Evan Rachel Wood Puts a Name to Abuse Allegations

'Westworld' actor, other women say singer Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson, victimized them
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 1, 2021 11:19 AM CST
Evan Rachel Wood: Marilyn Manson Was My Abuser
This Nov. 9, 2019, photo shows Evan Rachel Wood posing for a portrait at the W hotel in Los Angeles.   (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)

Evan Rachel Wood has previously spoken, including before Congress, about how she'd been abused and raped multiple times by a former partner. She didn't name that partner then, but a new Instagram post from Wood has changed that. "The name of my abuser is Brian Warner," the Westworld actor wrote Monday morning, and while most people won't recognize that name, the stage name that Warner goes by will prove more familiar: singer-songwriter Marilyn Manson. "He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years," Wood wrote of Manson. "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." Vanity Fair notes that four other women also posted their own allegations against the 52-year-old Manson "in a show of solidarity."

Those accusations include everything from intimidation and coercion to psychological abuse and sexual assault; one of the women has since taken down her post. "I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent," Wood added in her own entry. The 33-year-old has said she first met Manson when she was 18 and he was 36, and when she testified in front of Congress in 2018 in a push to get the Sexual Assault Survivors' Bill of Rights passed nationwide, she said her unnamed abuser subjected her to "toxic mental, physical, and sexual abuse" and threatened her life. Wood and Manson were briefly engaged in 2010. Vanity Fair includes excerpts of remarks from the other women accusing Manson, including one from Sarah McNeilly, who states: "I want to see Brian held accountable for his evil." Manson hasn't responded yet, though he's denied similar allegations in the past. People has more on the accusations. (More Evan Rachel Wood stories.)

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