Marilyn Manson Lawsuit Dismissed: Judge Says Sexual Assault Case Was Filed Too Late

A Los Angeles judge has dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit filed against Marilyn Manson by his former assistant, Ashley Walters, ruling that she waited too long to bring her case.

Two years after an appeals court revived the case against Manson (Brian Warner) by ruling that Walters might have delayed suing due to “trauma-induced memory suppression,” a trial judge on Tuesday (Dec. 16) once again tossed the case out, canceling a trial that had been set to start next month.

Walters claims Manson subjected her to brutal treatment, also including sexual harassment and discrimination, during the year that she worked for him from 2010 to 2011. But such claims are typically subject to a strict two-year statute of limitations.

“There is no triable issue of material fact,” Judge Steve Cochran wrote in a written ruling, obtained by Billboard. “Plaintiff’s claims are time barred.”

In a statement to Billboard, Manson’s attorney Howard King said: “It’s gratifying, after all these years, that a judge can just look at the facts and see that once again, Brian Warner was wrongfully accused. It’s nice for him to get some justice, though it was at great personal cost. Now he can move on.”

Attorneys for Walters did not immediately return a request for comment from Billboard.

Walters was one of several women who accused Manson of sexual abuse in 2021. His former fiancé, Evan Rachel Wood, accused him of grooming and sexual abuse on Twitter in February 2021, and then others, including Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco and model Ashley Morgan Smithline, filed lawsuits against him.

Manson has denied all of the allegations, and prosecutors said in January that he would not face criminal charges from Los Angeles prosecutors following a four-year investigation. Manson settled with Bianco in early 2023; Smithline’s case was dismissed months later.

Manson sued Wood for defamation over her accusations, claiming she had encouraged other women to falsely accuse him. But a judge dismissed much of the case in 2023, and Manson eventually dropped it and agreed to pay Wood $327,000 in legal fees.

In her own 2021 lawsuit, Walters claimed that Manson subjected her to “sexual exploitation, manipulation and psychological abuse” while she worked for him as a personal assistant more than a decade earlier. The alleged abuse included whipping her and throwing her against a wall in a “a drug-induced rage”; forcing her to stay awake for 48 hours by feeding her cocaine; and having “offered” her sexually to friends and associates.

In June 2022, Judge Cochran dismissed Walters’ case for being filed years past the statute of limitations. But in December 2023, a California appeals court said her lawsuit might be fair game under the so-called delayed discovery rule, as she claims the trauma of the incidents caused her to suppress the memories until 2020.

That ruling sent the case back to Judge Cochran for more litigation into the actual evidence for such suppression claims. But after two more years of discovery, Manson’s lawyers said the case suffered from the same fatal flaw, writing: “Plaintiff’s argument that she ‘repressed’ certain memories shortly after the conduct occurred does not impact her comprehension of the wrongness of the events at the time.”

On Tuesday, Judge Cochran sided with those arguments, ruling that Walters had no way to avoid the expiration of the statute of limitations: “We have a situation where the complaint was not filed until about 10 years after the operative events,” the judge said at the hearing, as reported by Rolling Stone. “I’m not able to find that the delayed discovery rule is applicable.”