Marilyn Manson has dropped a lawsuit he filed against actress Evan Rachel Wood in which he alleged she defamed him by accusing him of sexual assault. The musician has agreed to pay nearly $327,000 in Wood’s attorneys’ fees, according to legal documents obtained by Rolling Stone.
Wood’s legal team said in a statement that Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, had sought to settle the lawsuit this past spring at the same time he was appealing a judge’s rulings against him. His initial offer was to pay a portion of Wood’s fees in return for keeping the settlement confidential, other than releasing a mutually agreed-upon statement. Wood rejected this offer. Her lawyers say she did not want to agree to confidentiality or the other terms. Warner subsequently agreed to drop his suit against Wood completely and pay her full lawyers’ fees.
“Marilyn Manson — whose real name is Brian Warner — filed a lawsuit against Ms. Wood as a publicity stunt to try to undermine the credibility of his many accusers and revive his faltering career. But his attempt to silence and intimidate Ms. Wood failed,” a rep for Wood said in a statement. “As the trial court correctly found, Warner’s claims were meritless. Warner’s decision to finally abandon his lawsuit and pay Ms. Wood her full fee award of almost $327,000 only confirms as much.” (A rep for Warner did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.)
Warner filed the lawsuit in March 2022, weeks before the release of the two-part documentary, Phoenix Rising, in which Wood detailed her allegations of rape and sexual abuse against Warner and how that led her to advocate for legislation in favor of abuse survivors. Warner filed the suit a little over a year after Wood made an Instagram post that said, “The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” referring to testimony she’d previously given referring to Warner only as an abuser and a 2016 Rolling Stone interview in which she said she’d been raped.
After Wood made her statement, more than a dozen women also came forward with allegations of sexual abuse against Warner. Several women also filed civil suits against Warner, some of which have ended either in settlement or dismissal. Rolling Stone conducted a lengthy investigation in 2021, speaking with more than 55 sources about the allegations against Warner. Warner has steadfastly denied all claims of abuse.
“[Warner] started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,” Wood wrote in her initial post. “I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”
Wood went into greater detail about the alleged abuse in Phoenix Rising, claiming Warner “essentially raped” her on the set of a music video for “Heart-Shaped Glasses” and that he physically abused her on tour. She also alleged that he raped her while she was sleeping and that he accompanied her to get an abortion when she became pregnant.
Warner’s suit alleged that Wood and co-defendant Illma Gore impersonated an FBI agent, sending fraudulent letters from the nonexistent agent to Warner’s associates in an effort to corral them into a conspiracy against him. (Gore is now also off the hook in the lawsuit, according to the agreement obtained by Rolling Stone.) He claimed Wood leveraged her role in the creation of the Phoenix Act, a nonprofit organization Wood founded to help sexual abuse survivors, to recruit women to accuse him of wrongdoing. Warner also alleged that Wood and Gore “swatted” him, ostensibly sending police to his house to check on him under a false pretense to generate publicity. He was seeking unspecified damages from the lawsuit.
In May 2023, a judge struck down many of Warner’s claims, including his allegation that Wood recruited women to speak out against him. In February of this year, a judge ordered Warner to pay Wood $326,956 for her defense fees and $169,408 to Gore. This ruling came under California’s anti-SLAPP statute protecting people who are unfairly sued for exercising their right to free speech. Warner’s legal team filed a 92-page appeal in August, which they were advocating for at the time he decided to drop the suit.
In March 2022, Wood told the hosts of The View that she was willing to allow Warner’s lawsuit against her to go to trial if need be. “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,” she said at the time. “This is why people don’t want to come forward. This was expected. I am very confident that I have the truth on my side and that the truth will come out.”
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