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      Evan Rachel Wood Accuses Marilyn Manson of Abuse

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEvan Rachel Wood Accuses Marilyn Manson of Abuse“He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,” Ms. Wood, said on Instagram. Hours later Mr. Manson’s label dropped him.The rock musician Marilyn Manson last year. Mr. Manson and the actress Evan Rachel Wood publicly became a couple in 2007, when she was 19 and he was 38.Credit…Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for The Art of ElysiumJenny Gross and Feb. 1, 2021Updated 6:09 p.m. ETThe actor and singer Evan Rachel Wood, who has spoken publicly for years about being a survivor of sexual and physical violence, said on Monday that she had been abused by the rock musician Marilyn Manson.“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” Ms. Wood wrote in an Instagram post. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. 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.”Ms. Wood, 33, was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2017 for her role in “Westworld” and voiced Queen Iduna in “Frozen 2.” She began acting as a child, receiving her first Golden Globe nomination early in her career for her portrayal of a volatile adolescent in the 2003 drama “Thirteen.”Her relationship with Mr. Manson became public in 2007, when she was 19 and he was 38. The two were briefly engaged.Representatives for Mr. Manson did not respond to several requests for comment on Monday. Last year, Mr. Manson’s representatives issued a statement to Metal Hammer, a music magazine, in response to questions about his relationship with Ms. Wood and her testimony before Congress about being a victim of domestic violence.“Personal testimony is just that, and we think it’s inappropriate to comment on that,” Mr. Manson’s representatives told Metal Hammer. “You then go on to talk about Manson being accused of ‘terrible things’ by unnamed ‘critics’ but offer no guidance on who these critics are and what these things are, so it’s not possible to comment.”Evan Rachel Wood at her home in Los Angeles last year.Credit…Rozette Rago for The New York TimesSeveral other women have also accused Mr. Manson of having abused them. In 2018, the actress Charlyne Yi accused Mr. Manson of harassment in a series of tweets that have since been deleted. In September 2020, Dan Cleary, who said that he had worked as an assistant to Mr. Manson for several years, wrote on Twitter that he had witnessed the singer being abusive.Loma Vista, the label that released Marilyn Manson’s latest recording, said Monday it would stop promoting it and would not work with him in the future.“In light of today’s disturbing allegations by Evan Rachel Wood and other women naming Marilyn Manson as their abuser, Loma Vista will cease to further promote his current album, effective immediately,” it said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Due to these concerning developments, we have also decided not to work with Marilyn Manson on any future projects.”Ms. Wood, who supported a California law that extended the statute of limitations on domestic abuse, testified before the State Senate in 2019 that a man whom she did not identify by name had groomed her when she was 18.“He cut me off from my close friends and family one by one, by exhibiting rage in some form or another when I was in contact with them,” she said in her testimony. “He had bouts of extreme jealousy, which would often result in him wrecking our home, cornering me in a room and threatening me.”She said that she felt terrified for her life, and that he broke her down through starvation and sleep deprivation, and by threatening to kill her. In one instance, he forced her to kneel in their bedroom, tied up her hands and feet, beat her and shocked sensitive parts of her body with a device called a violet wand.When she tried to leave him, he would call her house incessantly, she said.Mr. Manson told Spin magazine in 2009 that he had called Ms. Wood 158 times one day after a breakup. “I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull in with a sledgehammer,” he said.His representatives said last year, in response to questions by Metal Hammer, that Mr. Manson’s comment in Spin was “obviously a theatrical rock star interview promoting a new record.”Mr. Manson described his views on women in a 2015 interview with Dazed, a style magazine.“Girls should always present themselves to you when you come home,” he said. “‘Hi honey, I’m home,’ and she’s wearing lingerie, legs akimbo. ‘Come and get it, honey.’”Ms. Wood told Rolling Stone magazine in 2016 that she had been raped: “By a significant other while we were together. And on a separate occasion, by the owner of a bar.”In recent years, especially after the birth of her son in 2013 and the start of the #MeToo movement, she was galvanized to become an advocate for survivors of domestic abuse, she told The New York Times in a 2018 interview. “If you’re going to be famous, for me it has to mean something, or be used for something, because otherwise it just freaks me out,” she said in the interview.That February, she testified before Congress about what she had endured.“So often we speak of these assaults as no more than a few minutes of awfulness, but the scars last a lifetime,” she said in her testimony, in which she detailed an episode in which she thought she might die at the hands of her abuser. “Not just because my abuser said to me, ‘I could kill you right now.’ But because in that moment, I felt like I left my body. I was too afraid to run, he would find me.”For years afterward, she said, she “struggled with depression, addiction, agoraphobia, night terrors,” and made two suicide attempts; she said she was eventually diagnosed with long-term post-traumatic stress disorder.Before her Congressional hearing about the Survivor’s Bill of Rights, which expanded access to medical care and more for survivors of sexual assault, Ms. Wood said she had hardly uttered the full scope of her trauma to anyone. She had barely processed it herself, she said in the 2018 interview, until she was cast in “Westworld,” the sci-fi drama in which she plays an innocent who slowly awakens to the darkness around her.Ms. Wood has said that she did not report her abuser to authorities because the statute of limitations had long since passed, and that she chose not to name him because she felt she had to come to terms with her own story first. “It took me so long to process everything and to get to a place where I felt even safe enough to speak about the abuse. And it’s scary,” she said in Harper’s Bazaar in 2019.Giving survivors more time was part of her motivation in working on the Phoenix Act, the California bill for which she testified. It passed in 2019, and took effect last year. It lengthens the statute of limitations for domestic abuse felonies to five years, and expands training for officers working on domestic violence cases.In response to Ms. Wood’s allegations on Monday, Susan Rubio, the California state senator who proposed the legislation, and who is herself a survivor of domestic abuse, called for Mr. Manson to be investigated.She said Ms. Wood had been “instrumental” in getting California’s laws changed. “When survivors speak up, they help victims realize they are not alone and empower them to come out of the shadows,” she said. “The more stories we share, the less power we give our abusers.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Rape-Revenge Tales: Cathartic? Maybe. Incomplete? Definitely.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRape-Revenge Tales: Cathartic? Maybe. Incomplete? Definitely.Films like “Promising Young Woman” should be especially urgent in the wake of #MeToo. Instead, they sell female characters short.Carey Mulligan as a medical school dropout bent on avenging a friend’s rape in “Promising Young Woman.”Credit…Merie Weismiller Wallace/Focus Features, via Associated PressJan. 14, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETThis article contains spoilers for “Promising Young Woman.”Early in “Promising Young Woman,” a pedantic creep inserts his fingers in the protagonist’s vagina. Our heroine, who has been feigning drunkenness, quickly snaps out of her stupor, shifting from easy prey to vigilante.The creep tries to cover his assault, insisting that he is a nice guy who’d felt a connection with her.“A connection?” Cassie repeats. “OK. What do I do for a living?”The man has no answer, so she continues: “How old am I? How long have I lived in the city? What are my hobbies? What’s my name?”Cassie, 29 going on 30, is a barista whose hobby is, ostensibly, this: luring would-be rapists into sardonic lectures. Yet as the movie unfurls, we learn little about her, and even less about the woman she is trying to avenge.Critics have hailed “Promising Young Woman,” written and directed by Emerald Fennell, for its timeliness, often connecting it to the #MeToo movement that has given a platform to victims of sexual harassment and abuse. As that movement continues to change the way we think about sexual violence, centering victims’ experiences and exposing abuses of power, rape-revenge stories like this one should feel more relevant than ever.Instead, “Promising Young Woman” and a handful of other recent movies — “The Perfection,” “Revenge” and “I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu” — recall films from the ’70s and ’80s that reduced rape victims to emotionless, even sexy avengers. They offer female characters a facile kind of agency. A woman, once made powerless by an attacker, can take justice into her own hands — but she must pay for that power with her personhood.Rape itself turns girls and women into little more than objects, and these films — two of them directed by women — contribute to that dehumanization, rather than defy it. They confine female characters to lives of sociopathic wrath. But it doesn’t have to be that way: The recent “Black Christmas” revival, as well as TV shows like “Big Little Lies” and “I May Destroy You,” give their victims more room to grow and heal.In “Promising Young Woman,” Cassie (Carrie Mulligan) lives to avenge her best friend, Nina. We learn that she and Nina were in medical school when another student raped Nina in front of his friends. Nina dropped out, and Cassie soon followed suit, to care for her.Despite her importance to the narrative, Nina never comes into focus. She’s dead, but we never learn how she died. We don’t even know what she looked like as an adult, since the only pictures we see of her come from Cassie’s childhood. Nina’s fiery personality shines through in glimpses — an anecdote her mother tells, a speech Cassie delivers to the rapist. But ultimately, the movie perpetuates the very wrong it condemns, turning a woman who was “fully formed from day one” into little more than the worst night of her life.“Promising Young Woman” adamantly criticizes predators and their enablers, and nods to #MeToo. (The creep Cassie deceives is writing a novel about “what it’s like to be a guy right now.”) Yet despite its assertion that rape is “every woman’s worst nightmare,” the film carelessly subjects its female characters to it, or at least the threat of it. Cassie exacts worse revenge on the women who discredited Nina than she does on nightclub predators and their enablers: She tricks a former friend into believing she has been raped and kidnaps the teenage daughter of a college dean. Cassie also offers herself up for assault, letting some of the nightclub men — like the novelist creep — violate her before she schools them.This behavior recalls that of Jennifer, a rape victim in the 1978 cult hit “I Spit on Your Grave,” who seduces two of her attackers to lure them to their dooms. In “I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu,” last year’s straight-to-DVD sequel by the original movie’s writer-director, Meir Zarchi, Jennifer (Camille Keaton) discusses the experience in a radio interview. “The only advantage at my disposal was my God’s given weapon: my sexual appeal. So I used it to entice and trick them,” she says.Jennifer’s daughter, Christy (Jamie Bernadette), does the same later when she avenges her own brutal rape. Both “I Spit on Your Grave” and the sequel revel in gang-rape sequences as much as the massacre that follows, with prolonged, explicit scenes of men (and, in the case of “Deja Vu,” one woman), taunting, wounding and penetrating their helpless victims. If the protagonists experience meaningful evolutions in their transformation from wailing victims to dead-eyed avengers, they’re not shown.The women of “Revenge” (2017) and “The Perfection” (2018), though more calculating, are barely better rendered. Vengeance takes center stage when Charlotte and Lizzie, the cellist heroines of “The Perfection” (directed by Richard Shepard), dismember the musician behind their childhood abuse. But they sacrifice their humanity along the way: Charlotte (Allison Williams) tricks Lizzie into maiming herself, and Lizzie (Logan Browning) play-acts raping Charlotte. In “Revenge,” written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, the bombshell Jen (Matilda Lutz) mows down the three men complicit in her rape and attempted murder. Despite her ingenious recovery, Jen transforms from one male fantasy to another, swapping blond curls and lollipops for booty shorts and bloodshed.Perhaps most important, none of these movies seem particularly interested in the real aftermath of rape. Their characters may shed some tears, but there are no phone calls to loved ones, no visits to hospitals or therapists, no chronic depression or panic attacks. If anything, rape makes these women more resourceful, preternaturally capable of exacting justice without fear of retribution.“Black Christmas” (2019) is a more grounded tale of rape and revenge. Though the Sophia Takal film failed to dazzle at the box office or wow critics, who scorned its supernatural climax, it acknowledged the trauma of rape as much as it did the catharsis of revenge. In the film, the sorority sister Riley (Imogen Poots) is still recovering from sexual assault at the hands of a fraternity’s former president. She copes with flashbacks and anxiety, and her friends comment on her withdrawn affect. Riley eventually vanquishes her rapist, but not as part of some violent power trip; she does so in self-defense.Michaela Coel plays a woman coping with the trauma of rape in “I May Destroy You.”Credit…Natalie Seery/HBOMore balanced takes on these themes can be found on television, where long-form storytelling makes ample room for nuance. In the first season of “Big Little Lies” (2017), the murder mystery has rape at its center. Jane (Shailene Woodley), whose attack by an unknown assailant leads to the birth of her son, struggles to cope as a young mother in a cutthroat, elitist community. When her son is accused of choking his classmate, she worries that his father’s influence might have played a role and begins to relive the incident. She fantasizes about shooting her attacker and chases flashbacks away with long runs and Martha Wainwright songs. When her rapist turns out to be her friend’s abusive husband, the show’s ensemble of women rallies around Jane. One of them kills the man to defend her friends from his wrath.The 2020 series “I May Destroy You” ruminates entirely on the aftermath of sexual trauma, as the main character, Arabella (Michaela Coel), and her friends each try to cope. In the final episode, Arabella lives through multiple confrontations with her rapist, two of which involve deception and revenge, before she eventually decides to move on.At the climax of“Promising Young Woman,” Cassie tries to torture Nina’s rapist. The man overpowers and kills her, but the script throws viewers one last revenge Hail Mary: Cassie has orchestrated his arrest from beyond the grave.This cheeky, borderline celebratory reveal (complete with “Angel of the Morning” ironically on the soundtrack) rings hollow. The film is more interested in what Cassie represented — a clapback against rape culture, a pastel-painted middle finger — than it ever was in Cassie as a human being.Though rape and revenge both figure in “Black Christmas,” “Big Little Lies” and “I May Destroy You,” their narratives do not isolate women who’ve been attacked, nor do they condemn them to single-minded quests for revenge. These women lean on other people, often other women. They find a peace that ultimately matters more than confrontations with their attackers.As the saying goes, living well is the best revenge.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Kim Ki-duk, Award-Winning South Korean Filmmaker, Dies at 59

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve lostKim Ki-duk, Award-Winning South Korean Filmmaker, Dies at 59He was celebrated for movies centered on society’s underbelly, but he was later accused of sexual misconduct. He died of Covid-19.The South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk in 2013 at the Venice Film Festival, where his “Moebius” was screened out of competition. A year earlier, his film “Pieta” had won the Golden Lion there. Credit…Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDec. 17, 2020, 12:42 p.m. ETSEOUL, South Korea — Kim Ki-duk, ​an internationally celebrated South Korean film director who made movies ​about people ​on ​the margins of society​ that ​often ​included ​shocking scenes of violence against women, and whose career was dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct, died on Dec. 11 in Latvia.​ He was 59.The cause was Covid-19 and related heart complications, his production company, Kim Ki-duk Film​, said. According to the company, he had undergone two weeks of treatment for the disease at a hospital in Latvia, where he had recently relocated and was reported to have been scouting locations for his next film.Mr. Kim remains the only South Korean director to have won ​top ​awards at the three ​major international film festivals: those in Cannes, Venice and Berlin. He ​spent much of his time abroad after allegations that he had sexually abused actresses began to haunt his career in 2017​.Few film industry groups issued formal statements on ​Mr. Kim’s death or his films. ​Film critics who shared their condolences and appreciations on social media faced blistering reactions from people who said that doing so was tantamount to violence against his victims.“I stopped teaching Kim Ki-duk’s films in my classes in 2018 when the program about his sexual assaults screened on Korean TV,” Darcy Paquet​, an American film critic​ who specializes in Korean cinema​, wrote on Twitter.​ “If someone does such awful violence to people in real life, it’s just wrong to celebrate him. I don’t care if he’s a genius (and I don’t think he was).”​But Mr. Kim’s films also attracted fans who said his depictions of poverty and violence ​helped spark important debates about life in South Korea. “I try to discover a good scent by digging into a garbage heap,” he once said of his approach to filmmaking.His movies often centered on society’s underbelly. One dealt with a coldhearted man who turned a woman he once loved into a prostitute. He also tackled issues like suicide, rape, incest, plastic surgery and mixed-race children.“Crocodile” (1996), his first film, tells the story of a homeless man who lives on the Han River in Seoul and makes a living by stealing cash from victims who kill themselves or by recovering bodies in the river and demanding rewards from grieving families. The man saves a woman from suicide and then rapes her.Mr. Kim in Seoul in 2012 with the award he had just won in Venice. He was the only South Korean director to have won ​top ​awards at the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals.Credit…Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Pieta” (2012) is perhaps Mr. Kim’s most recognized film. A deeply unnerving tale, it follows a mother and son on a quest for revenge and redemption and includes graphic scenes of torture and violence. It won the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. The year before, Mr. Kim had received an award at the Cannes festival for “Arirang,” a documentary about a near-fatal accident that occurred on one of his shoots.While his movies often garnered critical acclaim abroad, most of them were commercial failures in South Korea.“I made this movie so that we can reflect upon ourselves living in this miserable world where you are lauded for succeeding in life even if you do so through lawbreaking and corruption,” he said after his movie “One on One,” about the brutal murder of a high school girl, flopped in 2014. “I made it hoping that some will understand it. If no one does, I can’t do anything about it.”Many moviegoers, especially women, were disturbed by what they considered perverted, misogynistic and sadistic scenes of violence against women in Mr. Kim’s movies. The criticism grew significantly in 2017 when an actress starring in Mr. Kim’s movie “Moebius” accused him of forcing her into shooting a sexual scene against her will.He was later fined for slapping her in the face, but other charges were dismissed for lack of evidence or because the statute of limitations had expired.More actresses came forward with accusations of sexual abuse. Women’s rights groups in South Korea rallied behind the victims, accusing Mr. Kim of confusing “directing with abusing.”He ultimately became known as one of the many prominent ​South Korean ​men​​ — including theater directors, prosecutors, mayors, poets and Christian pastors — to face serious accusations of sexual misconduct as part of the country’s #MeToo movement. In 2018, the local broadcaster MBC aired “Master’s Naked Face,” which examined the allegations against Mr. Kim.Min-soo Jo in a scene from “Pieta” (2012), perhaps Mr. Kim’s most recognized film.Credit…Drafthouse FilmsMr. Kim denied being a sexual predator and sued his accusers for defamation. The cases were still pending in court when he died.Mr. Kim was born on Dec. 20, 1960, in ​Bongwha, a rural county in the southeast of South Korea. His early formal education ended in primary school. His father was reported to have been a disabled Korean War veteran who abused him.As a teenager, Mr. Kim toiled in factories and sweatshops. He enlisted in the South Korean Marine Corps and later enrolled in a Christian theological school, before moving to Paris to study painting when he was 30.When he returned to South Korea in 1995, he was determined to become a film director and began churning out one low-budget movie after another, winning international recognition that few South Korean directors were able to achieve.Mr. Kim is survived by his wife and a daughter.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      FKA twigs Sues Shia LaBeouf, Citing Abusive Relationship

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFKA twigs Sues Shia LaBeouf, Citing ‘Relentless’ Abusive RelationshipThe lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles by the musician, accuses the actor of sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress.The musician FKA twigs, born Tahliah Debrett Barnett, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court that accuses the actor Shia LaBeouf of sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress.Credit…Ana Cuba for The New York TimesKatie Benner and Dec. 11, 2020Updated 6:12 p.m. ETJust after Valentine’s Day in 2019, the musician FKA twigs was in a car speeding toward Los Angeles. At the wheel was her boyfriend, the actor Shia LaBeouf. He was driving recklessly, she said in a lawsuit filed on Friday, removing his seatbelt and threatening to crash unless she professed her love for him.They were returning from the desert, where Mr. LaBeouf, the star of “Transformers,” had raged at her throughout the trip, FKA twigs said in the lawsuit, once waking her up in the middle of the night, choking her. After she begged to be let out of the car, she said he pulled over at a gas station and she took her bags from the trunk. But Mr. LaBeouf followed, and assaulted her, throwing her against the car while screaming in her face, according to the suit. He then forced her back in the car.The gas station incident is at the heart of the lawsuit that says Mr. LaBeouf, 34, abused FKA twigs physically, emotionally and mentally many times in a relationship that lasted just short of a year. Her aim in coming forward, she said in an interview, was to explain how even a critically acclaimed artist with money, a home and a strong network of supporters could be caught in such a cycle.“I’d like to be able to raise awareness on the tactics that abusers use to control you and take away your agency,” FKA twigs, 32, born Tahliah Debrett Barnett, said.Mr. LaBeouf responded Thursday to the concerns raised by Ms. Barnett, and a second former girlfriend who has accused him of abusive behavior, in an email that broadly addressed his conduct.“I’m not in any position to tell anyone how my behavior made them feel,” he said in an email to The New York Times. “I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I’m ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt. There is nothing else I can really say.”The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, says that Mr. LaBeouf knowingly gave Ms. Barnett a sexually transmitted disease. It accuses him of “relentless abuse,” including sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress.Mr. LaBeouf and his representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.“I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations,” Mr. LaBeouf wrote in an email to The New York Times. Responding to specific accusations in another email, he wrote that “many of these allegations are not true.”Credit…Mark Blinch/ReutersKarolyn Pho, a stylist who is another of Mr. LaBeouf’s former girlfriends, described similarly tumultuous experiences to The Times, some of which are also outlined in the lawsuit. Once, the suit says, he drunkenly pinned her to a bed and head-butted her, enough that she bled. Afterward, she began to grapple with the idea that he was abusing her. “So much goes into breaking down a man or woman to make them OK with a certain kind of treatment,” she said in an interview.Presented with a detailed account of the claims that the women made against him, in interviews and subsequently in the lawsuit, Mr. LaBeouf, responding in a separate email, wrote that “many of these allegations are not true.” But, he continued, he owed the women “the opportunity to air their statements publicly and accept accountability for those things I have done.”He added that he was “a sober member of a 12-step program” and in therapy. “I am not cured of my PTSD and alcoholism,” he wrote, “but I am committed to doing what I need to do to recover, and I will forever be sorry to the people that I may have harmed along the way.”Mr. LaBeouf has a long history of turbulent behavior. He has been arrested several times on charges that have been dismissed, including assault and disorderly conduct, according to newspaper reports and public records. In 2015, strangers recorded video of him arguing with his girlfriend at the time, the actress Mia Goth, telling her, “This is the kind of thing that makes a person abusive.” After the men recording Mr. LaBeouf gave him a ride, he told them: “If I’d have stayed there, I would’ve killed her,” according to the video.Ms. Barnett said Mr. LaBeouf would squeeze or grab her to the point of bruising. But she did not go to the police, she said, first out of a misguided concern about harming his career, and later because she thought her account would not be taken seriously, and it would be futile.Though many states have laws that treat gender-based, sexual or domestic violence as a civil rights violation, tort suits of the kind Ms. Barnett is pursuing, with a daunting account of painful moments, are relatively uncommon; most often, allegations arise amid divorce or custody proceedings, or while seeking orders of protection. But there has been a slight uptick in civil claims since the #MeToo movement, amid more attention on the complex nature of abuse, said Julie Goldscheid, a law professor at CUNY Law School who studies gender violence and civil rights.Three women die each day at the hands of their abusers, according to the National Organization for Women. The pandemic has exacerbated dangerous situations by forcing partners to stay without interruption in close quarters, law enforcement officials said, and hotlines around the world have reported an increase in calls for help.In the lawsuit, Ms. Barnett describes how she met Mr. LaBeouf in 2018, when she was cast in “Honey Boy,” a mostly autobiographical film he wrote, and they started dating after the movie wrapped. The early days of their relationship were marked by his “over-the-top displays of affection,” she says in the lawsuit, which helped earn her trust.In an abusive relationship, there’s often a “honeymoon phase,” as some experts call it, that builds intimacy and sets a benchmark for how happy the romance could be. It serves as a powerful lure; though flashes of bliss may remain, they are meted out through increasingly controlling demands and impossible standards of behavior.Noah Jupe and Ms. Barnett on the set of “Honey Boy,” a mostly autobiographical film Mr. LaBeouf wrote.Credit…Amazon StudiosIn the lawsuit, Ms. Barnett and Ms. Pho said that Mr. LaBeouf did not like it if they spoke to or looked at male waiters; in an interview, Ms. Barnett said she learned to keep her eyes down when men spoke to her. She also stated in the suit that Mr. LaBeouf had rules about how many times a day she had to kiss and touch him, which he enforced with constant haranguing and criticism.Mr. LaBeouf convinced Ms. Barnett to stay with him in Los Angeles, she said, rather than move back to London where she and her professional circle lived. It was a step toward her isolation, she said. And he would often say that her creative team used her, a message that eventually led her to doubt them.But living with him became frightening, she said. The lawsuit says that he kept a loaded firearm by the bed and that she was scared to use the bathroom at night lest he mistake her for an intruder and shoot her. He didn’t let her wear clothing to bed, and would spin a trifling disagreement — over an artist she liked and he didn’t, for example — into an all-night fight, depriving her of sleep, the suit says.The situation came just as she was completing what became her most critically lauded album, “Magdalene.” Ms. Barnett said she found herself in stasis, struggling to fulfill her professional duties, and confounding her friends and colleagues. “Twigs is always the driving force behind her career — always a step ahead of everyone else,” said her longtime manager, Michael Stirton. “This was an extreme change in her personality and character.” The album’s release was delayed multiple times, and a tour was rescheduled at great cost, Mr. Stirton said, as Ms. Barnett receded. “I could speak to her,” he said. “But I couldn’t reach her.”As Ms. Barnett grew more isolated, she said she felt as though her safety nets were unraveling. The gas station incident had happened in public, she said, and no one stepped to her aid; an early attempt she made to tell a colleague was brushed off. “I just thought to myself, no one is ever going to believe me,” she said in an interview. “I’m unconventional. And I’m a person of color who is a female.”Slowly, with the help of a therapist, she began to strategize her exit. While she was packing to leave in spring 2019, Mr. LaBeouf turned up unannounced and terrorized her, according to a sworn statement from a witness, her housekeeper, in the lawsuit. When Ms. Barnett wouldn’t leave with him, the statement says, he “violently grabbed” her, picked her up and locked her in another room, where he yelled at her.Escaping him began to seem “both difficult and dangerous,” the lawsuit says. And even as she grew in resolve, she felt overwhelmed, she told her therapist, in an email The Times has reviewed. Though she had the means, it took several attempts for Ms. Barnett to extricate herself, she said in an interview. And it was only afterward that she realized how broken down she had become.“The whole time I was with him, I could have bought myself a business-flight plane ticket back to my four-story townhouse in Hackney,” in London, she said. And yet she didn’t. “He brought me so low, below myself, that the idea of leaving him and having to work myself back up just seemed impossible,” she said.In her lawsuit, Ms. Barnett said she plans to donate a significant portion of any monetary damages to domestic-violence charities. “It was actually very expensive, and a massive undertaking of time and resources, to get out,” she said in an interview. Her status makes her situation unusual, she said. But she wanted to share her story because it was otherwise so common.“What I went through with Shia was the worst thing I’ve ever been through in the whole of my life,” she said. “I don’t think people would ever think that it would happen to me. But I think that’s the thing. It can happen to anybody.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Bill Cosby Case: Judges Review Decision to Allow Multiple Accusers

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusClassic Holiday MoviesHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBill Cosby Case: Judges Review Decision to Allow Multiple AccusersSeveral Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices hearing Cosby’s appeal of his sexual assault conviction expressed concern that five additional women had been allowed to testify at his 2018 trial.Bill Cosby entering court during his 2018 trial on sexual assault charges. An appeal of his conviction in that case was heard Tuesday by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.Credit…Matt Slocum/Associated PressBy More

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      A Second Sudden Exit for a Hard-Charging Artistic Director

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Race and PolicingFacts on Walter Wallace Jr. CaseFacts on Breonna Taylor CaseFacts on Daniel Prude CaseFacts on George Floyd CaseAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Second Sudden Exit for a Hard-Charging Artistic DirectorAri Roth founded Mosaic Theater Company after being fired by Theater J. He resigned under pressure after complaints from staff.Ari Roth, the founding artistic director of the Mosaic Theater Company, in 2015 at the theater’s Washington, D.C., home.Credit…Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesBy More