Evan Rachel Wood names her abuser in powerful Instagram post

Evan Rachel Wood has identified Marilyn Manson as her abuser in an Instagram post on Monday morning. 

The actress and musician, who has spoken out about surviving domestic violence in the past, made numerous allegations against her former fiancé in the statement. 

“He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,” Wood wrote. “I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission.” 

Wood and Manson’s relationship first became public in 2007, when she was 19, and he was 38. They became engaged in 2010 and separated seven months later.

Wood’s allegations against Manson mark the end of her silence and her solidarity with other victims who have spoken out about their abuse. She also hopes that, in naming her abuser, she will be able to protect others. 

“I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail,” she wrote. 

“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.” 

In a statement released on Monday evening, Marilyn denied the accusations.

"Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality," he said. "My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how - and why - others are now choosing to misinterpret the past, that is the truth."

Wood first shared her domestic abuse and sexual assault experience in 2016 in an email to a Rolling Stone reporter. 

"Yes, I've been raped," she wrote. "By a significant other while we were together. And on a separate occasion, by the owner of a bar...I don't believe we live in a time where people can stay silent any longer. Not given the state our world is in with its blatant bigotry and sexism."

After the magazine published the quote, Wood posted the entire email on her Twitter.

In the document, she details her reasons for staying quiet about her experience, the impact of the incidents on her health, and the need to change the discourse surrounding emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Despite speculation that Manson had been one of Wood's abusers, she refused to identify the perpetrators. 

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In 2018, Wood again shared her experience of abuse in Capitol Hill. In a moving testimony, she detailed two attacks of rape and torture to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations. The hearing was to have the Sexual Assault Survivors' Bill of Rights Act, which had already been passed on a federal level, implemented in all 50 states. 

"I thought I was the only human who experienced this, and I carried so much guilt and confusion about my response to the abuse," Wood said. "I accepted my powerlessness, and I felt I deserved it somehow."

“There are two specific incidents of sexual assault and violence I have experienced that really stick out in mind. In fact, they are burned into my brain, branded there for life, a mental scar that I feel every day.”