In 2019 Evan Rachel Wood created the Phoenix Act to extend the statute of limitation in sexual abuse cases in California from 3 years to 10 years. She believes it’s important to give survivors time to come forward.

Evan testified in front of the senate on behalf of the Phoenix Act, detailing her own rape and abuse at the hands of a former boyfriend. Watch the extremely harrowing video here. (Obvious TW.)

In the video Evan says:

That she met the man in question at 18 years old. (Evan and Manson began dating when she was 18.)

That she looked up to him “in many ways.” (Common in relationships with a large age gap. There is 18 years between Evan and Manson.)

The man was charismatic and powerful. (As a fan of Manson’s music and a former fan of the man himself, I can attest to that he used to be incredibly charismatic early on in his career. The “Bowling For Columbine” interview is the obvious example.)

The relationship followed the normal grooming process with the man treating Evan like a princess at first and urging her to move in with him almost immediately. Evan then discovered the abuser had hidden a “terrible drug and alcohol problem” from her. (No sources needed for Manson’s drug and alcohol abuse but it seems like it may have been particularly bad at that point in time. Trent Reznor said in an interview in 2009: “He is a malicious guy and will step on anybody’s face to succeed and cross any line of decency. Seeing him now, drugs and alcohol now rule his life and he’s become a dopey clown.” He also said Manson used to fake being fucked up on alcohol and drugs but now there was no need to pretend.)

The abuser wanted Evan to look a certain way or else he would call her names and make fun of her. (Evan changed her look drastically when she started dating Manson. I followed their relationship back in the day and there were countless articles on gossip websites speculating Manson was forcing Evan to emulate his ex-wife, Dita Von Teese. Here’s a link to one of the articles, the first one I found after a snappy Google search.)

He cut Evan off from her friends and family by exhibiting rage around them in some way or form. He wanted Evan completely isolated and was extremely jealous. He’d wreck their joint home in jealous rages.

The abuser threatened and bullied people with violence and legal action. He’d brag about being able to have people killed and having friends in gangs. He illegally collected data on people to blackmail them.

He gifted Evan a cellphone that she found out he was monitoring. He downloaded spyware onto her laptop and hacked her e-mails and social media accounts.

He broke Evan down through sleep depravation, starvation and threats against her life. Sometimes he would threaten her with deadly weapons.

Sometimes he wouldn’t allow Evan to sleep until she participated in acts of “fear, pain, torture and humiliation.”

The abuser videotaped doing these things.

In some of the videotapes he can be heard threatening to kill Evan.

He also threatened her friends and family in these videos.

He threatened to leak parts of the footage and compromising photos he’d taken of her as blackmail.

Evan left him several times but he would call her house incessantly and threaten to to kill himself. (Quote by Marilyn Manson himself from Spin Magazine: “My lowest point was Christmas Day 2008, because I didn’t speak to my family. My walls were covered in scrawlings of the lyrics and cocaine bags nailed to the wall. And I did have an experience where I was struggling to deal with being alone and being forsaken and being betrayed by putting your trust in one person, and making the mistake of that being the wrong person. And that’s a mistake that everyone can relate to. I made the mistake of trying to, desperately, grasp on and save that and own it. And every time I called her that day — I called 158 times — I took a razorblade and I cut myself on my face or on my hands. I look back and it was a really stupid thing to do. This was intentional, this was a scarification, and this was like a tattoo. I wanted to show her the pain she put me through. It was like, “I want you to physically see what you’ve done.”)

On one occasion Evan returned to their home to try and diffuse the situation. The abuser tied her up, beat her and shocked sensitive parts of Evan’s body with a torture device called a violet wand. (Here’s a video of Manson stunning himself with his violet wand.)

After the violet wand occasion, Evan was so scared that she played along with whatever her abuser wanted. She endured constant daily abuse and occasional rape. 

Eventually, Evan managed to escape safely. 

She was diagnosed with Stockholm Syndrom and complex PTSD. It took her years of intense therapy to accept that she was abused. 

After realizing she wasn’t the only woman tortured at the hands of Marilyn Manson, Evan took her hard evidence - photographs and video - to press charges. The evidence, however, was useless as the statute of limitation had passed on Evan’s case…

And that’s why Evan fought for the Phoenix Act. To give survivors more time to process their abuse so they can seek justice without the BS 3 year statute of limitation letting abusers walk.

Evan also shared this photo via Twitter:

Marilyn Manson in 2009 about Evan Rachel Wood: “I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull in with a sledgehammer.”

He pretty much completely got away with that comment apart from the wonderful Patricia Arquette calling him out on Twitter years later. x x

Manson’s “The High End of Low” era, the album after Evan and him broke up, features a music video for the song “Running to the Edge of the World” where he beats the crap out of and murders a woman. It’s pretty much accepted that the murdered woman is supposed to represent Evan.

So, the statute of limitations fucked Evan over. But why hasn’t she publicly named her abuser? Simple. 

Marilyn Manson threatened to kill Evan Rachel Wood.

I never personally believed Manson was Evan’s abuser until I took a deep dive and found all the undeniable evidence listed above. I liked his music, I liked his personality in interviews, I liked Rose McGowans cutesy stories about him from her book “Brave.” It seemed too obvious. But you can’t deny the facts. There is no way it could be someone else. The timelines simply don’t add up unless it’s Marilyn Manson.

Marilyn Manson raped and tortured Evan Rachel Wood for years. She can’t name him but we can do it for her.