Los Angeles county district attorney says allegations are too old and evidence insufficient to charge musician

Prosecutors said on Friday that they will not file charges against Marilyn Manson after a years-long investigation of allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence.

The Los Angeles county district attorney, Nathan Hochman, said the allegations were too old under the law and the evidence was not sufficient to charge the 56-year-old shock rocker whose legal name is Brian Warner.

“We have determined that allegations of domestic violence fall outside of the statute of limitations, and we cannot prove charges of sexual assault beyond a reasonable doubt,” Hochman said. “We recognize and applaud the courage and resilience of the women who came forward to make reports and share their experiences, and we thank them for their cooperation and patience with the investigation.”

Nearly four years after the investigation began, the then district attorney, George Gascón, said on 9 October that his office was pursuing new leads that added to the “already extensive” file that authorities had amassed.

LA county sheriff’s detectives said early in 2021 that they were investigating Manson for incidents between 2009 and 2011 in West Hollywood, where Manson lived at the time. The investigation included a search warrant that was served on his West Hollywood home. The case was initially turned over to prosecutors in September 2021, but the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office requested more evidence-gathering and the investigation resumed.

The identities of the women police and prosecutors spoke to were not revealed, but the Game of Thrones actor Esmé Bianco – who sued Manson in a case that has been settled – said she was part of the criminal investigation. Before the decision not to prosecute, she criticized how long the process was taking at a rally for Hochman, who was elected soon after.

“Almost four years ago, I did what victims of rape are supposed to do: I went to the police,” she said on 10 October. “I described to them in agonizing detail how the rock musician Brian Warner – better known by his stage name Marilyn Manson – had raped and abused me over the course of our relationship.”

Bianco said she gave investigators “hundreds of pieces of evidence, including photos of my body covered in bites, bruises and knife wounds, emails and text messages, threats to my immigration status”.

In her lawsuit, Bianco alleged sexual, physical and emotional abuse, and said that Manson violated human trafficking law by bringing her to California from England for non-existent roles in music videos and movies.

Manson’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has previously called the allegations “provably false”. A representative for Bianco did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

In 2021 his former fiancee, the Westworld actor Evan Rachel Wood, named him as her abuser for the first time in an Instagram post.

Wood and Manson’s relationship became public in 2007 when he was 38 and she was 19, and they were briefly engaged in 2010 before breaking up.

“He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,” Wood said.

Manson replied on Instagram that these were “horrible distortions of reality”. He sued Wood, saying she and another woman fabricated accusations against him and convinced others to do the same. A judge threw out significant sections of the suit, then in November, Manson agreed to drop it and pay Wood’s attorney fees.

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

Other women sued Manson in the months after Wood came forward. Wood’s representative did not immediately return a message on Friday.

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.