Michael Buckner/George Pimentel/Getty Images
In the latest twist in Marilyn Manson’s battle against sex crimes allegations, Evan Rachel Wood not only dismisses claims that she coerced another woman into saying the shock rocker raped her, but that the accuser was forced to retract.
“I never pressured or manipulated Ashley Morgan Smithline into making charges against plaintiff Brian Warner, and I certainly never pressured or manipulated her into making charges that weren’t true,” Wood said. in a statement filed yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court. “It was Ms. Smithline who first contacted me in March 2019,” the Westworld actress says in the document (read here).
“SP. Smithline always told me she was abused by Mr. Warner,” Woods adds bluntly in the rich social media statement.
Smithline’s recent brutal about-face, a month after its 2021 lawsuit against Manson aka Warner was dismissed by default, lawyers for the heavily accused singer and Wood are in court today at DTLA before busy judge Teresa Beaudet to find out if the model is the statement should be allowed in Manson’s March 2022 case against his former fiancée and her abuse allegations. After chastising Manson/Warner attorneys for not filing Smithline sooner, Judge Beaudet told the assembled Department 50 attorneys that she would deny the entertainer’s motion to have the model’s statement entered into the courtroom. affair.
As various other cases against Manson settle or are dismissed, Wood’s attorney, Michael J. Kump, said in a separate filing yesterday that Smithline’s statement is “inadmissible” and also claims that any manipulation or pressure came from a source other than his activist client.
“In sum, the plaintiff is asking this Court to believe that Smithline was somehow ‘coerced’ into making false accusations when other women shared their experiences with her and allegedly spoke of repressed memories (even though Smithline was the one who contacted Wood about the plaintiff’s abuses,” Kinsella Weitzman partner Iser Kump Holley LLP said in a Feb. 27 motion of opposition (read here). “But the real pressure Smithline face was not of TO DO allegations against the plaintiff—it was for retract them. Smithline’s statement is therefore completely unreliable,” he continues (Kump’s italics). In screenshots accompanying Wood’s statement, Smithline appears to indicate several times that Manson’s attorney, Howard King, attempted to contact her.
In the spotlight himself, King insists the focus should be on Woods.
“It’s no surprise that Evan Rachel Wood is fighting desperately to keep Ashley Smithline’s testimony out of court – because she knows the truth will expose her plot to manipulate the women who trusted her in order to destroy Brian Warner,” King, Holmes, Partner Paterno & Soriano said ahead of Tuesday’s hearing. “Brian Warner never abused anyone. Ashley Smithline told the truth. It is sadly predictable that Evan Rachel Wood – someone who has already filed a false FBI sworn letter in other legal proceedings – remains determined not to do the same.
Diverting for a second from who would have pressured whom, there is no doubt that the Smithline model appears in Phoenix risingdirector Amy Berg’s film about Wood’s allegations against Manson and her decision to go public with claims of their relationship from 2007 to 2010. Sitting at the heart of Manson’s lawsuit against Woods, Phoenix rising debuted at the 2022 Sundance Virtual Film Festival, the two-part documentary premiered on HBO in the spring of this year – despite Manson’s best legal efforts to shut it down.
The previous year, Smithline sued Manson in federal court for sexual assault, sexual assault, human trafficking and more from their interactions during 2010 to 2013. At the time, Smithline detailed the allegations of a Manson’s constant and growing pattern of abuse. , in particular by choking and cutting it. As he has done in all of the allegations against him, the “Beautiful People” singer has denied all of the allegations.
Losing its own attorney and missing key court deadlines, the Smithline case collapsed in early January. His accusations that it was Woods and his close associate Ashley Gore (who is a co-accused in the Manson case) who put notions of abuse in his head quickly followed to further muddy the waters, as did the new statement from Smithline.
All of this further obscures the whole situation, regardless of whether Smithline’s statement was entered into the case in support of Manson’s moves against Wood’s anti-SLAPP moves or not, Wood’s attorney predicted. .
“Unfortunately, the headlines that Smithline recanted its charges against the plaintiff will be unfairly increase the reputation of the plaintiff even if his ex parte is denied,” Kump notes in his own motion Monday.
“Indeed, these headlines are likely to impact public opinion even after Smithline’s statement. totally discredited“, continues the lawyer. “And he will be discredited. Documented evidence shows that he was Smithline who held out his hand Drink about plaintiff’s abuse more than a year before Smithline now claims that the defendants somehow convinced her that she was abused. The plaintiff has therefore failed to meet its obligation to show good cause for the remedy sought. »
Manson’s 2022 lawsuit against Wood came just over a year after the former Emmy nominee went online and called out her ex, now 54, for abusing and “grooming in “horrible” ways during their three-year relationship – which took place when Wood was into her. teens. Losing his agency, TV gigs and record label in quick succession, Manson’s initial response in 2021 was to claim Wood’s allegations were “horrible distortions of reality.”
A year later, he made it official with a jury demanding a trial.
The next hearing in that case is set for April 11 for Wood’s anti-SLAPP motions.