{"id":9082,"date":"2025-12-17T10:12:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T10:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-ends-sexual-assault-case\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T10:12:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T10:12:31","slug":"judge-ends-sexual-assault-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-ends-sexual-assault-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Ends Sexual Assault Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tA 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo years after an appeals court revived the case against Manson (Brian Warner) by ruling that Walters might have delayed suing due to \u201ctrauma-induced memory suppression,\u201d a trial judge on Tuesday (Dec. 16) once again tossed the case out, canceling a trial that had been set to start next month.<\/p>\n

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\n\tWalters 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is no triable issue of material fact,\u201d Judge Steve Cochran wrote in a written ruling, obtained by Billboard<\/em>. \u201cPlaintiff\u2019s claims are time barred.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard<\/em>, Manson\u2019s attorney Howard King<\/strong> said the ruling was \u201cgratifying\u201d and showed that Manson had been \u201cwrongfully accused\u201d by Walters: \u201cJustice delayed is still justice and is much appreciated even though it came with great personal cost. Now Brian can move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAttorneys for Walters did not immediately return a request for comment from Billboard<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\n\tWalters was one of several women who accused Manson of sexual abuse in 2021. His former fianc\u00e9, Evan Rachel Wood, accused him of grooming and sexual abuse on Twitter in February 2021, and then others, including Game of Thrones<\/em> actress Esm\u00e9 Bianco and model Ashley Morgan Smithline, filed lawsuits against him.<\/p>\n

\n\tManson 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\u2019s case was dismissed months later.<\/p>\n

\n\tManson 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.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn her own 2021 lawsuit, Walters claimed that Manson subjected her to \u201csexual exploitation, manipulation and psychological abuse\u201d 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 \u201ca drug-induced rage\u201d; forcing her to stay awake for 48 hours by feeding her cocaine; and having \u201coffered\u201d her sexually to friends and associates.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn June 2022, Judge Cochran dismissed Walters\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat 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\u2019s lawyers said the case suffered from the same fatal flaw, writing: \u201cPlaintiff\u2019s argument that she \u2018repressed\u2019 certain memories shortly after the conduct occurred does not impact her comprehension of the wrongness of the events at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Tuesday, Judge Cochran sided with those arguments, ruling that Walters had no way to avoid the expiration of the statute of limitations: \u201cWe have a situation where the complaint was not filed until about 10 years after the operative events,\u201d the judge said at the hearing, as reported by Rolling Stone<\/a>.<\/em> \u201cI\u2019m not able to find that the delayed discovery rule is applicable.\u201d<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[302,294,2133,423,301],"class_list":["post-9082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-assault","tag-case","tag-ends","tag-judge","tag-sexual"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}