Motion Picture Academy member and prominent Calabasas resident Jeffrey Cooper guilty on child molestation charges


DEFENSE TEAM–Jeffrey Cooper, right, with defense attorney Alan Jackson at Van Nuys Court this week.                                                                                                                                           SCOTT STEEPLETON/Acorn Newspapers

Calabasas architect Jeffrey Cooper was taken from court in handcuffs May 20 after a jury in Van Nuys found him guilty of three counts of lewd and lascivious acts against a girl 14 or younger.

The 70-year-old now faces 12 years in prison when he is sentenced on June 1.

Attorney Alan Jackson argued that his client, who has been free on bail since his arrest in 2018, should remain out of custody. But Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Alan Schneider denied the request and remanded Cooper to county jail.

For alleged crimes against a second girl, Cooper faced an additional five counts of child molestation involving a person 10 or younger, but the 12-person jury couldn’t come to a unanimous decision on those counts. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the prosecution would refile its case regarding the younger girl.

According to Deputy District Attorney Jessica Kronstadt, Cooper molested the older victim between 2006-07, and the younger one between 2012-16.

After the verdict was read, the girls’ attorney David Ring told The Acorn, “These families have been through four years of hell. This was one of the most aggressive defenses I’ve ever seen.”

While there’s disappointment regarding the hung jury, both families have the satisfaction of knowing Cooper is off the street.

“He was handcuffed and remanded to jail right then and there,” Ring, of the L.A. law firm Taylor & Ring, said.

The jury in the child molestation trial against the prominent Calabasas community leader began deliberations on May 18.

At the heart of the case against the co-founder of the Calabasas Shul, a former member of the City of Calabasas Architectural Review Panel, and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized for contributions to acoustics and theater design, were allegations of sexual acts at his home with two underage girls.

One of the alleged victims claimed she was held in the pitch-black, lower-lever music studio at Cooper’s Calabasas home, locked inside, and attacked for more than an hour while her banging on the walls and screams for help went unnoticed by others in the home. She was 6 at the time.

The other girl, approximately 13 at the time of her alleged abuse, claimed she was in the home alone with Cooper. The allegations first came to light in early 2018, and Cooper was subsequently arrested.

A grand jury indicted him on eight felony counts. Cooper maintained his innocence.

Closing arguments took place May 17 in the Van Nuys Courthouse, with Kronstadt telling jurors that Cooper colluded with his wife, his son, a friend and a handyman to paint himself as innocent and to keep himself out of jail.

Cooper’s wife, Shelley Cooper, testified she knew what previous witnesses said, thanks to reports from their son, Ben Cooper, who was in court daily. That, said Kronstadt, violates an order that witnesses, who are barred from court before they testify, not be privy to what others have said. The friend, Kronstadt said, was essentially a paid-off witness, having once received from Cooper $15,000 for a guitar. As for the handyman, not only did Cooper pay him thousands of dollars for some commercial doors years ago, he also paid him to check the locks on the studio doors the alleged victim said she couldn’t open, and then check them again the day before he took the stand to talk about his work. On both occasions, he showed an adult could turn the knobs with two fingers.

Together, said Kronstadt, these events indicate “collaboration, coordination and collusion,” aimed at keeping the defendant out of jail.

The younger victim, the prosecutor said, has trouble with men and struggles to say the word “vagina” because of the alleged abuse. “They are still haunted by the memory of the abuse that this man inflicted upon them,” argued Kronstadt.

Defense attorney Jackson—a former assistant head deputy for the Major Crimes Division at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office whose clients have also included Hollywood elites (he defended Kevin Spacey in a sexual assault case in Massachusetts), NBA stars, and foreign royals—also alleged collusion, but on the part of the victims and their families. He argued the allegations were false and dangerous, “from people with an agenda and a history of making false claims.”

The younger victim, now 16, was first to claim abuse, on April 1, 2018, more than five years after the acts allegedly occurred. Cooper was a friend of her mother and grandparents and had the family over frequently.

For several months in late 2017 he even rented to the family, for $18,000 per month, one of his homes after theirs suffered water damage.

Regarding the 16-year-old’s claims, Jackson portrayed her as “a young woman coaxed and poked and prodded” by a mother who admitted on the witness stand in the Cooper trial making up allegations of abuse by the girl’s father in the couple’s earlier divorce proceedings. Regarding Cooper, neither alleged victim, Jackson told the jury, could cite specific times or dates.

Yet, they told similar tales.

That, argued Jackson, is because, as phone records show, there were numerous calls between the families, who, before the arrest, did not know each other.

So it came to be that eight days after the first claims, the older of the two victims, an aspiring actor, made claims of her own.

And there were more indications of collusion, Jackson said.

In one text, the girl’s mother tells her they need to talk “so we can have the same story for detective.” Jackson also argued that the girl had an ulterior motive to make claims against someone high in Hollywood circles such as Jeffrey Cooper. Jackson also presented a text in court that supposedly proved collusion between the girl and her father.

“The comments regarding the text are totally salacious and false,” the father, who requested anonymity, told The Acorn.

Voices silenced

Pointing to Cooper, Kronstadt told the seven men and five women of the jury, “These girls’ voices were silenced by this man. No more.”

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, prosecuting child sexual abuse cases is “notoriously difficult.” Medical evidence is available in less than 5% of reported cases and prosecutors often must rely on the testimony of a child. And a child, or adult who claims to have been abused as a child, is generally viewed as a sympathetic witness. In the Cooper trial, there was no DNA evidence, no physical evidence, no eye witness to any alleged crimes.

But there was something that set it apart from other such cases: a defendant willing to testify on his own behalf.

Just after Cooper’s wife wrapped up her testimony, Cooper’s attorney notified Judge Schneider that Cooper wanted to take the stand. Schneider admonished Cooper that, in doing so, he was giving up some important constitutional rights. Cooper confidently replied that he understood.

At times confident, humble, humorous, and unafraid to challenge a prosecution assertion with which he disagreed—Kronstadt called it being evasive—Cooper spent roughly an hour on the stand fighting for his reputation, as a community leader, father, husband, and renowned sound studio architect with A-list clients, all of which were taken away overnight, he said, because of the allegations.

“That never happened,” he replied when Jackson asked about the alleged crimes. “Nothing remotely like that ever happened.”

Whenever the girls were at his home for Jewish events, barbecues, birthday parties, and other occasions, Cooper testified, there were multiple adults around at all times, including parents and, in the case of the younger girl, her grandparents, who were longtime friends of the Coopers.

The younger girl, said Cooper, “was never at my home alone.” Asked by his attorney how it felt to be accused of such heinous acts, Cooper said, “The words are hard to find. It’s been a living hell.”

As word of the verdict spread, James Bozajian, a former assistant L.A. County district attorney and current member of the Calabasas City Council, said, “It appears that justice has been served in this case. These are very serious charges, and having been duly convicted, the defendant must now be punished for his outrageous conduct.”

Follow Scott Steepleton on Twitter @scottsteepleton.