Actress Esmé Bianco claims she was psychologically, physically and sexually abused by rock musician Marilyn Manson during a three-year relationship with him.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, the English actress, known for playing Ros on "Game of Thrones," spoke at length about the alleged abuse.
"I was coerced, I was defrauded, I was transported from the U.K. to the U.S., I was harbored, and then I was coerced into involuntarily servitude, which included sexual abuse and physical abuse," said Bianco.
In a statement to ABC News, Bianco's lawyer, Jay Ellwanger, said his client was interviewed by FBI agents in Los Angeles last week, at their request. Bianco also turned over evidence of alleged abuses by Manson, specifically relating to "human trafficking and sex crimes," according to Ellwanger.
The FBI would not confirm or deny if there is an active investigation into Manson.
Bianco's public abuse allegations, follow multiple other allegations from former partners and contacts of Manson who have come forward in recent days. Many posted their accounts through written statements on Instagram, including "Westworld" actress Evan Rachel Wood, who dated the rocker from 2007- 2010.
Marilyn Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, has sold over 50 million records worldwide and received multiple Grammy nominations over his 32-year musical career. ABC News attempted multiple times to reach Manson's attorney for response to Bianco's allegations but did not hear back. Two weeks earlier, Manson denied the allegations levied against him by other accusers like Wood.
Manson's full statement shared to Instagram on Feb. 1 reads, "Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality. My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how - and why - others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth."
Bianco was working as a model and burlesque performer in London in 2005 when she said she was first introduced to Manson by his then fiancée Dita Von Teese, who she said told her that Manson wanted to feature her in an upcoming film he was writing.
"I was a big Marilyn Manson fan as a teenager," she said, "I just thought, wow, what a dream come true."
Over the next four years, their working relationship grew, with long phone calls and emails about their mutual interest in music and art, Bianco told ABC News. The actress said she now reflects on that time as Manson's "grooming" of her and claims he took advantage of the connection she thought she had with him. "He would say to me, 'you're my soulmate.' I truly believed him," Bianco said.
The first alleged incident involving physical violence occurred in 2009, according to Bianco. She said Manson flew her from London to Los Angeles, paying for her flight and hotel room at the Standard Hotel, because he wanted her to star in a music video for his song "I Want to Kill You Like They Do in the Movies."
But when Bianco arrived at Manson's Hollywood Hills home to start filming, she said she realized there was no film crew to shoot them. Instead, she said Manson wanted them to shoot it themselves using FlipCams, a popular recording device used in the mid-2000's. She said he insisted she stay in his home so they could work uninterrupted.
"I was kept in his home for three days," she claimed. "I was given nothing to eat, he gave me drugs and alcohol, and I essentially was not allowed to leave." She said Manson would send her text messages when they weren't in the same room, expressing his desire to "murder other women" and that he wanted to "sneak down to the room where I was sleeping and rape me."
Bianco detailed to ABC News the extent of the alleged physical abuse, which she said took place during the shooting of the finale of the music video. "He locked me in his bedroom, tied me to a wooden prayer kneeler. I was half naked, and he would beat me with a whip," she said. He also used a sex toy to shock her and filmed it, according to Bianco.
Bianco provided ABC News with a photo she says shows her bloodied back marked with whip lashes taken during that shoot. "I am so ashamed when I see that photo," she said. Bianco expressed regret that she may have once viewed that photo as "art" but now calls it "repulsive … that I was so brainwashed into thinking that was anything but abuse."
Over the course of the next two years, Bianco said their relationship became sexual, and that Manson would hide the abuse within sexual acts. "He always went too far," she said. "The biting, that was 100% non-consensual. And he would bite me till I was black and blue," Bianco said.
When pressed by ABC why she remained in contact with Manson, flying between London and Los Angeles, after the initial alleged incident of violence, Bianco said she thought Manson was in love with her, and that the four years of friendship had groomed her to believe they had a "special kind of relationship." She said there were times when she tried to cut him out of her life, but "he would find a way of getting his claws back into me."
She admitted, she did not understand what she says was happening to her was "very, very wrong." She compared her mindset then to that of a cult member who had been indoctrinated. At one point during the interview, she even questioned herself, "why didn't I just run?" She then answered her own question: "it's not until [you know] what psychological abuse and gaslighting does to somebody that you can fathom why I would have stayed."
In 2011, wanting to make a change in her personal life in London, she said she accepted Manson's invitation to permanently move to Los Angeles and live with him. Her life in his West Hollywood apartment was "very controlled," she said, claiming Manson did not allow her to sleep, eat, or leave the apartment without his permission.
Bianco also described what she said were the physical aspects of the apartment: cold and dark. Manson kept the temperature at 62 degrees, and blacked out all the windows, she said.
According to Bianco, Manson required her to abide by his dress code of heels, lingerie and stockings, and would parade her in front of his entourage. "He'd pull up my dress to show them bruises that he'd given to me," she claimed.
The actress said the final moments of their tumultuous relationship began with Manson smashing holes in the apartment walls with an ax because he believed she had put cockroaches in the walls to "mess with him."
"I tried to calm him down, and then he started chasing me with the ax," she said. "At that point, I thought, he's going to kill me." After secretly arranging for a place to live, Bianco says she sneaked out of the apartment while Manson slept.
Bianco said she did confide in a few close contacts about some of Manson's behavior toward her, but said she did not refer to it as abuse because she didn't understand what that meant at the time. She said it took her seven years after she left Manson to finally come to terms with what she says she endured.
ABC News spoke with Manson's former personal assistant, Ashley Walters, who said she saw Manson chase Bianco through the West Hollywood apartment with an ax, and recalled seeing bruises on Bianco's body, but said she did not press her about them, for fear of upsetting Manson. Walters is also one of the nearly a dozen women who posted written statements on social media in the past couple of weeks, claiming varying degrees of physical or emotional abuse by Manson.
ABC News also spoke with former contacts within Manson's and Bianco's social circle during the time in question. One contact, who declined to be identified for professional reasons, claimed they also saw bruises on Bianco's body and regretted not standing up to Manson. Fraser Knight has known Bianco since 2000 when they were roommates at Goldsmith University in London. He recalled a phone call he received from Bianco, after she moved in with Manson. "I remember her calling me from inside a cupboard, hiding. She hadn't been allowed to sleep for days and days on end." Knight said Bianco confided in him about the extent of the physical and sexual abuse six years ago.
Bianco first went public with claims of alleged abuse in 2019, when she testified before the California State Assembly in support of the Phoenix Act which advocates for survivors of domestic abuse. She did not name her alleged abuser at the time, but told legislators that the physical violence was most often disguised in "acts of intimacy and was coerced, not consented to."
She called it a "massive relief" to have decided now to name Manson as the alleged abuser to whom she was referring. "I've been carrying this dark secret for so long. At the same time, it's terrifying," she said. "I'm still scared of him. I'm still scared of blackmail, of threats."
For Bianco, it's other victims of abuse that motivate her to speak out. "Perhaps I can give strength to another survivor to go and report," she said. "I want people who are in this situation right now to know they're not alone and that it's not their fault."
It was only in recent months that Bianco said she began to see herself as a victim of human trafficking, after speaking with multiple experts in the field.
"The biggest misconception, especially when you're speaking about sex trafficking, is that it involves little girls from a foreign country, coming over to the United States for the purposes of sex," said Mallory Littlejohn, legal director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation.
While that type of trafficking does happen, according to Littlejohn, it is far more common in the United States for someone to be the victim of domestic sex trafficking.
"What that looks like for some people is a lot of grooming. It's a person that they think is their significant other," said Littlejohn.
"I wish I had known what I know now," said Bianco, "that you can be trafficked by an intimate partner."
According to the U.S. State Department, while it is hard to find reliable statistics on human trafficking due to the hidden nature of the crime, in 2019, a national human trafficking hotline received 136,990 calls, texts, chats, online tips, and emails, identified 11,852 potential human trafficking cases, and provided resources and referrals to 3,828 potential victims.
Experts said red flags include extremely possessive behavior and increased isolation. "It always starts out as a very loving relationship. And sometimes that possessiveness can be interpreted as love. With that possessiveness also comes kind of a sectioning you off from your friends and your family so that they are not able to step in. If no one knows what's happening with you, they can't help you," Littlejohn told ABC News.
For anyone affected by abuse and needing support, call 1-800-799-7233, or if you're unable to speak safely, you can log onto thehotline.org or text LOVEIS to 1-866-331-9474.
Editor's Note: This article has been updated to correct two misplaced quotation marks.
ABC News' Alex Stone and Derick Yanehiro contributed to this report.
