Former member of Brian Wilson's band and a close collaborator of the Beach Boys singer, Scott Bennett, was convicted of rape. The conviction stems from the claims of a woman that she was sexually assaulted by the musician in December 2014 after the concert of the American rock band in Oklahoma.
Scott Bennett was found guilty of rape by instrumentation and sexual battery on 29th of April, after a weeklong trial in a court in Oklahoma, according to Rolling Stone. Bennett is due to be sentenced on June 14. A jury recommended to give him a sentence of five years in prison.
According to the investigators, the incident happened in the 5th of December 2014 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa in Catoosa after the band's performance. A video from a security camera was shown during the trial. On the video, Bennett was seen blocking the 21-year old victim from leaving the elevator, which the two rode together.
The two got off and at one point Bennett tried to carry the victim down the hallway, before "appearing to sexually assault her". Bennett then went to a hotel room before emerging 35 minutes later, according to Ultimate Classic Rock. Prosecutor Edith Singer described the video footage "very, very disturbing" as he left the victim "like a sack of trash."
Shannon McMurray, Bennett's defense lawyer, plans to make an appeal over the conviction ruling. "It's a tragedy all the way around. Two drunk people running into each other, now one person's a convicted sex offender," McMurray said, maintaining that the two were intoxicated at the time.
Police interviewed the victim the next morning and said she did not remember anything about the attack or ever even meeting Bennett, Jezebel reported. Following the police investigations, her underwear was found in Bennett's hotel room.
His DNA also matched what was found on the material. The victim was reportedly at the hotel for a birthday party when friends noticed she was nowhere to be found. Security came to look for her and found her slumped over on the seventh floor. The 51-year-old musician told the police that he touched the woman's genitals but denied any sexual activity took place in his room.
Bennett made his Wilson debut on 1998's Imagination, which started a long string of recording and touring activity in the Beach Boys co-founder's camp.
