Evan Rachel Wood accuses Marilyn Manson of grooming and "horrific abuse"

Actor Evan Rachel Wood and four others have detailed allegations of "horrific" sexual abuse and grooming against singer Marilyn Manson.

Wood met Manson in the mid-2000s, when she was 18 and he was 36. They went public with a dating relationship in January 2007 and got engaged in January 2010 but ended the engagement later that year. Wood delivered a personal testimony before Congress three years ago about her experience with domestic violence by an unnamed ex partner. Today, she has confirmed that she was referencing 52-year-old Marilyn Manson (real name Brian Hugh Warner).

“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.”

At least four other women posted their own allegations against Manson today, detailing harrowing experiences that they claim included sexual assault, psychological abuse, and/or various forms of coercion, violence, and intimidation. The four women go by the names Ashley Walters, Sarah McNeilly Ashley Lindsay Morgan and Gabriella. His team has “categorically denied” similar accusations in the past.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, in May 2018, months after the #MeToo movement began, a police report was filed against Manson citing unspecified sex crimes that allegedly took place in 2011. In August 2018, the Los Angeles District’s Attorney office announced that it was declining to pursue that case because of a lack of corroborating evidence.

Wood’s brave testimony before Congress three years ago detailed a harrowing period of ongoing abuse by a partner (allegedly Manson). The Westworld actress 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, and the worst part, sick rituals of binding me up by my hands and feet to be mentally and physically tortured until my abuser felt I had “proven my love for them.”

"In this moment, while I was tied up and being beaten and being told unspeakable things, I truly felt like I could die, not just because my abuser said to me, “I could kill you right now.” But because in that moment, I felt like I left my body. I was too afraid to run, he would find me. I was too afraid to fight back, he had threatened to kill me before. I was too afraid to have him turn on me, I knew what would happen if he got angry.

"Once I realised what he was going to do, I froze, and it was as if I could see myself from the outside and for the first time in months I felt something, utter shame and despair," Wood added.

"So I went numb, soon I couldn’t feel anything. I wasn’t alive. I was deeply terrified and that fear lives with me to this day. What makes me more hurt and more angry than the actual rape and abuse itself, was that piece of me that was stolen, which altered the course of my life. Because of this abuse and my already spiritless person, when I was pushed onto the floor of a locked storage closet by another attacker, my body instinctually knew what to do — disappear, go numb, make it go away. Being abused and raped previously made it easier for me to raped again."

Evan Rachel Wood describing the abuse she suffered when she was in a relationship with Marilyn Manson pic.twitter.com/wHSiGlH7TQ

— Kiera ⚡ (@abadgirlshould) June 10, 2020

To contact the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, freephone: 1800 778 888, or Women's Aid at 1800 341 900.