Max Factor Heir Must Pay $19m for Rape

The convicted serial rapist and heir to the Max Factor cosmetics empire has been ordered to pay $19m (£11.9m) to a woman he drugged with a potent anaesthetic and assaulted, compounding the horror by videotaping the attack.

The judgment in favour of a California woman who was identified only as Shawna Doe was the first in three suits by the victims of 39-year-old Andrew Luster.

Luster, who is the great grandson of Max Factor, is serving a 124-year sentence for rape. He was returned to the California state prison service last June after being tracked down by a bounty hunter to the Mexican beach resort where he fled shortly before his conviction.

Judge Frederick Bysshe, in Ventura County, California, said the magnitude of the award - $9m in compensatory damages and $10m in punitive damages - was intended to deter future assaults using the drug, known as gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB.

"Luster targeted a minor girl more than half his age, drugged her, raped her, humiliated her," the judge wrote on Friday. "He subjected her to one sexual indignity after another, all the while taping his sadistic assaults on her for his future depraved viewing."

Luster catalogued the videotapes with neat labels which recorded the names of his victims, and the drugs used to knock them out.

Shawna Doe told the court she had no knowledge of the 1997 attack at Luster's beach home in Santa Barbara, California, until she was shown the videotape by police three years later.

Portions of the 30-minute video were later shown on US television, compounding the anxiety and depression she had suffered. However, it is unclear whether she will be able to collect the award.

Lawyers for Luster have argued he has nowhere near the $20m that is estimated as his personal fortune.

They suggested the only source of funds now available to the victims was the $1m bail bond Luster sacrificed when he went on the run.

Luster's sudden poverty would mark a new chapter in the story of the society rapist. The first instalment in a made-for-TV film called A Date with Darkness: the Trial and Capture of Andrew Luster, was aired last week.