This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Former Brighton High School football star Osa Masina has been charged with felony counts of rape and forcible sodomy in connection with a sexual assault in Cottonwood Heights earlier this summer.
The criminal charges, filed Thursday in 3rd District Court, come days after Masina was placed on "interim suspension" at the University of Southern California and barred from the campus and participation in the Trojans' football activities.
Masina surrendered to Cottonwood Heights police Thursday morning and was booked into the Salt Lake County jail. As of Thursday afternoon, he remained there. Bail was set at $250,000; he posted bail Thursday night and left the jail.
The three counts, all first-degree felonies, each carrying a maximum penalty of five years to life in prison, stem from allegations that he had sex with a 19-year-old woman while she was under the influence of marijuana and alcohol after a party in the Salt Lake County suburb in late July. Los Angeles police are investigating Masina for an alleged sexual assault involving the same woman earlier in the summer, though no charges have been filed in connection with that case.
The sexual encounters were consensual, Salt Lake City defense attorney Greg Skordas said on Masina's behalf.
According to charging documents in Utah, Masina, 19, and the woman attended a party in Cottonwood Heights on July 25. In the early hours of July 26, Masina, the woman and two other men from the party went to a fast-food restaurant. The woman said she did "not feel all there," the documents state, and fell asleep in the car while the three men went inside the restaurant to eat.
After that, the group returned to the home where the party had been and the woman fell asleep. She awoke, the charges state, with Masina having sex with her, which the woman said "hurt [her] so bad."
"Due to her intoxicated state, all she felt capable of doing was moving her legs to try to lessen the pain," the charges state. "She heard Masina laugh, and he continued."
The woman passed out again and next awoke to Masina engaging in forcible oral sex with her, the charges state. "She could not breathe or talk."
The woman told officials she passed out again.
The frightened woman later awoke and left the house after being unable to reach a male friend and his father via telephone, court documents state. She "may have passed out yet again," the charges add, because the next thing she remembers, she told police, is waking up in the front yard of a neighboring home, hunched against a tree, "with only her bra and a blanket over her."
"She discovered that she was bleeding," documents state. "She later discovered that she had damage to porcelain crowns on the back of her teeth."
A rape exam was conducted July 26, according to the documents.
In an interview with investigators, court documents state, Masina acknowledged that he had sex on the night in question.
Last month, the Los Angeles Police Department executed a search warrant as part of an investigation into two allegations of sexual assault, one in California and one in Utah.
The warrant was based on allegations from the 19-year-old woman who said Masina gave her two Xanax pills in addition to marijuana and alcohol before he and a teammate, Don Hill, sexually assaulted her in July about two weeks prior to the assault in Utah.
The warrant also says Masina sent a video of him having sex with the woman to her ex-boyfriend, a player on the University of Arizona football team, via Snapchat.
The woman told police her ex-boyfriend told her about the video only after she reported the assault on July 26.
"She does not even recall having sex with Osa while she was in California," the report states.
Masina had not been allowed to play in USC's first two games of the season, but, until recently, had been permitted to practice with the team.
Masina was placed on "interim suspension" late last week, was barred from all football activities and was given until Monday evening to leave the campus, pending the review of a Title IX complaint that had been filed against the sophomore linebacker, Skordas said.
Hill, according to reports, was suspended from team activities this week.
Masina's first court date has yet to be scheduled.
Twitter: @aaronfalk