A local council leader is calling for a Marilyn Manson concert in Bournemouth to be cancelled.
Millie Earl – of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council – wants the Antichrist Superstar’s proposed stop at the Bournemouth International Centre on October 31 to be scrapped, due to the multiple sexual misconduct allegations made against the 56-year-old in recent years.
Earl, a member of the Liberal Democrat political party, hopes to “reinforce the message that violence against women and girls isn't something that's acceptable in our community”, according to the BBC.
She adds that, although BCP Council “don’t have any input” into choices made by Bournemouth International Centre’s operators BH Live, she has written to the company to “express [her] concern”.
She also says that BCP Council have “been doing a lot of work” with such initiatives as the White Ribbon campaign, which encourages boys and men to end violence against women and girls.
Manson, real name Brian Hugh Warner, has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women since 2021. He has denied all allegations of wrongdoing. In January, California prosecutors’ investigation into claims of domestic violence by four women ended. No criminal charges were pressed against the heavy metal singer, because his alleged actions exceeded the statute of limitations.
A lawsuit against Warner was also thrown out due to the statute of limitations. A suit filed by Warner’s former personal assistant Ashley Walters, claiming sexual assault and battery, was dismissed in 2022, as the alleged abuse took place between 2010 and 2011.
Another case – in which Warner’s ex-partner Ashley Morgan Smithline sued the musician for sexual assault, sexual battery and other alleged offences – was dismissed in January 2023. A judge threw it out after Smithline was unable to find new legal representation in time. She later recanted her accusations and said she’d been “manipulated” into making them by Warner’s ex-fiancee Evan Rachel Wood.
In 2022, Warner sued Wood, to whom he was briefly engaged in 2010, and her friend Ilma Gore for defamation. The Westworld actor alleged on Instagram in 2021 that Warner “horrifically abused me for years”. A Los Angeles judge dismissed the claims in Warner’s suit in May 2023 and, the following January, the singer was ordered to pay Wood almost $327,000 to cover her legal fees. Warner dropped the suit in November 2024.
In 2023, Warner settled out of court with two accusers who took legal action against him. Former Game Of Thrones actor Esme Bianco sued him for sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Her representatives later said that she agreed to settle the case so that she could “move on with her life and career”. The other accuser was a Jane Doe, later identified as Bianca Allaine Kyne, who sued him in 2021 claiming the singer raped her in 2011.
The allegations against Warner were the subject of a TV documentary, Unmasked, which aired in the UK on Channel 4 earlier this year. Wood and Kyne were interviewed for the programme.
Warner was dropped by his record label Loma Vista, his booking agent and his manager in 2021, but the singer has started attempting a musical comeback. He released a new album, One Assassination Under God – Chapter One, in 2024 via Nuclear Blast and has tours of Europe and North America booked for later this year.
