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For the first time, Evan Rachel Wood addressed the defamation lawsuit that her ex-fiancé Marilyn Manson filed against her during an appearance Monday on "The View."
"I can't obviously speak about any of the specific allegations of the lawsuit, but I am not scared," Wood said on the daytime talk show.
Wood went on "The View" to promote the upcoming two-part HBO documentary "Phoenix Rising," which chronicles the alleged abuse she said she experienced while in a relationship with Manson.
"I am sad because this is how it works. This is what pretty much every survivor that tries to expose someone in a position of power goes through, and this is part of the retaliation that keeps survivors quiet," she continued on "The View." "This is why people don't want to come forward. This was expected."
The actress added that despite the lawsuit she's "very confident that I have the truth on my side and that the truth will come out."
"I'm doing this to protect people. I'm doing this to sound the alarm that there is a dangerous person out there and I don't want anybody getting near him," Wood continued. "So people can think whatever they want about me. I have to let the legal process run its course, and I'm steady as a rock."
Insider contacted Manson's rep for comment but didn't receive an immediate response.
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In part one of "Phoenix Rising," which chronicles Manson's alleged sexual abuse against Wood, the actress notes many experiences with her ex-fiancé.
Wood and Manson made their relationship public in 2007 when she was 19 and he was 38. The two were briefly engaged before their relationship ended in 2010.
In the documentary, directed by Amy Berg and premiering on HBO on Tuesday, Wood says that Manson "essentially raped her" when they filmed the music video for his 2007 song "Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)." She also said that she has an "M" scar on her body, near her pelvic area, that Manson gave her during their relationship.
Manson's attorney, Howard King, previously denied to Insider that the incident occurred. "Brian did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows that is the truth," he said in a statement earlier this year.
In part two of the documentary, Wood reveals that while making the 2011 HBO miniseries "Mildred Pierce," she was pregnant with Manson's child and ultimately had an abortion.
"The second it was over [he] was like, 'Make me dinner,'" the actress said in the documentary of what transpired following the abortion. "And I remember being like, 'I'm supposed to be resting — my body has gone through this trauma, there's aftermath here.' And he didn't care."
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In response to this allegation, King gave Insider the following statement:
"As we detailed in our lawsuit, nothing that Evan Rachel Wood, Illma Gore, or their hand-picked co-conspirators have said on this matter can be trusted," it said. "This is just more of the same."
In the suit, Manson, whose birth name is Brian Warner, called Wood's accusations against him "a malicious falsehood that has derailed Warner's successful music, TV and film career."
The suit also alleges that Wood and her activist friend, Illma Gore (who is also in the documentary), "impersonated an actual agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by forging and distributing a fictitious letter from the agent, to create the false appearance that Warner's alleged 'victims' and their families were in danger, and that there was a federal criminal investigation of Warner ongoing."
Before the documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Wood had made other allegations of abuse against Manson, including that he groomed her and he "horrifically" abused her as a teenager.
Manson has denied these allegations, calling them "horrible distortions of reality" in a February 2021 statement posted on Instagram.