LOS ANGELES (AP) – Detectives are investigating allegations of domestic violence against rocker Marilyn Manson related to incidents that occurred about a decade ago in West Hollywood, authorities said Friday.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office’s Special Victims Office opened the investigation after a woman turned to authorities to report the allegations, said Sheriff’s Lt. John Adams. The incidents occurred between 2009 and 2011, when Manson lived in the city of West Hollywood.
“Our people are in the early stages of an investigation into this,” Adams said. He did not describe the allegations or say when the woman appeared.
The investigation came less than three weeks after actor Evan Rachel Wood publicly accused Manson, her ex-boyfriend, of sexual and other physical abuse, alleging that it was “ manipulated to present itself ”during their relationship.
Adams refused to identify the woman who contacted the sheriff’s department, as is usual in cases of domestic violence.
Manson, 52, called Brian Warner, has denied Wood’s accusations as “terrible distortions of reality.”
Wood, 33, who stars in HBO’s “Westworld,” had previously talked about the abuse in a relationship, but did not name the person until he detailed the allegations on Instagram on Feb. 1.
“My aggressor’s name is Brian Warner, also known worldwide as Marilyn Manson,” Wood said. “He started preparing me when I was a teenager and abused me horribly for years.”
The relationship between Wood and Manson was made public in 2007, when he was 38 and she was 19. They briefly committed in 2010 before breaking up.
Manson responded to Wood’s allegations with his own post on Instagram the same day he posted.
“My intimate relationships have always been fully consensual with like-minded couples,” her message said. “Regardless of how and why others now choose to distort the past, that’s the truth.”
In 2018, Los Angeles County prosecutors declined to file charges against Manson for allegations of assault, battery and sexual assault dating back to 2011, saying they were limited by prescriptions and lack of corroboration. The plaintiff in that case only identified himself as a social acquaintance of Manson’s.
He denied the allegations through his lawyer at the time. The lawyer could not be contacted for comment on Friday.
The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they were sexually assaulted, but named Wood because of his decision to speak publicly.