Marilyn Manson Sues Evan Rachel Wood for Defamation

Marilyn Manson is suing Evan Rachel Wood for defamation, as Deadline reports. The lawsuit, which was filed in a California court by Manson’s attorney Howard E. King, comes over a year after Wood publicly accused him of abuse, saying that he started grooming her when she was a teenager and “horrifically abused me for years.” At the time, Manson denied the allegations and called them “horrible distortions of reality.”

The suit claims that Wood committed “to publicly cast Plaintiff Brian Warner, p/k/a Marilyn Manson, as a rapist and abuser—a malicious falsehood that has derailed Warner’s successful music, TV, and film career.” Illma Gore, who is described as Wood’s “on-again, off-again romantic partner,” is also named as a defendant.

In addition, the lawsuit claims that Wood and Gore “created a fictitious email account to manufacture purported evidence that Warner was emailing illicit pornography” and that they impersonated an FBI agent “to create the false appearance that Warner’s alleged “victims” and their families were in danger, and that there was a federal criminal investigation of Warner ongoing.”

Manson and his lawyer also allege that Wood and Gore “provided checklists and scripts to prospective accusers, listing the specific alleged acts of abuse that they should claim against Warner” and that they “made knowingly false statement to prospective accusers which have since been repeated by those accusers in court filings), including the defamatory claim that Warner filmed the sexual assault of a minor.”

The suit is seeking a jury trial and “an order enjoining Wood and Gore from engaging in further wrongful conduct toward Warner.”

In a statement to Deadline, King said: “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.”

Wood is the subject of Phoenix Rising, a two-part documentary that will air on HBO following its premiere at Sundance Film Festival in January. In the film, directed by Amy Berg, Wood claims that Manson “essentially raped” her during the filming of the music video for Manson’s 2007 song ‘Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)’.