Marilyn Manson has settled a lawsuit that was set to go to trial next week, in which an anonymous woman alleged that he sexually assaulted her in 2011, when she was underage, and then threatened to murder her family if she told anyone.
In the suit against Brian Warner (Manson’s real name), the accuser — identified as Jane Doe – claimed that the shock-rocker raped her on his tour bus.
“Warner performed various acts of criminal sexual conduct upon Plaintiff (Jane Doe), who was a virgin at the time, including but not limited to forced copulation and vaginal penetration,” alleged the suit, filed in 2021.
READ MORE: Marilyn Manson Accused Of Raping Underage Girl In New Lawsuit
“One of the band members watched Defendant Warner sexually assault Plaintiff. Plaintiff was in pain, scared, upset, humiliated and confused. After he was done, Defendant Warner laughed at her,” the lawsuit stated. Plaintiff is informed and thereon alleges that all of the sexually abusive and harassing conduct alleged herein was done to satisfy Defendant Warner’s own prurient sexual desires. Then Defendant Warner demanded Plaintiff to ‘get the f— off of my bus’ and threatened Plaintiff that, if she told anyone, he would kill her and her family.”
The case was set to go to trial next week, but will no longer proceed now that a settlement has been reached.
“Brian is pleased that, just as previous lawsuits were abandoned without payment or settled for pennies on the dollar, 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,” Manson’s attorney, Howard King, said in a statement to Billboard.
READ MORE: Marilyn Manson Pleads No Contest To Blowing Nose On Videographer, Gets Fine, Community Service
Meanwhile, Manson’s accuser also shared a statement, explaining why she chose to accept a settlement rather than go to court.
“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,” the woman said in a statement to Rolling Stone.
In that statement, she recalled Manson attending her deposition in person, where she 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.”
She added: “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. Most importantly I could have risked losing the freedom to tell my story, and that is worth more than anything in the world.”
