“Westworld” actor Evan Rachel Wood, who testified before Congress about her experience of domestic and sexual violence, said on Monday that she was “horribly” abused by musician Marilyn Manson, her ex-partner.
In a post on Instagram, Wood wrote that Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, “started nursing me when I was a teenager and horribly abused me for years.”
“I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I have finished living in fear of retaliation, slander or blackmail, ”wrote Wood.
“I’m here to expose this dangerous man and name the many industries that made him possible before he ruined even more lives,” the actor added. “I support the many victims who will no longer be silent.”
Wood, now 33, met Manson, 52, when she was a teenager and he was in his late thirties. They dated intermittently in the late 2000s, and in 2010 they were briefly engaged. Wood married “Billy Elliot” star Jamie Bell in 2012, and they divorced in 2014.
NBC News has reached out to Manson’s representatives for comment on Wood’s allegations, quoted in full above.
British music magazine Metal Hammer said Manson abruptly ended a telephone interview last fall after the publication mentioned Wood’s name.
In a subsequent statement to the magazine, Manson’s UK PR representative said in part, “Personal testimony is just that, and we think it inappropriate to comment on it.”
In early 2018, Wood testified before a House Judiciary Subcommittee on her experiences of domestic and sexual violence at a hearing on the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act. She said she was raped twice, first by an abusive partner and then by a man in the locker of a bar. (She did not name her abusers.)
She said she suffered from depression, agoraphobia, and night terrors after her attacks, and that she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I was terrified and that fear lives with me to this day,” Wood said in her testimony. “What hurts and angers me more than the actual rape and abuse itself was that part of me that was stolen, which changed the course of my life.”
