. ‘He needs to be more gentle with me and he was.’
Their relationship ended in December 2021 ‘because I didn’t want to see him any more because of the emotional rollercoaster. I had realized he was really toxic for me.’
At the time, she had met another romantic interest – also called ‘Gabe.’
But when they broke up her relationship with Olds took off again.
‘Gabriel Olds has a way of always making his way back into my life and getting me to have sex with him and BDSM sex with him,’ admitted the woman.
Reflecting on their often turbulent relationship, said said her ‘enduring a lot of pain’ made Olds ‘happy.’
She explained how he ‘always said pain transcends into pleasure’ – but the pleasure was only for Olds, not for herself.
And, because of how Olds’s had managed to deeply sway her psyche, ‘I kind of believed him.’
Det. Brent Hopkins, with the LAPD’s Special Assault Section, was in court for the July 29 hearing. He previously told the Daily Mail the case is ‘definitely unique, not like any other case that I’ve handled or we’ve seen for quite a while’
She said she was ‘coerced and manipulated by Gabriel Olds over the course of several years.
‘I was mad at myself about that.’
The court was shown texts where JD6 wrote to Olds: ‘The sex is the best I’ve ever had in my life.
In December 2017 she texted: ‘Your cuddles are out of this world.’
Defense attorney Leonard Levin, a former LA County prosecutor, deemed some of the witnesses’s testimony ‘revisionist history.’
Under cross-examination, she said Olds had subjected her to other instances of non-consensual sex.
‘I was being used and abused and abused sexually as a person and as a friend. I’m very familiar with his sex addiction,’ she said.
She said she came forward to police after seeing reports of her former lover’s arrest last year.
‘It really just reminded me…when I couldn’t breath and I was fearing for my life,’ she told the court.
‘I’m really angry by the fact that he really used me like that and other women like that. There’s no morals there.’
Responding to questioning by Levin, the witness said Olds first punched her during sex in April 2017 after their fifth date without any prior discussion about his sexual proclivities.
Afterwards, she began researching BDSM sex online.
‘I was scared but I don’t know how much of my fear I expressed to him,’ she said. Violent sex, she added, ‘gave me fear not pleasure.’
Initially she agreed to the ‘punching and slapping’ but ‘did not agree to the extent that he would do it. It was too much. It was causing me a lot of pain and injury.’
She described the sexual violence as ‘physical assault’ but chose to continue their relationship because, ‘he was my friend and I loved him. I didn’t want to lose him.’
She blamed Olds’ ‘psychological manipulation’ as the reason she continued to date him although she remained ‘in love’ with him.
The divorcee was in love with ‘his brain. He was very smart.’ The two would have ‘deep analytical conversations’ about action and other subjects.
Olds and Steve Pieters attend a screening of The Eyes Of Tammy Faye in Los Angeles on September 16, 2021
After one break-up, she eventually began dating him again.
‘He was very charming and somehow he had a way of luring me back into having sex with him.
‘He would constantly text me “Are you single?” I was pretty lonely at that time. I wanted to be with him. I wanted a friendship and a love relationship.’
The relationship ‘finally ended for good’ in 2022.
Levine previously told the Daily Mail his client’s defense ‘is that all he engaged in was consensual sexual conduct with the alleged victims as well as many other women who have come forward on his behalf.’
Det. Brent Hopkins of the Los Angles Police Department’s Special Assault Section, was also in court for the hearing.
He previously told the Daily Mail the case is ‘definitely unique, not like any other case that I’ve handled or we’ve seen for quite a while.
‘I’m not surprised that he has people supporting him. He’s a charming guy, he’s very charismatic and has an impressive background.
‘There are plenty of people who enjoy that lifestyle and as long as everyone’s consenting to it and talks about it before and after and are all on the same page, no problems at all.
‘The problem for him is that he did not always get consent and crossed that line from a relationship between two adults and the privacy of someone’s bedroom into something that became a crime and landed him in jail.’
Olds is being held on $3.5 million bail at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s North County Correctional Facility, a maximum-security complex located 35 miles north of the iconic Hollywood sign near Six Flags Magic Mountain.
He has pled not guilty to the charges. If convicted could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
The preliminary hearing is set to continue.
