Prosecutors: More needed in Marilyn Manson sex assault probe

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Detectives have handed the results of their 19-month investigation into sexual assault allegations against Marilyn Manson to prosecutors, who said Tuesday they need more evidence gathered before they can consider criminal charges.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that on Monday their investigators handed off the case, which involves sex assault and domestic violence allegations dating from 2009 to 2011 against the 53-year-old rocker, to the District Attorney’s Office.

The office called the case it received “partial.”

“Once we receive everything, experienced prosecutors will carefully and deliberatively review everything that has been submitted prior to making a filing decision,” the office said in a statement. “This review will take some time but rest assured our office takes these allegations very seriously.”

Representatives for Manson, whose legal name is Brian Hugh Warner, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but his attorney has called the allegations “provably false.”

The investigation included a November search of Manson’s home in West Hollywood, where media devices and other items were seized.

Authorities have not identified the women involved, but several have publicly alleged that they were physically, sexually and emotionally abused by Manson around the time of the incidents under investigation, and some have filed civil lawsuits.

They include “Game of Thrones” actor Esmé Bianco, whose attorney said she also gave interviews to law enforcement.

Manson is himself suing his former fiancée, “Westworld” actor Evan Rachel Wood, whose February 2021 Instagram post alleging he had “horrifically abused me for years” set off the wave of public allegations against him.

The suit calls her assault allegations fabricated, and said she and another woman used false pretenses including a phony letter from the FBI to convince other women to come forward.

Wood’s attorneys said in court documents that the suit is meritless, and an example of the retaliation Manson long threatened Wood with if she spoke out about his abuse.

Manson emerged as a musical star in the mid-1990s, known as much for courting public controversy as for hit songs like “The Beautiful People” and hit albums like 1996’s “Antichrist Superstar” and 1998’s “Mechanical Animals.”

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they have come forward publicly as Bianco and Wood have.

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