A sexual abuse lawsuit filed against 1990s shock-rocker Marilyn Manson can go forward, according to a ruling by a California appeals court on Dec. 13. The suit, initially filed in 2021, had previously been thrown out due to statute of limitations rules, but the appeals court overruled the earlier decision on the grounds of the “delayed-discovery” rule, which holds that although the alleged incidents occurred in 2010 and 2011, trauma had caused the alleged victim to suppress memories of them until 2020.
The suit was filed by a former assistant of Manson’s (real name Brian Hugh Warner) named Ashley Walters, who claimed that the star subjected her to “sexual exploitation, manipulation and psychological abuse” during the years she worked as his personal assistant. Manson has denied the allegations.
Manson was the subject of numerous accusations in 2021, which he has denied.
As the court wrote in its ruling: “The complaint described the support group Walters joined in October 2020 and recounted the stories shared by the other abused women that ‘began to unlock new memories she repressed long ago as a result of her psychological trauma by being manipulated and threatened by Warner during and after her employment.’ The complaint also described how Walters began therapy in November 2020 and was diagnosed the following month with complex post traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.”
In a statement, Walters’ lawyer James Vaginini said: “We believe this ruling makes certain that courts must factor in trauma-induced repression into the legal reasoning why survivors often come forward years after their trauma to raise claims. This clears a path, much like many of the newly passed laws sweeping the country, allowing victims of sexual assault and harassment to raise their claims against their abusers when they are able to, not by a deadline set by statute.”
Actor Evan Rachel Wood accused Manson of 'horrifically abusing' her in a statement in 2021.
Manson was the subject of multiple accusations of abuse and sexual misconduct in 2021, when his former fiancee, actor Evan Rachel Wood, posted to Instagram that Manson “started grooming [her] when [she] was a teenager and horrifically abused [her] for years.” Her statement was followed by allegations from multiple other women, and Manson was subsequently dropped from his record label, Loma Vista Recordings, and his talent agency CAA, as well as from TV series American Gods and Creepshow. Manson denied the allegations, saying “these recent claims against me are horrible distortions of reality,” and over the next several years there were a series of suits and countersuits, with several of the initial suits dismissed, recanted, or settled out of court. (Manson also filed a defamation lawsuit against Wood, which remains ongoing.)
One of the most infamous music figures of the late 1990s, Manson’s eponymous band scored its first U.S. No. 1 album with 1998’s Mechanical Animals, returning to the top of the chart in 2003 with The Golden Age of Grotesquerie. (1996’s breakthrough album Antichrist Superstar reached No. 3, while the band’s last six albums, up to 2020’s We Are Chaos, have all charted in the top 10.) Manson himself became a particular magnet for controversy after the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting, when various media watchdogs and U.S. elected officials placed him at the center of a debate about violence in media. He has not released new music since 2020, though he was a featured artist on Kanye West’s 2022 album Donda.
