Rocker Marilyn Manson won't be charged after long investigation of
sexual assault allegations
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[January 25, 2025]
By ANDREW DALTON
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Prosecutors said Friday that they will not file
charges against Marilyn Manson after a years-long investigation of
allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said the allegations
are too old under the law and the evidence is not sufficient to charge
the 56-year-old shock rocker whose legal name is Brian Warner.
“We have determined that allegations of domestic violence fall outside
of the statute of limitations, and we cannot prove charges of sexual
assault beyond a reasonable doubt,” Hochman said. “We recognize and
applaud the courage and resilience of the women who came forward to make
reports and share their experiences, and we thank them for their
cooperation and patience with the investigation.”
Nearly four years after the investigation began, then-District Attorney
George Gascón said on Oct. 9 that his office was pursuing new leads that
added to the “already extensive” file that authorities had amassed.
LA County sheriff’s detectives said early in 2021 that they were
investigating Manson for incidents between 2009 and 2011 in West
Hollywood, where Manson lived at the time. The probe included a search
warrant that was served on his West Hollywood home. The case was
initially turned over to prosecutors in September 2021, but the Los
Angeles County District Attorney’s Office requested more
evidence-gathering and the investigation resumed.
“We are very pleased that, after a thorough and incredibly lengthy
review of all of the actual evidence, the District Attorney has
concluded what we knew and expressed from the start — Brian Warner is
innocent,” his attorney, Howard King, said in a statement.
The identities of the women police and prosecutors spoke to were not
revealed, but “Game of Thrones” actor Esmé Bianco — who sued Manson in a
case that has been settled — said she was part of the criminal
investigation. Before the decision not to prosecute, she criticized how
long the process was taking at a rally for Hochman, who was elected soon
after.
“Almost four years ago, I did what victims of rape are supposed to do: I
went to the police,” she said on Oct. 10. “I described to them in
agonizing detail how the rock musician Brian Warner — better known by
his stage name Marilyn Manson — had raped and abused me over the course
of our relationship.”
Bianco said she gave investigators “hundreds of pieces of evidence,
including photos of my body covered in bites, bruises and knife wounds,
emails and text messages, threats to my immigration status.”
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Marilyn Manson attends the 9th annual "Home for the Holidays"
benefit concert in Los Angeles on Dec. 10, 2019. (Photo by Richard
Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
In her lawsuit, Bianco alleged
sexual, physical and emotional abuse, and said that Manson violated
human trafficking law by bringing her to California from England for
non-existent roles in music videos and movies.
“Whilst I am deeply disappointed by the decision of the District
Attorney to not bring charges in the case against Brian Warner, I am
sadly not surprised,” Bianco said in a statement released by her
lawyer. “Once again, our justice system has failed survivors. Not
the individual prosecutors and detectives who worked for years on
this case, but the system that made them do so with one hand tied
behind their collective backs.”
In 2021 Manson's former fiancée, “Westworld” actor Evan Rachel Wood,
named him as her abuser for the first time in an Instagram post.
Wood and Manson’s relationship became public in 2007 when he was 38
and she was 19, and they were briefly engaged in 2010 before
breaking up.
“He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically
abused me for years,” Wood said.
Manson replied on Instagram that these were “horrible distortions of
reality.” He sued Wood, saying she and another woman fabricated
accusations against him and convinced others to do the same. A judge
threw out significant sections of the suit, then in November, Manson
agreed to drop it and pay Wood's attorney fees.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they’ve
been sexually abused, unless they come forward publicly as Bianco
and Wood have done.
Other women sued Manson in the months after Wood came forward.
Wood's representative did not immedately return a message Friday.
Manson emerged as a musical star in the mid-1990s, known as much for
courting public controversy as for hit songs like “The Beautiful
People” and hit album’s like 1996’s “Antichrist Superstar” and
1998’s “Mechanical Animals.”
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