LOS ANGELES (AP) – Detectives are investigating domestic violence allegations against rocker Marilyn Manson related to incidents that took place in West Hollywood about a decade ago, authorities said Friday.
The Sheriff’s Special Victims Office in Los Angeles opened the investigation after a woman approached authorities to report the allegations, the sheriff’s Lieutenant John Adams said. The incidents reportedly took place between 2009 and 2011, when Manson lived in the city of West Hollywood.
“Our people are only in the early stages of investigating this,” said Adams. He wouldn’t describe or say the charges when the woman came forward.
The investigation came less than three weeks after actor Evan Rachel Wood Manson, her ex-fiancé, publicly accused her of sexual and other physical abuse, alleging that she had been “manipulated into submission” during their relationship.
Adams declined to identify the woman who contacted the sheriff, as is common in domestic violence cases.
Manson, 52, whose real name is Brian Warner, has denied Wood’s allegations as “terrible distortions of reality.”
Wood, 33, who stars on HBO’s “Westworld,” had previously talked about abuse in a relationship, but didn’t mention the person until she spelled out the allegations on Instagram on Feb. 1.
“My abuser name is Brian Warner, also known as Marilyn Manson,” said Wood. “He started nursing me when I was a teenager and he abused me horribly for years.”
The relationship between Wood and Manson became public in 2007 when he was 38 and she 19. They were briefly engaged in 2010 before breaking up.
Manson responded to Wood’s allegations with his own Instagram post on the same day as her post.
“My intimate relationships have always been completely consistent with like-minded partners,” his post said. “No matter how – and why – others choose to misrepresent the past now, that’s the truth.”
In 2018, Los Angeles County prosecutors declined to file charges against Manson on allegations of assault, assault, and sexual assault from 2011, saying they were limited by statutes of limitations and lack of confirmation. The prosecution was identified in that case only as a social acquaintance of Manson.
He denied the charges at the time through his attorney. The lawyer was not available for comment on Friday.
The Associated Press doesn’t normally name people who say they were victims of sexual assault, but Wood for her decision to speak out publicly.