For three decades, goth rock singer Marilyn Manson reveled in his image as the ultimate pop-culture villain.

In a U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles, the British-born actor Esmé Bianco is waging a legal battle to prove that his menacing persona was all too real.

Bianco’s federal suit, filed April 30, alleges sexual assault, sexual battery and human trafficking beginning in February 2009, when Manson flew her to L.A. to shoot a video for his song “I Want to Kill You Like They Do in the Movies.”

The video never materialized. Instead, the 39-year-old says that, over the course of four days, Manson locked her in a room, beat her with a whip and shocked her with electricity in his frigid home in Los Angeles.

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