LOS ANGELES — Ashley Morgan Smithline, whose 2021 federal lawsuit against Marilyn Manson was dismissed last month after she missed a court deadline to name new counsel, now says actor Evan Rachel Wood and others manipulated her into making false accusations against the rocker.
Wood — who denies the allegations — was one of a number of women who in early 2021 publicly accused Manson of sexual abuse. She said in a documentary the next year that he had “essentially raped” her while shooting a music video in 2007. The initial allegations resulted in the embattled performer being dropped by his record label and his manager and losing a role in the TV show “American Gods.”
“In November 2010, I had a brief, consensual sexual relationship with Brian Warner, also known as Marilyn Manson, during a trip I took to Los Angeles from Thailand, where I was living,” Smithline, a model, said in a sworn declaration filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. “Ten years later, I succumbed to pressure from Evan Rachel Wood and her associates to make accusations of rape and assault against Mr. Warner that were not true.”
