For years, Marilyn Manson has faced accusations of sexual assault and violence, but his legal troubles have intensified after ex-girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood began working on a documentary about her alleged interactions with the rock star. Manson is also facing lawsuits from Game of Thrones actress Esmé Blanco and a former assistant, but Wood’s Phoenix Rising documentary where she chronicles her alleged abusive relationship with Manson amplified the visibility of this case.
Manson has remained relatively silent until this week when he announced his lawsuit against Wood, citing defamation and impersonation of an FBI agent.
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“We’re filing this now because we have been able to gather an overwhelming trove of evidence – including both documents and witness statements – which proves that the stories that Evan Rachel Wood and her co-conspirator Illma Gore have been falsifying and spreading are both vindictive and demonstrably untrue,” Manson’s attorney Howard King told Deadline.
“It’s incredibly important to differentiate between the character of ‘Marilyn Manson’ and the man Brian Warner,” he continued. “Wood’s claims may resonate because of the intentionally ‘shocking’ character of ‘Marilyn Manson’ but they simply do not reflect the truth. The manufactured facts these conspirators scripted a decade after the event never happened.”
On his Instagram, Manson left this message: “There will come a time when I can share more about the events of the past year. Until then, I’m going to let the facts speak for themselves.” He advised viewers to click the link in his Instagram bio which directs them to a PDF of the lawsuit.
Manson is not only suing Wood but a woman named Ashley Gore as well, and he alleges that Gore is Wood’s on-again-off-again romantic partner. He claims the women hacked his social media accounts and computers, and “created a fictitious email account to manufacture purported evidence that [Manson] was emailing illicit pornography.”