American rock star Marilyn Manson was captured by his record company, following new accusations against him of sexual abuse and domestic violence on Monday. Actress Evan Rachel Wood identified him on Instagram as the man who “horribly abused her for years”. Also TV channel AMC breaks its ties with the singer and band leader, who became known as ‘shock rocker’ in the 1990s.
Manson has always contradicted previous accusations of abuse and violence. So now, too. In Instagram, he calls the recent statements “hideous distortions of reality”.
In her post on Instagram, Wood writes that as a teenager, she was captured by the artist, and then “brainwashed and manipulated, so that I became submissive. I want to expose this dangerous man now, before he destroys any more lives.” The two got a relationship in 2007, when she was 19 years old and he was 38, and broke up in 2010.
Over the past few years, Wood has been telling us about her experiences of domestic violence and rape, without mentioning names of perpetrators. “Once I was raped, it was easier to undergo it again. I instinctively eliminated myself,” she wrote in 2017 on social media as part of the #metoo campaign.
She was the initiator of the Phoenix Act, a change of law that aims to make accusations of domestic violence less likely to be mitigation. Successfully, the law came into force in California last year. Wood has set itself the goal of getting the law passed across the US.
On Monday, other women from the American entertainment and art world also came out with similar accusations against Manson:
Manson‘s record company Loma Vista responded to the “disturbing accusations” on Monday, announcing that the company will no longer promote its latest album, nor will it release new music from him. Tv channel AMC reported to Vanity Fair that Manson is being removed from a planned broadcast of the horror series Creepshow.
In an interview with Spin magazine in 2009, Manson said about his then girlfriend: “Every day I fantasize about hitting her brains with a sledgehammer.” When it was criticized, his press officer insisted that he had made that statement in his role as ‘theatrical rockster‘, and that he didn’t mean it.