In the past, actor and activist Evan Rachel Wood has spoken about the alleged abuse she was subjected to by an unnamed ex.In an Instagram post early Monday morning, she put a name to the allegations.
“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” Wood wrote. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail.
I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”
In a show of solidarity, at least four other women posted their own allegations against Manson, detailing harrowing experiences that they claim included sexual assault, psychological abuse, and/or various forms of coercion, violence, and intimidation. Manson has denied similar allegations in the past.
His representatives were not immediately available for a comment, but his team has “categorically denied” similar accusations in the past.
Wood [pictured above], now 33 and a star of HBO’s Westworld, has said that she met shock-rocker Manson when she was 18 and he was 36.
In 2018, Wood testified before a House Judiciary Subcommittee as part of an effort to get the Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights passed in all 50 states. “My experience with domestic violence was this: Toxic mental, physical and sexual abuse which started slow but escalated over time, including threats against my life, severe gaslighting and brainwashing, waking up to the man that claimed to love me raping what he believed to be my unconscious body,” she told the subcommittee, though she did not name a perpetrator at the time.
The following year, she testified before California legislators on behalf of the Phoenix Act, legislation that altered the statute of limitations for crimes involving domestic violence.
In 2009, in an article in Spin, Manson was quoted as saying of Wood, “I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull in with a sledgehammer.” Last year, when that comment was brought up by a music journalist, a representative for Manson noted that the comment was “obviously a theatrical rock star interview promoting a new record and not a factual account.” Wood and Manson were engaged in 2010 before breaking up.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, in May of 2018, months after the #MeToo movement began sweeping through the entertainment industry, a police report was filed against Manson citing unspecified sex crimes that allegedly took place in 2011.
In August of 2018, the Los Angeles District’s Attorney office announced that it was declining to pursue that case because of a lack of corroborating evidence. At that time, Manson’s attorney, Howard E. King, told The Hollywood Reporter that the “allegations made to the police were and are categorically denied by Mr Warner and are either completely delusional or part of a calculated attempt to generate publicity…. . … Any claim of sexual impropriety or imprisonment at that, or any other, time is false.”
We will update this breaking news as the story develops.
Oran O’Beirne
www.overdrive.ie 2021
Photos – Loma Vista Recordings [Manson] / Ryan Pfluger © 2022 [Wood]
