One of the women who previously accused Marilyn Manson of alleged abuse, Ashley Morgan Smithline, has detailed the extent of her relationship with Manson in a further accusation for a People magazine cover story. In the story, she backed up her allegations of sexual violence, physical violence, abuse and coercion with many more specific claims.
By releasing this as her first interview since she first made the allegations in February, she hopes that more people will view Manson as “a monster,” and see her as a “survivor” rather than a victim. She claims that she was in communication with Manson between 2010 and early 2013.
At the time that Smithline and Manson reportedly began talking, he was a 41-year-old rockstar and she was a 26-year-old model working in Thailand. She states that she was flown back to Los Angeles to act in a music video for him, and that’s reportedly when they first met in person. Smithline claims that he acted normal at first as they began shooting the video, but alleges he had started lying to her to prevent her from getting any sleep.
“The lies got more and more, like what I’ve read about getting someone into a cult is you deprive them of food, you deprive them of sleep and you deprive them of talking to anyone,” She claimed. “So, like, all of those things were true. If I would fall asleep at like 1:00 in the morning, he would start playing really loud music and wake me up, and then I had to go do a line of cocaine to wake up and keep partying with him and entertain him.”
Although she says there were some good times, she alleged that the bad soon outweighed the good. “Sometimes, he would be joking and funny,” she said. “And then sometimes he would be the most terrifying monster in the world. Like, he would say things like, ‘Do you know I could kill you right now?’”
Smithline alleges that the rapes were “Countless.” She tried to explain, “From 2010 to 2012, I can’t, I mean, between 20 and 300? I don’t know.”
As for her allegations of physical abuse, she claims, “He definitely cut my inside of my thighs, my inside of my elbows. My outer thighs have his initials carved into them. He cut my lower stomach, and he made it very clear that I was replaceable, that I was vulnerable, that I was extinguishable, that he could kill me at any moment.” Smithline reportedly sent People photos of scars and screenshots of messages that Manson sent her between 2010 and 2012.
Some of her statements tried to speculate what Manson was even thinking, “I’ve asked the other girls that I’ve spoken to that were victims of him, like, ‘what do you think his objective was?’ And we all agreed that he – we think that he honestly wanted us all to kill ourselves, and that’s a serial killer, no?”
There was also a glass box that she would allegedly get locked inside occasionally. “When I was pissing him off, like if I had to go pee when he was replaying one of his songs I’d heard 30,000 times, I’d have to go in the box, without my phone, without anything,” she alleged.
While Manson has stated that all relationships were “entirely consensual,” Smithline firmly denies that with her own claim, “I didn’t know what BDSM was, and a lot of people are like ‘You knowingly entered into a BDSM relationship.’ And like, I don’t know what that is now even…I didn’t know what that was then, and that wasn’t what he presented at all. Like, he didn’t say ‘We’re going to have a relationship where you’re gonna kneel down or lay on the bed, and I’m gonna whip you with a swastika whip, or I’m gonna cut you while we’re having sex, or we’re gonna have a blood pact – I’m gonna drink your blood, you’re gonna drink mine.”
A spokesperson for Manson responded, “We strongly deny [Smithline’s] claims. There are so many falsehoods within her claims that we wouldn’t know where to begin to answer them. This relationship, to the limited extent it was a relationship, didn’t last one week.”
Actress Evan Rachel Wood was the first to accuse Marilyn Manson of abuse. She was followed by Smithline, actress Esmé Bianco and others. Manson was dropped by his record label, agents and manager following the allegations.
Photo credit: Owen Ela
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