Dear Marilyn Manson Accusers
Dear Marilyn Manson Accusers,
I hope this open letter finds you in a moment of reflection. As I sit down to pen these words, I am driven by a sense of urgency & disgust for survivors everywhere to share how I see you from my own experience.
At the age of 14, my innocence was shattered by manipulation and grooming, that Illma Gore witnessed, which was validated by a therapist- not documentary crews, google, journalists looking for a story, definitely not honey pot lawyers in the pursuit to easy money & not by my Twin sister who has used this experience of mine to shape and falsely claim what you accusers experienced with Marilyn Manson as “Abuse”.
The documents shown to you in a support meeting & Phoenix Rising were created for you, and not based in the reality of Abuse to trick you into thinking that a mutually consensual relationship was a violation.
However, it is my opinion from what I’ve Seen & read of your stories is that you always had the power to say No & the Autonomy to leave; This is not the reality for Abuse survivors; which is to endure in isolation and dream of escape. Instead you were fed an idealistic & fairytale version of how the world works.
The lists and resources you were shown were photoshopped & modelled off me, derived from my experience and from the therapy tools that helped me heal that I shared with my sister years prior. They were slobbishly manipulated to fit to a narrative that Marilyn Manson was a predator & have you feel validated under the Name of Evan Rachael Wood & the allure of her social status to prop her lulling career up, & consciously timed for release at the height of MeToo.
Evan Rachael Wood is not an advocate for abuse survivors, and should NOT be anyones.
Phoenix Rising did not seek professionals, or therapists or a doctor, they used a bastardised model of me.
And I’m here to say to you Yes, you have been taken advantage of, but not by Marilyn Manson. It was Evan Rachael Wood & the allure of status that my sister Illma Gore used.
And though you have been tricked, it was not your fault being drawn to social status & the pressure of group settings; all humans naturally are. It is a survival response that is built deeply in our DNA, we will even mimic accents subconsciously in conversations & gestures; this is not just a parasocial mimicry phenomenon, this only worsens without logic in Group Think situations.
I ask empathetically, you to think of the repercussions of being falsely validated by wrong definitions shared to you by Evan Rachael Wood & My sister.
Abuse is a path I was unwittingly led down as a child, marred by a chaotic home life that lead me to fall into my abusers hands.
Even after validation in therapy, where I had to relearn not to blame myself, it only taught me how to manage the after effects of a deep emotional wound, to this day & years later I spend nights screaming in my sleep wondering why I was so weak, wondering how I didn’t stop it & questioning what I could’ve done to be stronger. I still Self sabotage by taking on too much accountability & responsibility for other people’s bad behaviour.
Hidden by THAT shame I was silenced; it was not by the force of a person, I silenced myself and the people around me who felt it easier to believe it was my fault, that sewed my mouth shut.
After I healed I stayed quiet for my children who never needed to know the horrors their mother endured by their conception. The past was over, the future was beautiful and my healing was deeply laid in the acceptance of. Single motherhood despite the circumstances of it.
This was something I hoped to only keep as a private conversation with my children had they ever asked, and between their father, but unfortunately my sister lacks the capacity to understand the world of pain she has brought up for me & her nieces re-writing history for herself.
At 14 I found myself in a room with two adults engaged in acts that no child should witness. Those adults, entrusted with residential guardianship of my sister and I after fleeing from home, had caught the attention of child services due to our homelessness.
Amidst this backdrop, my sister Ashley was given a room of her own. I was relegated to the stained box spring mattress on the lounge room floor & a couch, until circumstances had me share a bedroom with the adult couple who leased the property – a move prompted by the belief by them that sleeping in the common area was inappropriate.
You called yourselves children at 19, did you realise what you were doing to actual children survivors?
In stark contrast to your experiences, unlike you who were simply flirted with by a celebrity, in Phoenix Risng you purposefully weaponised the word ‘grooming’ changing the definition to a natural fawn pressure in you; a desire to impress a man far more famous than yourself, and you successfully placed blame for your own needs, desires & intentions for your career on someone else.
You, with the promise of taking part in a documentary at the height of #MeToo we’re so absent mindedly happy to ruin a Celebrities life, pompously calling it public safety, even though he’s married (a sex predator without prey) & then claim yourselves to be advocates of people like me.
The worst part about real abusive relationships is not the Abuse we endure, it’s the Delusion where you convince yourself and others you love the abuser because no one can understand why you stay; I’ll tell you, it’s Fear of violence from leaving & shame of being weak for enduring it and fear after you leave.
It’s how people outside of the relationship who claim to love you leave you behind unable to see you covered in bruises and meek, they can’t watch the way you deteriorate so they blame you; saying things like “I don’t get why they don’t just leave, I would never put up with that” believing themselves to be stronger than you for not being in your position. This is what the isolation is in Abuse, you withdraw from loved ones because of shame, not because the Abuser picks people off. The isolation is the way we Act in it.
In Phoenix Rising you blamed Marilyn Manson for picking off your family members as if he had control over your support group by telling you they were exploiting you.
Evan, pointing out your Mother stealing your hard earned money is not pitting you against her, it’s blatantly wrong for a mother to do that. Even I wouldn’t pick off my own daughters bank account & I’m impoverished.
It’s easier for those closest to you to call you meek & naive then face the reality that your situation could happen to them & its easier for them to believe they are stronger than you for not being in your position, and you just need to “wake up & leave” relinquishing them of all uncomfortable feelings. So when they see you sitting on their couch covered in bruises and silent, replying you love your partner even though you don’t believe it, they can chastise you for even staying.
If I don’t say I love him, he will know and I will be attacked, is the fear.
I won’t have anywhere to go, where will I live?
I have no money & my support network is gone. Is what I thought to myself while I was enduring.
Abuse survivors know something you don’t; We stay silent from shame, not for fear of the people who abused us. Because when you finally leave one behind you see them as the pitiful small & weak worms they actually are & are ashamed of what you put up with for someone like that.
In stark contrast to your experiences, I recount my narrative.
I was forced to be apart of witnessing two adults engage in intimate acts, in a bedroom I had no choice to be in, by residential guardians at 14, a scene that has left an indelible mark on my soul, and they would ask me if I liked watching.
THAT is Grooming.
Instead of recognizing your were grappling with an internal struggle to prove yourself worthy to a man far more famous than yourself, you redefined your recognition of your Fawn response & intentions to advance your careers to a “Power Dynamic” but you had the ability & the autonomy of a Hollywood Career & Family Members Support to say No & Leave.
You were confused being told about power, Power is the ability to change & effect lives like Police having the ability to arrest you, Judges sentencing you to jail, Politician’s Changing Laws & Parents/Guardians in control of a child’s well-being. Authority is what comes from someone with status & it is perceived.
His fame was a symptom of his career, something you had a choice in leaving behind & not something he had control over. How is it his responsibility to know your need to impress him over something he also can’t control?
I had the threat of my roof being taken away, I was too underage to lease my own apartment or seek safety at a women’s shelter.
Where I would lose my roof with no options outside of my abuser. You’d only lose Career benefits, which makes it seem you were exploiting him.
My journey was marked by isolation and maltreatment from the beginning. Yet Evan Rachael Wood and the Crew of Phoenix Rising spits on me and others to say she was a child at 19.
The memory that has forever etched itself into my consciousness revolves around the loss of my virginity. A pill my Abuser slipped into his partner’s drink to render her unconscious, where he would take my virginty less than a meter away from his partner, the night that found me standing in the shower, desperately scratching at my skin, convinced this was what sex was meant to be & to this day I am unable to be physically held or hugged without going completely numb, even in all my healing.
We should be teaching in Sex Education what Consent in the body also feels like, not just the words.
Did you go to fun Hollywood parties? Did you have the freedom of your career? Did you have a job? Did you have money to escape to a Hotel if needed? Where were your family & friends? Did they ask you why? Or did you gloat about bagging a celebrity?
Because I can tell you, if I had that option to leave after that shower I would’ve taken it.
But instead I was told that I was lucky because I was ugly. This twisted proclamation was reinforced by the cruel assessment of my appearance, that I was an ugly kid & no one else would show me any such attention if I didn’t continue taking it.
Did you believe you were ugly from body dysmorphia so it must be true?
Did it feel like he stole your body from you?
Did you, too, experience being deemed “lucky” by him because you were a teenager still growing, while grappling with the weight of your own experiences? & were you told to deal with it because you had nowhere else to live?
I’m asking, Did you feel fucking lucky?
He then held my medication hostage, misplacing it & without a support network the truth of my pregnancy came to light, my own sister hurled the word “disgusting” at me.
Trapped between her own anger and the roof over head being threatened because of these two adults and a betrayal blamed solely on me. I found myself isolated in a world that offered no refuge or escape. I was blamed for his behaviour. I was blamed for him cheating.
My sister would go on to tell her friends how disgusting I was, to survive she sucked up to his partner, just as in childhood she did with our mom. She’d tell them it was my fault, afraid of losing her roof, she teamed up with his partner and now has her witness statements against me picked from the very people who called me disgusting who never knew this side of my story.
Did you, too, feel isolation creeping in as your own circumstances unfolded? I’ll ask again, were you really isolated?
Or did you have a budding Hollywood Career & the Oppurtunity to further it without your family calling you disgusting?
Did you have a network of friends to lean on?
Did you Keep your mouth shut because you didn’t know how to escape and you couldn’t handle the chorus of judgement saying “just leave” with nowhere else to go?
Did you dream like me of When, where, why how to run, everyday.
In a society that pushes us to mature before our time, did you, like me, face the weight of being called a “child” at 15 with a baby when circumstances dictated that you bear the burdens of adulthood?
Were you subjected to the same refrain that demanded you lie in the bed you had made, without acknowledgment of the complexities that led to that point?
Or were you 19 with the ability to leave, more money and more autonomy than most from Hollywood Careers only to later call yourself a child at 19?
At 15 I was told I made my bed lay in, like an adult for getting pregnant, aren’t you supposed to be Independent at 18? That’s when you are sentenced as one in court. Why were you a child at 19?
Not only this but the barrage of ongoing judgement I get that have people easily believe I was a bad mother because of the stigma and the labels attached to me.
In the midst of these struggles, were you ever allowed to say no without having cigarettes put out on you? Or spit at?
Did you have the ability to choose a different environment that helped you feel safe? were you caught in a vortex of hardship with no one left to take you in, did you stay confused like me?
What autonomy did you have to escape?
Or was the only burden you had losing a man and his status? I think the status of being his partner is what kept you there.
What kept me stuck was the fear of violence for even thinking about leaving.
Did you experience the same sense of powerlessness as the nurses ignored your pleas for help? Because you were a young shitty teenager? Who probably wanted it?
Because they conveniently forgot to give me an epidural & gave me 40 stitches with no pain killers before they realised, all because I needed to “learn” for making an adult decision too young.
Did you find yourself grappling with theft, with the loss of your belongings? Because he stole your wallet, stereo & any valuables making it harder again to escape into the night which you dreamed of every second unsure of how to get the fuck out, because everyone left you behind?
Did you find yourself clutching your wallet beneath your pillow, a desperate attempt to maintain even a modicum of control in a life that seemed to spiral beyond your grasp?
And when he left at night for a girl younger than you & drugs were you relieved, even though he stole your money, like me? Because it meant he was gone for awhile.
Marilyn Manson accusers why did you post Pinterest pictures of welts & bruises from fun consensual kinks and call it violent? My bruises & marks were because I refused to take the baby to hospital the night my mom died.
Did you have anyone who would’ve taken you in? Because I didn’t, I had nothing, & I still fucking left. Why the fuck didn’t you?
Did you come up with a covert plan to escape & never look back. Did you secretly get him taken off your lease so when you had the guts to boot him out he couldn’t come back?
Did you dream and cry every night in silence waiting to run from everyone?
Or did you make a documentary just vaguely saying abuse terms? Because it seems the allure of status had you believing you were coerced.
The isolation that enveloped me was suffocating. The judgment of friends and family was inescapable, leaving me to wrestle with the internalized shame of being perceived as “broken.” Did you also navigate this treacherous terrain, where well-intentioned loved ones failed to understand the suffocating grip of abuse?
Or was it my therapy and healing that my sister & Evan modelled for you that decided you were a survivor.
Remember Illma Gore sent you googled and photoshopped sheet of abuse definitions based off my very own experience & therapy.
Where she called me a liar and never told my family and friends what happened because they couldn’t face the fact they left me behind, and l used my newborn child as an excuse & Illma Gore needed me as an excuse to steal money.
Did they tell you to grow up?
Did they tell you to get over it?
Or did a money hungry lawyer back you up?
Because no one has ever fucking backed me up & I did the work to heal.
Amidst the turmoil, after escaping; did you like me, have to pick up the pieces that abuse leaves behind? did you turn your life around?
Because abusers leave a mess behind them that you’re forced to clean up to move on. As you took your steps towards recovery, did you too feel the weight of the label “brave”?
Did you feel disgusted by it?
Did you hate it when everyone told you that you’re a survivor because what fucking choice did you have? It was endure, escape or die.
It doesn’t feel good to be called a survivor does it?
Did you also confront the dissonance between the image projected in the media and the fractured reality within? That we never feel Brave. We feel weak & we hate how long we stayed. Even when validated of our experiences, we feel ashamed that we ever lost so much control as we realise how others around us viewed us.
Or did a talk show hosts & journalists have a field day to sensationalise your abuse definitions for more readers?
Did it feel good to be called Brave?
Because I hate being called Brave for something I had to do. Bravery, to me, is a conscious choice – an active decision to face fear head-on. It’s akin to leaping from a precipice into the unknown below. In the realm of abuse, though, the luxury of choice is gone, leaving us tethered to a harrowing dilemma: escape or endure.
Where a lawyer coaxed you with a promise of a payout. After I escaped, healing in therapy was my journey through agoraphobia. It was a immense struggle; one that required a car to be parked right at my doorstep to coax me from my refuge. It took me 18 months before I could even look anyone in public in the eye & to sort out what both toxic shame & rightful guilt were. To understand what I was responsible for & what others were as well – Whereas in your cases, a lawyer coaxed you with a promise of a payout.
Did you stop to consider the consequences of survivors who’s lawyers would never represent them for Free?
Did you, too, struggle with reconnection to your body, with uncomfortable feelings & the awkwardness of human touch after years of isolation? Do you still struggle with hugging people?
Or did you use a camera & for buzz words?
Did you, too, grapple with the stigma of being labeled a pariah by those closest to you when you opened up? Was your pursuit of understanding met with skepticism, disbelief, and a wall of rejection for a decade? Or did you just wait a to cry when the time is ripe in MeToo?
Because most survivors want to forget and understand being angry at someone that long is a waste of your own life & power.
Accepting what you endured meant your family had to face how they treated you in it too, often refusing. Were you also cast out by them?
Did you know the disorienting torment of repressed memories, the fragments that danced at the edges of your consciousness, emerging as blips of anguish? Did you spend years screaming in your sleep, and facing trauma in the form of symbolism to piece together? Were you left piecing together a puzzle that felt simultaneously familiar and foreign?
Or did you believe Illma Gore’s lifted idea of repressed memories from my own therapy?
Because repressed memories don’t come back all at once.
They show up for years in feelings. They shape who you are, they plague you like a curse.
Therapy makes you aware of how they work & when your body feels safe enough they emerge in pieces leaving you in dread and not knowing why, and then you manage those horrible blips until you see the whole image. It’s never gone from your mind, ever, the shame of it all is what holds you down.
Amidst this struggle, of repression did you also finally discover the larger picture, tracing back the tangled threads of your life to their source?
Did you like me, realise the wounds inflicted in childhood, the nightmares, the symbols & the terror the very source of my pain, had ramifications far beyond that fateful moment of one abusive relationship? That it was an entire pattern of your life?
Did you realise like me in therapy that the source of repression came from a disconnection from the body in childhood sex abuse, we’re you punched in the face with the entire picture of the puzzle after having unending nightmares, alone or did you wait to freely form an idea when you were grouped together and told it’s abuse? Did you realise like me your entire identity was based off of other people telling you who you are & to grow up? That you formed an idea of yourself off being told you are wrong?
The ramifications of false accusations are far-reaching. Did you ever grapple with the ethical implications of accusing others? Did you ever question you were wrong?
Or did you think the Me Too Movement and women’s empowerment would coddle you?
Why do you think empowering women is hiding them from the reality of the world? That this place is horrible & people will sometimes treat you like you’re worthless. That it’s better to be someone who stands up and fights than someone who points fingers and blame and then call themselves brave.
Blaming is not Healing.
You’re taking the very power away from victims you claim to represent.
Did you recognise the damage inflicted on genuine survivors, & innocent men as their narratives became obscured by skepticism?
Did you recognise that men have never been given a platform to share their emotions without being called weak, and how you dug the hole deeper for gender bias on a human issue – abuse.
Did you realise exploiting a man’s social status is a abuse?
Were you aware of the complexities you waded into, the murky waters of media manipulation, and the legal system’s alluring pitfalls?
Were you cognizant of the distorted lens through which your story was projected, sensationalized for headlines and soundbites?
Did you realize that your advocacy was being leveraged for ulterior motives, shifting focus from the stories of those who lack a voice?
Were you conscious of the complicity of lawyers who sought profit from pain?
Did you see that you were being utilized in a system that exploits drama rather than the results of strength and healing? That pays for crying instead of fighting which is how we actually reclaim our power, by saying how far we’ve come.
Did the parasites of screens, fame and journalists who seek to exaggerate help you recover? was it okay that it was at the expense of everyone else?
Worse, you were aware with MeToo you’d be believed blindly, Never having to face the fate many abuse survivors follow, of having the family turn against them.
And you yourselves exploited a persons value and status and became the abusers.
Did you feel good about taking resources from everyday survivors?
Or did you wait ten years just to live in the past on a movement that suited your lies.
Did you tell us how you healed, or did you just cry?
As you traversed this path, did you pause to consider the true essence of empowerment?
It’s not crying & blame, it’s actions in recovery.
I sought healing and empowerment, aspiring to forge a brighter future for my daughters, untethered by the past. As I embarked on this, I did so with the intention to uplift myself & them, to share the lessons and strength I had garnered from the past without the details.
Yet Evan Rachael Wood scares her son over an ex relationship she had a decade ago & stole him from his dad, to make a boogie man out some ex she dated 10years ago.
Where I fostered mediation for what was best for my children’s future with mine, and he’s the actual father of my kids.
I accepted what happened & he does too, I wouldn’t let it affect me or my children or the people who choose to show up in their lives as long as there was love and understanding.
3 years after the relationship I realised giving power to the past, held me there. That the future was accepting the present.
I realised the longer I want an apology or validation the more I give power to people who don’t deserve it. I realised that what was in me and inspired others was my own Action of healing.
I realised the paths of my life all intertwined and lead me there to take one big step to say:
What happened in my life made who I am and I am proud of that.
And I am brave for me, not for anyone else.
Because advocacy, saving other and bravery is saving yourself, not the martyr-hood of a group of women forcing change on delusions of grandeur.
And it’s not by pointing fingers. It’s by looking at yourself.
– —
Sincerely,
Bryton Ursula Fucking Gore
