Game Of Thrones‘s Esmé Bianco Suing Marilyn Manson For Alleged Rape & Sex Trafficking

Editor’s note: The following article includes details about abuse and sexual assault that may be triggering. Please proceed thoughtfully.

British actress Esmé Bianco, known for her role as Ros on HBO’s Game Of Thrones, sued musician Marilyn Manson and his former manager, Tony Ciulla, for allegedly sexually abusing and battering her.

The suit, filed on April 30, claims that Manson (née Brian Warner) raped Bianco sometime around May 2011, and that he allegedly “committed sexual acts” against the actress when she was unable to give her consent. It additionally claims that Manson and Ciulla’s management company violated human-trafficking laws by bringing her from London to Los Angeles with the promise that she would be acting in a film that was never made and a music video that was never released.

“Mr. Warner used drugs, force, and threats of force to coerce sexual acts from Ms. Bianco on multiple occasions,” the lawsuit reads. It also lists the ways she alleges he sexually battered her: “These acts include spanking, biting, cutting, and whipping Ms. Bianco’s buttocks, breasts, and genitals for Mr. Warner’s sexual gratification — all without the consent of Plaintiff.” She also says that he gave her drugs and deprived her of sleep and food in order to “decrease her ability to refuse him” — something actress Evan Rachel Wood also described in her own allegations against the musician in February.

Bianco first met Warner through his ex-fiancée, Dita Von Teese, in 2005, and two years after their 2007 divorce, he lured Bianco to the United States under the pretence that she would appear in a music video for his song “I Want to Kill You Like They Do in the Movies” and a horror film based on the works of Lewis Carroll called Phantasmagoria, which was never made. Bianco claims that when she arrived, there was no crew for the music video and she was expected to stay at his home instead of the hotel that was promised. The “fraud,” Bianco alleges, however, truly occurred when he had her draft an agreement that she would star in his film. “By inserting himself in Ms. Bianco’s visa process,” the complaint reads, “Mr. Warner was able to control Ms. Bianco by threatening to withdraw support if she displeased him.”

Bianco was one of the handful of women who, in February 2021, alleged that Manson had abused them during the course of their respective relationships. Actress Wood had publicly talked about being a survivor of domestic violence since 2016, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that she named Manson specifically. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,” Wood wrote on her Instagram on February 1. “I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”

In a detailed feature for The Cut on February 10, Bianco described Manson’s alleged abuse, but also admonished those around him, including much of the public, for turning a blind eye towards his misconduct. “He’s told the world time and time again, ‘This is who I am,’” she said. “He hid in plain sight.”

After the allegations against him surfaced in February, Manson released a statement calling them “horrible distortions of reality” and claimed that his “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,” he alleged. Manson was soon dropped from his record label Loma Vista Recordings and his talent agency, CAA.

In the current lawsuit, Bianco alleged that she performed a slew of “unpaid labour” — including serving food for him and his guests and cleaning his apartment — that violates U.S. law regarding human trafficking. In the complaint, she claimed that she was “being offered up to his guests and bandmates to ‘spank.’ Mr. Warner implied that because he had brought Ms. Bianco to the United States and provided housing, she owed him labour and sexual intimacy.”

She also claims that Ciulla and his company were directly complicity in her abuse. “Mr. Warner’s former assistants discussed Mr. Warner’s abuse directly with Mr. Ciulla,” the suit reads. “Mr. Warner’s management had a vested interest in supporting his violent tendencies to encourage the creation of his ‘art’ and the promotion of the brand of Marilyn Manson, and were complicit in Mr. Warner’s abuse of Ms. Bianco.”

Refinery29 reached out to Bianco, Ciulla, and Manson for additional comment.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Helpline on 0808 2000 247.

If you have experienced sexual violence and are in need of crisis support, please visit Rape Crisis.