In the lawsuit, the plaintiff identified as “Jane Doe” accused Warner, 54, of “sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” It also cites the artist’s former record labels Interscope and Nothing Records for alleged “negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress” among other charges.
The complaint, filed in Nassau County, N.Y., Supreme Court, says Warner’s “pedophilic obsessions and violent behaviors were not only known by Interscope and Nothing Records, but they were celebrated and promoted for their collective financial gain,” the lawsuit says.
Among a wide-range of examples, the suit points at promotional concert posters and fliers featuring drawings of naked children and symbols associated with pedophilia to argue that they were allowed by the record labels for publicity and profits.
Representatives for Warner, Interscope and Nothing Records did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday afternoon.
The plaintiff is seeking damages and a court order prohibiting Werner and the record labels “from future unlawful business practices including, but not limited to, exposing minors and vulnerable adults to sexual abuse and exploitation,” the lawsuit says.
Attorney Karen Barth Menzies said in a statement to The Washington Post that the music industry is complicit in enabling the singer’s alleged criminal behavior.
“It takes a network of people to aid and protect the artists who commit these heinous acts. In order for there to be meaningful changes in the music industry, we have to do more than just hold the predators accountable,” she said.
She added that record companies should be “forced to acknowledge the crimes they allow to occur, and in some instances facilitate, and we have to force them to take responsibility for permitting and profiting from outrageous criminal behavior.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in Nassau County Supreme Court on Long Island, N.Y, says Doe first met Warner after a concert in 1995, when she was 16. Warner invited her and another underage girl into the tour bus where he questioned them about their ages and school grades, and later performed “various acts of criminal sexual conduct upon Plaintiff,” the lawsuit claims.
After the assault the plaintiff was “in pain, scared, upset, humiliated and confused.” Warner threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone about what happened, the lawsuit added.
After the first alleged assault, Warner began calling her at home, soliciting her to send explicit sexual photos of her and her friends, the lawsuit says. Soon after, the teenager began using drugs and alcohol, the lawsuit says, and would continue to abuse substances in the following years, the suit added.
Later that year, Warner allegedly sexually assaulted her again.
In 1999, then-19-year-old Doe met with Warner at several of his concerts, where he “continued to groom and sexually assault Plaintiff for the next 4 weeks during this tour” by exerting psychological control and manipulation, the lawsuit claims.
“While she was still a child, Defendant Warner had purposefully and intentionally laid the groundwork necessary to intimidate and control her. Despite reaching the legal age of majority, that power to psychologically intimidate and control Plaintiff was still present,” the suits says.
Warner and his band, also named Marilyn Manson, developed a large following in the mid-1990s after Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails produced their debut album and released it on his Nothing Records label, a subsidiary of Interscope. Four Marilyn Manson albums reached the top five of the Billboard charts, with two hitting the top spot.
Warner became a superstar largely because of his reputation as what Spin magazine described in 2009 as “rock’s oversharing provocateur.”
He came under further scrutiny in 2021, when actress Evan Rachel Wood named him as the previously anonymous abuser she had referenced in public statements and said the singer started “grooming” her when she was a teenager and “horrifically abused” her for years.
“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” Wood wrote on her Instagram account: “I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives.”
Warner publicly denied Wood’s allegations in an Instagram post and wrote that “my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality.”
Soon after, Warner was dropped by his label, Loma Vista Recordings, which said in a statement shared at the time with The Post that it would also “cease to further promote his current album, effective immediately.”
He sued Wood and another woman in 2022, accusing them of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. That lawsuit called Wood’s allegations a “fabricated revelation.”
Several other women, including “Game of Thrones” actress Esmé Bianco, model Ashley Morgan Smithline, and a former assistant of Warner’s, Ashley Walters, have also either publicly accused or filed civil lawsuits against the singer for alleged grooming and sexual abuse.
The women spoke with Rolling Stone in 2021. Through his lawyer, Warner “vehemently denied any and all claims of sexual assault or abuse of anyone.”
In September, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department concluded a criminal investigation into the women’s sexual abuse allegations against Werner, but prosecutors said more evidence was needed before they could decide whether he should be charged, the Associated Press reported.
Last week, Bianco agreed to settle a federal lawsuit with Warner in which she alleged sexual, physical and emotional abuse, the AP reported. Smithline’s lawsuit was dismissed this month after her attorney withdrew from the case, the Los Angeles Times reported, and Walters’s lawsuit was dismissed last year because the statute of limitations had passed, Billboard reported.
Bianco’s lawsuit, filed in 2021 in Los Angeles, alleged Werner violated human trafficking law by bringing Bianco to California from England in 2009 and 2011 by promising roles in music videos and movies that never materialized. Bianco accused him of physically and sexually abusing her and depriving her of food and sleep.