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The list of accusations continues to grow.
By Allison Mcglone — Written on Aug 27, 2021
As Kanye West welcomes Marilyn Manson to feature on his upcoming album 'Donda' — and invited him onstage at his Chicago listening party — it's important to refresh our memories about what exactly Manson is accused of.
What some have interpreted as West's bizarre attempt to comment on "cancel culture" should not overshadow the disturbing list of sexual abuse allegations against the rocker.
On February 1 2021, actress Evan Rachel Wood revealed the identity of the abuser she had often referenced in the past — her famed shock-rocker ex-boyfriend, Marilyn Manson.
At the time, Wood stated in an Instagram post that she is “done living in fear of retaliation” and feels she must call out Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, “before he ruins any more lives.”
Later, Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco filed a lawsuit against Manson, and thus ensued a growing list of accusations against Manson that became more and more damning.
List Of Sexual Abuse, Assault and Rape Allegations Against Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson was charged with assault and sexual misconduct in 2001.
In December 2001, Manson was charged with felony fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct and misdemeanor assault and battery against security guard Joshua Keasler.
Manson was accused of spitting on Keasler's head and rubbing his "G-string-clad genital area on it" during a concert.
After pleading no. contest to disorderly conduct and being hit with a $4,000 fine, he and Keasler reached a settlement.
In 2018, a police reported linked Manson to 'unspecified sex crimes.'
In August 2018, Manson was charged with "unspecified sex crimes" dating back to 2011.
The claims of sexual abuse were declined by the district attorney at the time because the statute of limitations had expired and police said there was an "absence of corroboration."
Evan Rachel Wood accused Marilyn Manson of grooming, assault and rape in 2021.
In February 2021, Evan Rachel Wood named ex-boyfriend Marilyn Manson as the person she had previously accused of grooming, abuse, assault and rape.
The Westworld star met Manson, whose real name is Brian Hugh Warner, when she was 18 and he was 36. The two apparently first came in contact when Manson requested that Wood appear in his horror film, titled Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll.
They began an on-and-off relationship that went public in 2007, shortly after Manson’s then-wife Dita Von Teese filed for divorce, and ended after a brief engagement in 2010.
The actress went on to wed Jamie Bell in 2012, and their son was born the next year. However, the couple divorced in 2014 after less than two years of marriage.
Wood has previously spoken out about her domestic violence experiences and the resulting trauma. But this the first time she has mentioned Manson by name in the allegations, though public speculation has long-since connected the dots.
The performer casually admitted to emotionally abusing Wood following a breakup in 2009, in the midst of their turbulent relationship.
“Every time I called her that day — I called 158 times — I took a razorblade and I cut myself on my face or on my hands,” Manson said in a phone interview with Spin.
He went on to state, “I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull in with a sledgehammer.”
Manson was reportedly sexually molested by a neighbor as a child, perhaps beginning the cycle of abuse.
Wood had addressed Congress in February of 2018 to advocate for the spread of the Survivors Bill of Rights. In the speech, she described memories of her abuse as “a mental scar that I feel every day.”
“I wasn’t alive. My self-esteem and spirit were broken,” the actress said of the effects of said abuse.
Wood also explained that “being raped and abused previously made it easier for me to be raped again, not the other way around,” and asserted that “the aftermath of rape is a huge part of the conversation that needs much more attention.”
"Even though these experiences happened a decade ago, I still struggle with the aftermath," she continued. "My relationship suffers, my partners suffer, my mental and physical health suffer. Seven years after my rapes — plural — I was diagnosed with long-term PTSD, which I had been living with all that time without knowledge about my condition. I simply thought I was going crazy."
Wood revealed that she had “struggled with depression, addiction, agoraphobia, night terrors,” and that this struggle led to two suicide attempts, after which she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital.
"This was, however, a turning point in my life when I started seeking professional help to deal with my trauma and mental stress," she said. "But others are not so fortunate and because of this, rape is often more than a few minutes of trauma, but a slow death.”
Wood’s speech also addressed the lies perpetuated by society about men having violent impulses and expressed hope to raise her son free from the harmful influence of such stereotypes.
Wood has said that the experience was both freeing and validating for her.
“To have members of Congress look at me and say, ‘Hey, that wasn't your fault,’ I just broke down in the middle of the hearing room,” the actress said.
“That was like the first time I really just, like, let it go. I knew I had been heard and then I realized, Holy shit, that's all I wanted…. It was just such a powerful thing.”
The actress continues to address myths and misconceptions surrounding domestic violence.
“It's not always that easy to leave [an abuser],” she has said. “They take away your privacy or take away your freedoms. And it happens slowly and steadily until one day you look around, you go, ‘Oh, my God, I'm trapped here. I am trapped.’”
Wood maintains that, “We are not talking about this enough and people don't understand the complexities behind it.”
She has also spoken about channeling her painful past into her work.
“Your demons never fully leave,” the actress told Rolling Stone in 2016. “But when you’re using them to create something else, it almost gives them a purpose and feels like none of it was in vain. I think that’s how I make peace with it. Westworld? Good God. I left so much in that first season and never looked back.”
Sarah McNeilly accused Manson of abuse.
That same day, Model Sarah McNeilly also accused Manson of emotional and physical abuse, among other things.
McNeilly stated on Instagram that she had endured a similar experience with Marilyn Manson. She described Manson’s initial persona as “charming, smart, funny, charismatic.”
"As he was wooing me I would come to find out he was torturing others. Before long I was the one being tortured," she wrote.
"I was emotionally abused, terrorized and scarred. I was locked in rooms when I was ‘bad’, sometimes forced to listen to him entertaining other women. Kept away from certain friends or if I didn’t he would threaten to come after them. I was told stories of others who tried to tell their story and their pets ended up dead.
"I wasn’t allowed to go near other artists working on the same set, as he told me they had aids and were disgusting and if I did so he would be very upset and ‘I wouldn’t want that’. I was verbally berated for hours upon hours. Blamed for everything under the sun in order to make me feel worthless.
"Any male friends in my life were not allowed any longer. He threatened to shank one of them after they posted something on my Facebook page. I was thrown up against a wall and he threatened to bash my face in with the baseball bat he was holding, for trying to get him to pick out a pair of pants prior to a music video.
"I witnessed him staging problems or hiding missing objects in order to justify his violent outbursts.
"I witnessed him recording others unknowningly in order to have blackmail on most anyone who entered ‘the meat locker’ ( as I called his home, it was kept at a chilly 62 degrees always) I witnessed him terrorize and abuse others in my presence. Slander his exes. I have been afraid to bring any spotlight upon myself as to avoid winding up in his crosshairs again.
"As a result of the way he treated me," she concluded, "I suffer from mental health issues and PTSD that have affected my personal and professional relationships, self-worth and personal goals. I believe he gets off on ruining people's lives. I stand in support of all that have and all will come forward. I want to see Brian held accountable for his evil."
Ashley Lindsay Morgan accused Marilyn Manson of sexual violence.
Another woman, Ashley Lindsay Morgan, also came forward with similar allegations against Manson on that same day.
“There was abuse, sexual violence, physical violence and coercion,” Morgan stated, also in an Instagram post. “I still feel the effects every day. I have night terrors, PTSD, anxiety, and mostly crippling OCD. I try to wash constantly to get him out or off of me.”
“I don’t want him to do this to anyone else, and I’ve felt responsible for others getting hurt for so long. I just thought it was somehow my fault. I know he is still doing this to a rotating door of young girls and causing irreparable damage. I am coming forward so he will finally stop.”
The post included an email allegedly sent by Manson in which he urged Morgan to enter into a blood pact.
A third woman, going by the name of Gabriella, made similar allegations on February 1.
The third alleged victim wrote on Instagram, “The reason I’m finally sharing this traumatic experience is for my healing and because I’m done being silent. I don’t believe it’s fair for someone to not be held accountable for their horrific actions.”
“I’m not a victim,” the account went on. “I’m a survivor.”
Wolf Alice's Ellie Rowsell accused Manson of sexual misconduct.
The following week, Ellie Rowsell, lead vocalist and guitarist for Wolf Alice, accused Manson of sexual misconduct.
Rowsell expressed her support for Wood and others making accusations against Manson and detailed her own encounter in which she said he took filmed an "upskirt" video of her without her consent.
"Solidarity to Evan Rachel Wood and those calling out Marilyn Manson," she wrote on Twitter, before going on to share her own experience.
"I met Marilyn backstage at a festival a few years ago. After his compliments towards my band became more and more hyperbolic I became suspicious of his behaviour. I was shocked to look down and see he was filming up my skirt with a gopro."
Esmé Bianco filed a lawsuit claiming Marilyn Manson abused her.
Soon after, Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco detailed her own allegations of physical, emotional and sexual abuse against Manson.
In her own testimony in support of the Phoenix Act, Bianco said, "“I basically felt like a prisoner ... I came and went at his pleasure. Who I spoke to was completely controlled by him. I called my family hiding in the closet.”
In the lawsuit filed by the actress last week, she accused Manson of drugging, beating, and torturing her.
Among the most shocking claims, Bianco says Manson, "flew her to L.A. in early 2009, purportedly to film a music vid for his song, "I Want to Kill You Like They Do in the Movies" ... [but that] upon arrival she learned there was no film crew, just Manson, and she was expected to stay with him, be on call 24/7 and wear lingerie as her 'costume.' She alleges she was given drugs and alcohol and subjected to threats of violence and rape, and according to the docs ... was tied to a prayer kneeler and beaten by Manson with a whip he told her was utilized by the Nazis. She claims Manson also electrocuted her."
Manson's attorneys have strongly denied all of Bianco's claims, saying they are "provably false."
Manson himself has said the accusations made by these multiple women are "horrible distortions of reality."
Evan Rachel Wood has spent years advocating for domestic abuse survivors.
She created the Phoenix Act, which changes the statute of limitations in cases of domestic violence from three to five years and requires further law enforcement training on the subject.
In April 2019, Wood testified before the California State Senate in support of the act. Her voice shook as she recounted the mental and physical torture she had endured at the hands of her then-unnamed abuser.
The actress stated that she had continued to blame herself for the abuse “because society had told me I should just leave when someone hits me,” but that her situation “was so much more complicated and so much scarier than anything had ever prepared me for.”
The act was signed into law in October 2019 and took effect last month.
Wood explained that she had named the act “Phoenix” because “bad things can happen to you, but you can rise out of the ashes.”
The actress continued the message of hope, saying “I do believe that you can come back from tragedy, sometimes even stronger than you were before.”
“I used to think being strong was not being affected,” Wood has said.
“And now, to me, being strong is letting it affect you but being able to move past it, and seeing the pain, walking through it, letting it flow through you, and then letting it leave. You can break and still be strong.”
If you’re experiencing domestic abuse, you’re not alone. The National Domestic Violence Hotline reports that approximately 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the U.S. More than 12 million women and men over the course of the year suffer from instances of domestic violence and abuse.
Call 1.800.799.SAFE (7233) / TTY 1.800.787.3224 for help.
Allie McGlone is a writer who covers a variety of topics for YourTango, including pop culture and entertainment.