[imagesource: youtube]
Content warning: Descriptions of assault and sexual violence.
Evan Rachel Wood has revealed more details about the gruelling reality of being romantically involved with her ex-fiancé, the disgraced shock rocker Marilyn Manson (born Brian Warner).
She’s already shared a ton of disturbing details in the HBO docuseries Phoenix Rising, where she makes allegations that Manson “made her drink his blood, hit her with a swastika-adorned Nazi whip and shocked her private parts”.
Now, in a new interview with the Navigating Narcissism podcast, Wood broke down why it took her so many years to face the reality of the violence she says she faced at his cruel hands.
Talking to host Dr Ramani Durvasula, Wood explained how during the larger #MeToo movement, her nervous system broke down under the “weight of it all” so much so that she started getting stress seizures.
“When I realized what a physical impact this was having on me and it was making it nearly impossible to just move about my life normally and comfortably and safely… that was such a breaking point for me,” Wood added.
As soon as Wood came out about her devastating experience with the Antichrist Superstar, other women did too, including one of his ex-girlfriends Rose McGowan, and former porn star Jenna Jameson, who says that Manson ‘fantasised about burning her alive’.
The sadist has repeatedly denied all accusations from Wood and all the other women who have claimed that the singer engaged in ritual sexual, physical and mental abuse, leading to many of the lawsuits filed against Manson so far either dropped, dismissed or settled. At least the courts ruled against Manson’s defamation lawsuit against Wood in an effort to protect free speech.
Anyway, Wood first began dating Manson when she was 18 and Manson was 37, and she explained that after all the “lovebombing” and “grooming” came the gaslighting and the ritualistic lashing, where she was put to a “kneeler” bench and hit “over and over” with a Nazi whip from the Holocaust before being shocked in the private areas until she broke the bench in half.
The actress said she essentially had to “play dead” and “give him something that was undesirable” in order to make it feel like it was Manson’s idea to let her go as part of her difficult attempt to separate from him.
“There was a moment where I was like, ‘I’m so afraid of this person, I’ve been threatened so many times, either with blackmail or with force and if I stay here because I’m too scared to leave, I feel like I’m dead anyway’,” Wood said. “Staying felt like a death sentence, leaving also felt terrifying because something could happen to me or he could come after me. I felt like either way I feel dead so I may as well try to escape,” she said of her decision to try and disentangle herself from the performer she said often behaved in a “cult leader” fashion.
She said he also managed to isolate her from all her friends and family, even forcing her to become estranged from her mom and best friend, while regularly spewing negative nonsense about the world and all the things she’s done wrong:
“You and him and a mound of cocaine and he would keep you up and stay awake just berating you,” Wood said, “telling you everything that was wrong with the world and the people around you, everything you were doing wrong, all the ways you were failing him and failing yourself, the suspicions he had towards you, he would start wrecking the house. It was this non-stop onslaught of words and monologues, this constant stream of negativity that I felt like I couldn’t escape and couldn’t stop… it’s where the brainwashing and abuse started taking place. He wouldn’t stop until you gave in or started agreeing with everything he was saying or making the phone calls he wanted you to make.”
You can watch the entire interview below:
[source:billboard]
