Marilyn Manson has settled another lawsuit filed by a woman who accused him of sexual assault.
An attorney for Manson's accuser has submitted a notice of settlement to the LA courts, with a request for dismissal due to follow at some point in the next 45 days.
About a dozen women accused Manson, real name Brian Warner, of abuse and assault after his former fiancée Evan Rachel Wood went public with her own allegations about their time together. Following media reporting of those allegations, a number of lawsuits were filed.
Two were dismissed, one due to the statute of limitations and the other because of a missed deadline to replace a lawyer who had stepped down from the case. A third, filed by actor Esmé Bianco, was settled earlier this year, with a legal representative for the actor saying that his client had resolved her claims "in order to move on with her life and career”.
A fourth lawsuit was filed by an unnamed woman who said in a statement this week that she had decided to settle because of the impact pursuing the litigation was having on her life.
She told Rolling Stone: “I was fully prepared for trial and never in a million years thought I would ever settle, but over the past two and a half years I have silently endured threats, bullying, harassment and various forms of intimidation that have intensified over the past few weeks".
“Marilyn Manson attended my deposition", she added, "and I was forced to answer seven hours of aggressive questioning with him staring at me from across the table. I’ve been told that this almost never happens, as it’s cruel, and that a main reason for it would be to intimidate and inflict emotional distress on a victim".
“I never cared about money and only ever wanted justice, but if we had gone to trial, I could have lost my right to anonymity and been victim-blamed on a large and public scale”, she went on. “Most importantly I could have risked losing the freedom to tell my story, and that is worth more than anything in the world".
Manson has denied all the allegations made against him and he sued Wood for defamation. One of his accusers, Ashley Morgan Smithline, whose lawsuit was dismissed, subsequently said that she had actually been pressured to go legal by Wood.
Responding to that claim, Wood hit back at the suggestion that she had somehow manipulated Smithline into making her allegations of sexual assault.
Commenting on the latest legal settlement, Manson's lawyer Howard King said: “This plaintiff has now agreed to drop her suit in exchange for an insurance payment representing a fraction of her demands and far less than the cost to Brian of proceeding to trial".
Rolling Stone notes that just one lawsuit now remains, filed by another unnamed woman who claims that Manson began grooming her when she was just sixteen, maintaining contact for a number of years and subsequently sexually assaulting her.
Kory Grow
