Evan Rachel Wood said she is “steady as a rock” in the face of a defamation lawsuit filed by her alleged abuser, rocker Marilyn Manson.
“I am not scared,” she said during an appearance on Monday’s episode of The View. “I am sad, because this is how it works. This is what pretty much every survivor that tries to expose someone in a position of power goes though, and this is part of the retaliation that keeps survivors quiet. This is why people don’t want to come forward. This was expected.”
Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, sued Wood in Los Angeles Superior Court on March 2, alleging defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit calls Wood’s allegation of physical and sexual abuse a “malicious falsehood” that has derailed his career.
Wood has not taken legal action against Manson but he was sued last year by actress Esmé Bianco and his former assistant Ashley Walters.
In his lawsuit, Manson accuses Wood of recruiting “prospective accusers to emerge simultaneously with allegations of rape and abuse … and brazenly claim that it took ten or more years to ‘realize’ their consensual relationships with [Manson] were supposedly abusive.”
On The View, Wood said she is “very confident” she has truth on her side.
“I’m doing this to protect people. I’m doing this to sound the alarm that there is a dangerous person out there and I don’t want anybody getting near him,” she said. “So people can think whatever they want about me. I have to let the legal process run its course, and I’m steady as a rock.”
Marilyn Manson: iHeartRadio Music News Coverage
Wood was 19 when she went public with her relationship with Manson, then 38, in 2007. They were briefly engaged in 2010.
In February 2021, Wood publicly alleged Manson “horrifically abused me for years.” (Manson dismissed the claims as "horrible distortions of reality" and insisted "my intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners.”)
“I was not drawn to him, he was drawn to me,” she recalled on Monday. “He approached me under the guise of work, false promises – and that is part of the grooming process. He was grooming me the second he said ‘hello.’”
Wood’s experience is detailed in the forthcoming HBO documentary Phoenix Rising, in which she claims Manson raped her on camera for his “Heart-Shaped Glasses” video, which remains on YouTube.
“We did not have sex on set, I was raped on set. There’s a difference,” she said. “When you’re inebriated like that, you can’t consent.”
(Manson’s rep countered that the video depicts simulated sex and Wood was “fully coherent and engaged.”)
Wood is not backing down.
“He made me forget who I was,” she said. “It’s taken me years to remember and it’s taken me years to get to myself and to even understand what had happened to me.
“He’s not going to stop until he’s stopped. I think it’s important to expose that."