A woman testified Tuesday that a close friend of her family, who has taught music in Costa Mesa and claimed he worked as a personal assistant to actors Brooke Mueller and Charlie Sheen, repeatedly molested her and her friend starting when they were about 4 or 5 years old.
Anthony Philip Bruccoliere is charged with 18 felony sexual assault crimes for two victims between 2008 and 2019.
The alleged attacks began at one of the girls’ homes after they went swimming as he was babysitting them, Deputy District Attorney Thomas Farnell said in a trial brief. Bruccoliere allegedly invited the girls to sit on a bed with him to “play house,” Farnell said.
Bruccoliere molested the girls and directed them to masturbate him, the prosecutor said.
When the girls were about 11 years old he invited them over for “sleepovers” at his Costa Mesa home, where he allegedly sexually assaulted them multiple times for years, Farnell added.
The accuser said Bruccoliere would have the girls “rehearse” a story for their parents about how they would watch the movie “Beetlejuice” and have snacks and a meal. He allegedly picked them up from a cheerleading group practice and then massage them before progressing into sexual assaults, the woman testified.
She said the girls would attempt to resist but could not.
“We would try to turn over, but we were small and that was a big dude on us,” she testified. “So it wasn’t in the cards … I wouldn’t say it was force, but we didn’t think we had an option to move. We had a 200-pound guy on top of us.”
Bruccoliere allegedly told the girls he would help them practice “French kissing” and other sexual activity for future boyfriends, the woman testified. The defendant resisted penetrating the victims, but did so once when she was 12 years old, she testified.
“It slipped in and I jumped off,” she said. “I think I was 12 … It hurt. I was bleeding afterward … He said, `Oh, sorry.”’
The girls loved him as an uncle, but grew more uncomfortable with the assaults over time, she testified.
“I thought less of him, for sure, but I still felt I loved him. He was supposed to protect me. He was my uncle,” she said.
At some point, the two girls put their friendship on hold and distanced themselves from each other so the defendant could not take them home for slumber parties anymore, she said.
The sexual assaults stopped when she was 14 and moved to Idaho with her mother and her boyfriend, she testified.
The accuser said she was driving with her mom when she blurted out what had happened finally. They were crying so much they had to pull the car over for a time, she said.
A short time before that, the defendant had texted her asking her to call him, prompting her to ask him to never reach out again, she said.
“I tried to block all of that out and the text brought it all back,” she said.
After coming forward to law enforcement, the girls made a “covert call” to the defendant to confront him about the alleged sexual assaults. Jurors heard a recording of the call.
When the girls said they were in therapy, the defendant chuckled and said, “I am too.”
As the girls confronted him about the alleged attacks, Bruccoliere denied them, but also appeared to characterize them in the call as instigating the sexual encounters.
“I never did anything you guys didn’t want to do,” he said.
“It was a traumatic event. We were little. We didn’t know what we were doing,” one of the accusers told him.
“I was just doing whatever you guys wanted to do,” he responded.
“You took my virginity,” one of the girls said.
“I never did,” he replied. “We never did anything like that. I never went inside. Are you kidding me? … There was never any kind of penetration.”
Later, the defendant told the girls that he recalled they would step into the shower with him and he would discourage them.
“You guys wanted to and I said no,” he said. “It was all about you guys wanted to try things and that I was like I don’t know, are you guys sure? Are you guys going to hate me? … I never instigated anything.”
He added later in the call, “I never should have let you guys be naked. I feel bad letting you guys run around naked.”
Bruccoliere was arrested less than an hour after the cal, the woman testified.
Bruccoliere’s LinkedIn page says he was a he was a personal assistant for Mueller and Sheen from January 2009 through January 2013. Mueller and Sheen filed for divorce in 2010, which became final in 2011.
The page also listed Bruccoliere as being a personal assistant/property manager for the Netflix series “Cobra Kai” from January through August 2019.