A state appellate court Wednesday reinstated a lawsuit brought by a former assistant to Marilyn Manson accusing the shock rocker of sexual harassment and assault.
The three-justice panel of the Second District Court of Appeal unanimously found that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Stern erred when he dismissed Ashley Walters' case in 2022. Stern concluded that the plaintiff had not presented facts to overcome the statute of limitations.
Walters appealed, contending that the delayed discovery rule postponed accrual of her claims until 2020, when she joined a support group and was able to recover suppressed memories of Manson's alleged abuses. Walters also maintained that Manson, now 54, was prevented from asserting the statute of limitations defense because she was coerced into silence.
"Until she received diagnosis and treatment, Walters was unable to remember the repressed events, and once she did recall them, she was unable to immediately identify these events as abuse," Justice Gail Ruderman Feuer wrote for the majority. "These allegations of suppressed memories and psychological blocking are sufficient to withstand a (dismissal at this stage)."
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Walters, a photographer, worked with and for Manson Records from May 2010 to October 2011 and alleged the singer sexually abused and battered her multiple times and required her to travel with drugs. She also maintained he bragged about raping women and showed her a video of himself abusing an underage girl.
Tanya Sukhija-Cohen, Walters' attorney, told Stern during the 2022 hearing that her client initially repressed her memories of the alleged abuses by Manson due to post-traumatic stress disorder, but then hired an attorney and reported what happened to law enforcement when she recovered her memory in 2020. Manson also threatened to "ruin" her career and reputation, the attorney said.
But Walters did not file her lawsuit until May 2021, Stern noted in his February ruling.
"Reading the first amended complaint as a whole, (Walters) pleads that (she) was aware of the actions against her by the time she left her employment," Stern further wrote. "Thus, nine to 10 years passed until the filing of the action, far beyond the two-year limitations periods of her claims."
Walters' sexual assault cause of action, as written, "is not subject to the most recent amendment providing for a ten-year limitations period as this revision is not retroactive," according to Stern, who also said that Walters' claims were not subject to the delayed discover rule.
Manson attorney Gene Williams Stern said that much of what Walters alleged was contradictory and that the evidence showed she knew the alleged abuses were wrong at the time. He also said Walters did not provide proof of any threats by Manson against her, but only that he was "bad" and "scary."
Walters came forward along with other women who accused the singer of sexual abuse. Manson's real name is Brian Hugh Warner and he obtained his stage name by combining the names of a sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe, and an infamous criminal, Charles Manson.
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