LOS ANGELES (AP) – Detectives are investigating allegations of domestic violence against rocker Marilyn Manson over incidents that occurred in West Hollywood about a decade ago, authorities said Friday.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Special Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation after a woman approached authorities to report the allegations, Sheriff’s Lieutenant John Adams said. The incidents apparently took place between 2009 and 2011 when Manson lived in the city of West Hollywood.
“Our people are still in the early stages of an investigation into this,” Adams said. He did not describe or say the allegations when the woman came forward.
The investigation came less than three weeks after actor Evan Rachel Wood Manson, her fiancé, publicly accused of sexual and other physical abuse, claiming that she was ‘manipulated into submission’ during their relationship.
Adams did not want to identify the woman who contacted the Sheriff’s Department, as is typical in domestic violence cases.
Manson, 52, nicknamed Brian Warner, denied Wood’s allegations as “horrific distortions of reality.”
Wood, 33, who plays in the HBO’s “Westworld”, had previously talked about abuse in a relationship, but did not name the person, until she posted the allegations on Instagram on February 1.
“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known as Marilyn Manson,” Wood said. “He started taking care of me as a teenager and abused me horribly for years.”
The relationship between Wood and Manson became known in 2007 when he was 38 and she was 19. They were engaged shortly in 2010 before they broke up.
Manson responded to Wood’s allegations the same day as her report with his own Instagram post.
“My intimate relationships have always been completely one-sided with partners who think alike,” he said. “No matter how – and why – others now choose to misrepresent the past, that’s the truth.”
In 2018, Los Angeles County prosecutors declined to file charges against Manson over allegations of assault, battery and sexual assault dating back to 2011, saying they were limited by prescriptions and lack of confirmation. The accuser was in that case only identified as a social knowledge of Manson.
He denied the allegations at the time through his attorney. The lawyer could not be reached for comment Friday.
The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they were victims of sexual assault, but did mention Wood because she decided to speak in public.