The prevalence of domestic violence is staggering. It’s time to bring it out of the shadows

For years, the actor Evan Rachel Wood spoke about an abusive past relationship with a man she did not name. In 2018, she testified before Congress about her experience of being sexually assaulted, as part of her public advocacy for a law called the sexual assault survivor’s bill of rights. In 2019, she testified before the California state senate in support of extending the statute of limitations on crimes related to domestic violence. In her descriptions of the relationship, Wood describes gradually being subjected to berating and accusations, which escalated into demands that she isolate from friends and family, strict controls on her ability to eat and sleep, and eventually physical as well as sexual violence. “He broke me down through means of starvation, sleep deprivation, and threats against my life, sometimes with deadly weapons,” Wood told lawmakers. The abuse would often result, she said, “in me having severe panic attacks where I was unable to breathe or stop shaking”. She said her abuser would keep her awake for days by forcing her to do drugs, and that he sometimes subjected her to inventively violent and cruel non-consensual sex acts. When she tried to leave, she said, her abuser would threaten suicide, or blackmail her with revenge porn. After the relationship finally ended in 2011, she says she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

On Monday, Wood publicly named the man she says did these things to her for the first time. “The name of my abuser is Brian Warner,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “Also known to the world as Marilyn Manson.” Shortly thereafter, four other women also came forward with their own accounts of abuse at Warner’s hands: Sarah McNeilly, Ashley Lindsay Morgan, Ashley Walters and Gabriella Accarino. (Manson has denied these allegations, as well as similar allegations that have been made against him in the past.) Warner’s record label, Loma Vista said that they would no longer work with him after the women’s accusations became public. AMC networks cut Warner from a segment of the horror anthology series Creepshow, and the talent agency CAA severed its contract with the musician.

Wood’s accusations are unique in their particular cruelties. But in describing a pattern of violence from a partner that used a mosaic of physical, psychological and sexual abuse tactics that accrued into an intolerable environment of coercive control, she had much in common with other high-profile women who have come forward to accuse high-profile men of domestic abuse. In December, the British musician FKA Twigs filed a civil suit against her former boyfriend, the actor Shia LaBeouf, in which the musician claimed that LaBeouf subjected her to “relentless abuse”– psychological, physical and emotional – during the course of their relationship. And that lawsuit comes amid a long, ongoing legal battle between the actor Amber Heard and her ex-husband, Johnny Depp. Heard was granted a restraining order against Depp in 2016, shortly before the couple divorced, and has since claimed that the actor subjected her to “excessive emotional, verbal and physical abuse” and “angry, hostile, humiliating and threatening assaults”. (Depp has passionately – and litigiously – denied these accusations.)

Domestic violence is different than other kinds of abuse dynamics, and gender hierarchies are enforced differently from other systems of power. In the case of intimate partner violence, much of this has to do with where the abuse happens: the most extreme kinds of gender violence, like the treatment these women say they have suffered, tend to happen in the home, or in the confines of romantic relationships. This intimacy makes domestic violence all too easy for those on the outside to trivialize. When the abuse happens behind closed doors, it is simpler for an abuser to minimize or deny his victim’s claims, simpler for outsiders to dismiss the abuse as mere lovers’ quarrels, or the products of a jilted woman’s exaggerations. But this cultural aversion to taking domestic violence seriously does not mean that the phenomenon is uncommon: it is estimated that one in four women will experience intimate partner violence throughout her lifetime.

The private location of domestic violence also makes it easier for abusers to hide their conduct, and harder for victims to get help. When abuse happens in the home, usually there is no one there to see it – or at least, no one aside from children or other family members, the people who are also vulnerable to the abuser’s violence. When no one can see what happens to you, no one can corroborate your story. No one can hear what he threatened; no one can capture his conduct on a cellphone video. In this way, domestic violence transforms the privacy of domestic life into the impunity of isolation. In the home, there is no authority for a victim to appeal to for protection, and no one to bear witness to her pain. There is no one there to stop the abuser, and so the abuser does what he wants.

The isolation felt by domestic violence victims is often enforced. In her accounts of her relationship, Wood says that Warner would become paranoid and prone to fits of jealousy, and that he began demanding more and more control over where she went and whom she spent her time with. “He gifted me a cellphone, which I found out he was monitoring,” Wood testified in 2019. “He downloaded spyware on to my computer and hacked into my emails and social media accounts, so I could not reach out for help. When my friends and family tried to intervene, I swiftly told them to leave and that I was fine, because I was afraid of what he would do.”

With the spread of Covid-19, the dangers of domestic violence are only growing. Travel restrictions, stay-at-home orders, and mass layoffs mean that abusers’ tempers are short, their victims’ chances for escape are slim, and resources are more difficult than ever to access. Job losses, which in the pandemic have been incurred disproportionately by women of color, mean that victims are more financially dependent on their abusers, making it more difficult for women to leave. Social isolation has eroded the relationships and support networks that would have otherwise been a lifeline out of the relationship; alternative housing options, like shelters and hotels, have had to cut capacity or shut down.

Long-term confinement with abusers will have impacts on domestic violence victims that still can’t be foreseen. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that when lockdowns went into effect, “Domestic-violence hotlines prepared for an increase in demand for services.” But many groups experienced the opposite: in some regions, calls dropped by more than 50%. “Experts in the field knew that rates of IPV had not decreased, but rather that victims were unable to safely connect with services.” You can’t call the domestic abuse hotline when your abuser is in the next room, holed up at home with you in quarantine.

Meanwhile, there is some evidence that while domestic abuse services have become harder for women to access, the need for them is growing. One study in the journal Radiology found a significant increase in the number and severity of IPV injuries that resulted in trips to the emergency room.

After Wood’s Instagram post went viral, Warner released his own statement, calling Wood’s and the other women’s descriptions of his conduct “horrible distortions of reality”. For her part, Wood has said that she decided to come forward with her alleged experiences after learning that other women had similar accusations against Warner. “If you’re going to be famous, for me it has to mean something, or be used for something,” she told the New York Times. It’s unclear whether her public claim, along with those of other prominent women, will finally bring about a public accounting of the prevalence and harm of domestic violence – the issue remains deeply misunderstood, shrouded in shame and judgment of the victims, enabled by excuse-making for the perpetrators. But it’s clear that many women are suffering the way that Wood did. In her Instagram post, she seemed to have this reality in mind. “I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent,” she wrote.