Another woman has come forward with accusations of abuse against Marilyn Manson. Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco spoke to New York magazine's The Cut and named Manson as her abuser. The accusations come a week after actress Evan Rachel Wood made accusations against Manson, along with four other women.
During the interview, Bianco said the two were friends for a few years, but things got physical on the set of his 2009 music video “I Want to Kill You Like They Do in the Movies." Bianco claims the violence began on set.
Their dynamic changed in 2009, after Manson sent Bianco a plane ticket from her home in London to L.A. so she could star in the music video for his song “I Want to Kill YouLike They Do in the Movies.”He explained that it would be shot on a flip camera for a home-video feel and would involve Manson “kidnapping” Bianco in his home. “I need to have a victim/lover,” he wrote in an email. Bianco believed that the job would be strictly professional. “You are gonna have to pretend to like being manhandled by me. Sorry,” Manson emailed her a few days before the shoot. Once she arrived, she says, the line between art and reality immediately blurred. Bianco, who was 26 at the time, says she spent the next three days in lingerie, barely sleeping or eating, with Manson serving up cocaine rather than food. She remembers him losing his temper and throwing the camera at a smoke alarm. Soon, she says, he became violent, tying her with cables to a prayer kneeler, lashing her with a whip, and using an electric sex toy called a Violet Wand on her wounds — the same kind of “torture device” Wood has said was used on her. Bianco was terrified but tried to calm down by telling herself, It’s just Manson being theatrical. We are going to make great art.
While waiting for her flight back home, Bianco sobbed. She felt sad to leave Manson and considered her wounds to be proof of their bond. On some level, she knew what had happened wasn’t BDSM; she says they hadn’t discussed consent or safe words, which she knew from both personal experience and the fetish performers in her circle were crucial for safe power dynamics. A few days after the shoot, Manson emailed Bianco a picture of her back covered in welts with a note reading, “bringing sexy back.”
The video never ended up being released and Bianco never saw the footage from that shoot. Despite all this, the two began a long-distance affair. When they met, she alleges Manson would bite her during sex without consent, and leave her whole body bruised. Bianco claims Manson's personal assistant, Ashley Walters, managed travel for Bianco and other women. Walters was one of the other women who publicly named Manson last week.
Bianco was eventually convinced to move in with Manson. She divorced her husband, left their London home and moved in with Manson in LA, and after a brief honeymoon period, he became incredibly controlling.
She says he dictated what she could wear (she says he preferred her in a short pencil dress with stockings), her sleep schedule (“I was often violently shaken awake should I go to sleep without permission,” she told the California Assembly), and when she could come and go from the apartment (she says she didn’t have a key). One night in May, Manson sent Walters a text saying someone had broken a glass in the studio and that “Esme is gonna get the brunt of this. Don’t care.”
“I basically felt like a prisoner,” says Bianco. “I came and went at his pleasure. Who I spoke to was completely controlled by him. I called my family hiding in the closet.”
Bianco claims that Manson would play her sex scene from Game of Thrones on a projector for guests, and she would feel humiliated. He would say “That’s my girlfriend, she’s a whore. Look, her tits are out.”
She accuses him of cutting her with a knife. Manson sent photos of what he did to Walters and a bandmate with the subject "See what happens?" The breaking point came two months into living together when Manson chased her around the apartment with an ax. This led to her to find another apartment and eventually break it off. There is plenty more to the story you can read at The Cut. Bianco testified publicly alongside Wood a few years ago, but at the time did not name Manson as her abuser.
Last week, actress Evan Rachel Wood publicly named Manson as her abuser, after previously detailing being mentally and physically tortured by an older man when she was 18-years-old. You can see the details of her accusations here. On Monday, she wrote that Manson "started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years," adding "I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission." Wood released a second statement accusing Manson and his current wife of trying to blackmail her into silence.
Wood also began signal-boosting other women who spoke of the abuse they alleged Manson caused to them. Another accuser has since come forward saying Manson pulled a gun on her and accused him of drugging his girlfriend at the time. A former Manson personal assistant has backed Wood's claims.
Limp Bizkit's Wes Borland, who played with Manson in 1998, was the first artist to speak out, and said that everything Wood was saying was true. Trent Reznor released a statement denouncing him. Another musician, Phoebe Bridgers, revealed she went over to Manson's house as a teenager and he joked of having "a rape room."
Otep has said earlier this week that Manson's current wife Usich used to call Otep's previous girlfriend in hysterics claiming Manson was drugged and abusive.
Manson's previous wife, Dita Von Teese responded to concern from fans by addressing the situation, saying she was never abused by Manson. Sharon Osbourne also spoke positively of her relationship with Manson but said she did not keep tabs on his personal life. Actor Corey Feldman accused Manson of emotional abuse.
The FBI has opened an investigation into the abuse claims.
