A model who previously accused Marilyn Manson of sexual assault says she was reportedly pressured by his ex-fiancee Evan Rachel Wood to make the claims.
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Manson’s attorney, Brian Hugh Warner, filed a declaration at the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday after Ashley Morgan Smithline said the allegations were false. She stated Wood repeatedly told her that just because she couldn’t remember what happened “did not necessarily mean that it did not happen,” as reported by Yahoo! News. “While at first, I knew Mr. Warner did not do these things to me; eventually, I began to question whether he actually did,” Smithline said during the hearing.
Smitline added that she was told by Wood and Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco about their accusations against Manson. Wood, who was engaged to Manson in 2010, said the singer groomed her when she was a teen and allegedly abused her throughout their relationship in a social media post.
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Smithline and three other women also posted the allegations on their personal social media pages. She said Wood, Bianco, and others asked if similar forms of abuse happened to her and then asked if she had trouble remembering or “repressing memories” of the abuse.
“Eventually, I started to believe that what I was repeatedly told happened to Ms. Wood and Ms. Bianco also happened to me,”
Ashley Gore, also known as Ilma Gore, reportedly drafted the statement for Smithline after Wood encouraged everyone to go public with their allegations when she created her post. However, a spokesperson for Wood said Smithline’s claims were false and never pressured her to do anything.
“It’s unfortunate that the harassment and threats Ashley received after filing her federal lawsuit appear to have pressured her to change her testimony.”
Smithline filed her lawsuit against Manson in 2021, accusing him of sexual assault, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and unlawful imprisonment. A judge dismissed her complaint last month after she failed to submit a notice of new counsel after her attorney removed themself from her case. She claims her former attorney Jay Ellwanger filed the complaint on her behalf and did not review the case’s documents before filing.
“The complaint contained untrue statements about Mr. Warner, including that there was violence and non-consensual sexual activity in our brief relationship and that I had repressed memories of the same until meeting with Ms. Wood, Ms. Gore, and others in 2020. Looking back, I feel I was manipulated by Ms. Wood, Ms. Gore, Ms. Bianco, and Mr. Ellwanger to spread publicly false accusations of abuse against Mr. Warner,