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In Phoenix Rising, a documentary about actress Evan Rachel Wood's life, she alleged she was "essentially raped on camera” by Marilyn Manson while filming the music video for his 2007 single Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand).
In February, the Westworld star publicly named him as the man who “groomed” her when she was a teenager and “horrifically abused her for years” in an explosive Instagram post.
Actor Esme Bianco had also sued Marilyn Manson over claims of sexual, physical and emotional abuse.
The Game Of Thrones star alleges that the Tainted Love singer, 52, locked her in a room, deprived her of food, plied her with drugs, and illegally trafficked her to LA, among other shocking accusations
Manson – real name Brian Warner – has fiercely denied such claims, branding them “horrible distortions of reality” and insisting all of his relationships have been consensual.
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His lawyer has shut down Wood's allegations, saying: “Of all the false claims that Evan Rachel Wood has made about Brian Warner, her imaginative retelling of the making of the Heart-Shaped Glasses music video 15 years ago is the most brazen and easiest to disprove, because there were multiple witnesses.
Here, we take a look at the allegations levelled against him over the years, beginning more than 20 years ago.
1998: Manson details ‘mistreating women’ in his autobiography
Titled The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Manson’s autobiography featured a stream of disturbing anecdotes which Chicago Reader critic Jim Derogatis called out at the time.
He said Manson’s recollections suggested he “generally mistreated one or more women per day”.
And although the sexual encounters were all presented as consensual, some of the depictions raised alarm bells.
These included one encounter in which a deaf fan was covered in raw meat before having sex with a number of Manson’s band mates. The rocker himself, and one of his friends, then urinated on her.
Another chapter, which recently resurfaced online, described how Manson and Nine Inch Nails’ frontman Trent Reznor allegedly sexually assaulted an intoxicated woman together back in the ‘90s.
In February this year, Reznor issued a statement denouncing his fellow rocker.
"I have been vocal over the years about my dislike of Manson as a person and cut ties with him nearly 25 years ago," he told Pitchfork.
"As I said at the time, the passage from Manson’s memoir is a complete fabrication. I was infuriated and offended back when it came out and remain so today."
Trent Reznor denounced his former collaborator
2001: Manson charged with assault and sexual misconduct
In December of this year, Manson was charged with assaulting security guard Joshua Keasler who claimed that the singer spat on him and rubbed his head into his g-string-clad genitals during a concert in Michigan.
Manson was charged with fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct along with misdemeanour assault and battery.
He received a $4,000 fine and eventually reached an undisclosed settlement with the victim.
2007: Manson and Wood start dating – then break up
Wood was 19 when she started dating the then 37-year-old Manson in 2007.
In her recent Instagram statement, Wood wrote that he “started grooming me when I was a teenager.”
The pair split in 2008 before reuniting in 2010, when they were briefly engaged, before breaking up for good the same year.
Manson spoke about self-harming following the initial break-up. He told an interview with Spin in 2009 that he had “fantasies every day about smashing (Wood’s) skull in with a sledgehammer.”
His representatives later insisted that the comment had been a “theatrical” exaggeration.
Manson and Wood back in 2007
2018: Charlyne Yi allegations
The House actress accused Manson of harassing “just about every woman” on the show during a visit to the set in 2018.
In a since-deleted tweet, Yi also alleged that he called her a “China man” and added: "I genuinely hope he gets help.”
Charlyne Yi said Manson was a huge fan of the series House
February 2018: Wood testifies before Congress
Wood first talked about being raped by a then-anonymous “significant other”, as well as the owner of a bar, in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone.
The Frozen II actress told the magazine: “I don’t believe we live in a time where people can stay silent any longer, not given the state our world is in with its blatant bigotry and sexism.”
In 2018, she also detailed her experiences in front of the US House Judiciary Committee as part of a campaign to secure a bill of rights for sexual assault survivors across America.
Without naming names, she told the committee: “My experience with domestic violence was this – the 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.”
2019: Wood testifies before a California State panel
Appearing before a state panel in April of this year, Wood once again detailed her trauma from domestic violence, but declined to name her abuser.
“The fear of being judged by society is debilitating and the fear of retaliation from my abuser is paralysing,” she said.
“I have been diagnosed with complex PTSD, including disassociation, panic attacks, night terrors, agoraphobia, impulse control, chronic pain in my body, among other symptoms.”
February 2021: Wood names Manson in Instagram post
On February 1, 2021, Wood shared the following statement on Instagram:
Following the post, four other women –including Bianco – came forward with similarly disturbing allegations against him, with their accounts shared by Vanity Fair.
Manson responded to the claims, dismissing them as “horrible distortions of reality”:
Despite his protestations of innocence, the singer was cut from two TV shows and dropped by his record label Loma Vista Recordings.
It said in a statement: “In light of today’s disturbing allegations by Evan Rachel Wood and other women naming Marilyn Manson as their abuser, Loma Vista will cease to further promote his current album, effective immediately.”
February 2021: Wolf Alice star says Manson used gopro to film up her skirt
Wolf Alice star Ellie Rowsel, 28, spoke out in support of Manson’s alleged victims and to share her own experience of meeting the 52-year-old.
The singer tweeted this horrendous revalation:
April 2021:
On April 30, it emerged that Game of Thrones star Bianco had filed a lawsuit against Manson in federal court in Los Angeles.
She claimed that Manson violated human trafficking laws by bringing her to California from England under the false pretences of roles in music videos and movies that never materialised.
The lawsuit alleges that in 2009, Manson flew Bianco to LA to shoot a video for the song I Want To Kill You Like They Do In The Movies.
The suit says that Bianco was expected to stay at Manson’s home instead of the hotel where she had been booked, and there was no crew, only Manson himself shooting with a phone.
Manson deprived Bianco of food and sleep though gave her alcohol and drugs, locked her in a bedroom, whipped her, gave her electric shocks, tried to force her to have sex with another woman and threatened to enter her room and rape her during the night, the suit alleges. No video was ever released.
The two began a long-distance relationship later that year, the suit says.
Bianco (left) has sued Manson over a number of disturbing allegations
Manson again brought Bianco to Los Angeles in 2011, ostensibly to appear in his feature film Phantasmagoria, though that project also never materialised.
During that visit, Manson would not allow Bianco to leave home without his permission, chased her around their apartment with an axe, cut her with a "Nazi knife" without her consent and photographed the cuts and posted the pictures online, also without her consent, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit said that at the time, Bianco feared for her safety if she did not comply with Manson’s demands, and did not go to authorities. But her lawyer Jay D Ellwanger said she has now come forward and spoken to the FBI and local law enforcement.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives also said in February that they were investigating domestic violence allegations against Manson dating from 2009 to 2011 in West Hollywood. They did not identify the woman who made the report.
January 2022: Evan Rachel Wood's documentary details when Manson reportedly “started penetrating me for real”
In Phoenix Rising, a documentary based on Wood's career, the actress said she was fed absinthe on the set of Manson's 2007 single Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand).
She alleged that a previously discussed “simulated sex scene” turned into him “penetrating [her] for real” once the cameras were rolling.
“I had never agreed to that,” she said.
She said that she had “never been on a set that unprofessional in my life up until this day. It was complete chaos and I did not feel safe. No one was looking after me.”
“I was coerced into a commercial sex act under false pretences. That’s when the first crime was committed against me and I was essentially raped on camera."
She added how the incident made her feel “disgusting and like I had done something shameful."
Manson's lawyer has categorically shot down Wood's allegations as "imaginative retelling" of the past.
Manson’s lawyer Howard King denied Wood’s claims in a statement to the Guardian: “Of all the false claims that Evan Rachel Wood has made about Brian Warner, her imaginative retelling of the making of the Heart-Shaped Glasses music video 15 years ago is the most brazen and easiest to disprove, because there were multiple witnesses.
“Evan was not only fully coherent and engaged during the three-day shoot but also heavily involved in weeks of pre-production planning and days of post-production editing of the final cut. The simulated sex scene took several hours to shoot with multiple takes using different angles and several long breaks in between camera setups.
“Brian did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows that is the truth.”
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