Charles Manson was a Rapist
By: H. Allegra Lansing
Tags: Rape, True Crime, Charles Manson, History, Sex Trafficking

Like many pimps, he used rape as a weapon against his followers

In this forum, I’ve written several articles detailing exactly who and what Charles Manson, the leader of a thrill-kill cult, was. Those articles included “Charles Manson was a White Supremacist”, “Charles Manson was a Sex Trafficker”, and “Charles Manson was a Fame Whore”.

I have written of some of the ways that Manson coerced, manipulated and abused the young people in his Family (including sexual abuse) but it’s important to make the distinction that he was a rapist. That he used rape as a weapon repeatedly, during (and before) the era in question.

Charles Manson was sentenced to The Indiana Boys School in 1947 after he and another boy committed two armed robberies. He was just 13 years old when he was sentenced to ‘Painsville’ as the institute was called.

Plainsville was a reform school. Reform, in the 1940s, meant breaking the child of their behaviors. Guards were known to be mirthfully sadistic. Charlie’s accounts of being brutalized by guards and tormented by administrators were not challenged. Being a little kid in a place like that was especially risky. Charlie claimed that he was raped and assaulted by prison guards then other inmates shortly after his arrival.

Four years later in February 1951, Charlie and two other boys escaped from Plainsville. They stole a car, drove west and enjoyed three days of freedom. They made it all the way to Utah where they robbed several gas stations. There, they were captured and sent to the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C.

Months later, 17-year old Charlie was due to be freed. With weeks left of his sentence, he raped another boy while holding a razor at his throat. He was transferred to the Federal Reformatory in Petersburg, Virginia — a high-security facility. Months later, he was moved to a maximum-security facility in Chillicothe, Ohio.

Charlie then spent most of the next 15 years in jails and prisons, including McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington State, and Terminal Island in the Los Angeles area. His charges included the Mann Act (transporting a minor over state lines for sexual purposes) which he committed while he was pimping in California.

Charlie was released from prison in the spring of 1967, and over the next two years he began to amass his Family — a group of dropouts, delinquents, and drug-addled teens all looking for a sense of purpose and love in their lives. Instead of the peaceful communes of the day, the Family (as they were called) found Manson — a violent sociopath who used sex and drugs to control his followers, ultimately coercing several of them to commit murder.

The murders were committed in the summer of 1969, a year after Charlie had experienced his greatest chance of success: meeting drummer Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, who promised to help Manson launch a music career. Instead of trusting the itinerant ex-con and musician, Wilson and his cronies wanted to mold Charlie into their vision of a pop star. Aggravation over their manipulations festered into increasing drug use, a decline in the Family’s fortunes, and a sense that fame was slipping away. In late 1968, during a drug-induced vision, Manson imagined the songs of the Beatles’ White Album coming to life, picturing a global race war that would ultimately land him in a position of world domination. It was the beginning of the end for Charlie and his group of nomads and neophytes, and Manson’s rage began to grow.

Dennis Wilson describes living with the women of the Manson Family

In early 1969, the Family moved to Spahn Ranch, where they had stayed several months before. This 500-acre property in Chatsworth California gave them the space and distance from law enforcement for Manson to further control his followers, but it led to a sharp decline in their lifestyle from the posh homes in Topanga Canyon and the Pacific Palisades where Wilson and his friends had once welcomed them.

One of those friends was Columbia Records producer Terry Melcher. Melcher had been encouraged by Wilson to listen to Manson’s music and consider helping him get a recording deal. On several occasions, Charlie visited Melcher’s home at 10050 Cielo Drive along with Wilson. Now, in early 1969 with his opportunities scattered and diminishing, Charlie returned to Cielo Drive to chat with Melcher.

Instead, on that day (March 23rd) Charlie discovered that Melcher had moved out of Cielo Drive. A film actress (Sharon Tate) and her husband (Polish director Roman Polanski, who was overseas on a film project) had moved in. Charlie was ordered to leave the property, after a tense encounter with home owner Rudy Altobelli.

Sharon Tate at Cielo Drive

That very evening, after returning to Spahn Ranch from Cielo Drive, Manson allegedly raped a 17-year old girl. Around 5:30 that evening, a teen from nearby Reseda (identified later as C. Smith) was picked up hitchhiking by two young men. They told her they lived on an old western film set in Chatsworth and asked if she’d like to hang out with them. She agreed and was driven to Spahn Ranch. That evening, she later told police, Charlie raped her. Terrified, she asked someone to give her a ride to buy cigarettes. Once at the store, she escaped. A couple weeks later, she went to the cops.

A week later on n April 2nd, the 17-year old teen from Reseda went to the police with her claims of rape. The police questioned C. Smith but she declined to press charges. They filed the information away however, as more and more credible concerns were raised about Manson and his followers.

Two months later in early June, Charlie was preparing to perform his music while a producer (Mike Deasy) recorded him in his mobile van. While Deasy was setting up production, police arrived at Spahn Ranch to arrest Manson for statutory rape, with the girl from Reseda. Though she had declined to press charges and police weren’t sure that a violent sexual assault occurred, the fact that he was an adult and she was a minor made it a crime.

Yet somehow, Charlie got out of jail that day on just $25 bond!

The terms of his parole dictated that he not be involved with crime, and not hang around with criminals. He’d been arrested how many times, including the charge for rape? He was definitely associating with criminals, including an outlaw biker gang (the Straight Satans). His parole officer frequently couldn’t find him. He was using narcotics, breaking and entering, auto theft and other criminal activity — some of which the authorities knew about. He was also harboring underage runaways. And the police knew there were weapons at the ranch — a clear violation of what were federal probation regulations.

One of his followers, 15-year old Dianne Lake (aka Snake) reported that Charlie violently raped her. She flirted with him, after months of feeling ignored by his affections, and he took her to a trailer on the Spahn Ranch property where he raped and sodomized her, later telling her ‘That’s how we do it in prison’. In the recent EPIX miniseries (“Helter Skelter: An American Myth”) Dianne admitted that following the anal rape, she went down to a river on the ranch property to soak in, because she was left bleeding after the assault.

Dianne Lake was 14-year old when she met Charles Manson. Two years later, she testified against him.

Shortly after the assault, other members of the Family noted that Dianne was in poor shape.

“One of the girls found her sitting beside George, saying something like ‘Walt Disney died for us.’ Afterward, George (Spahn)… told me, ‘There’s something wrong with that girl’.” — Reflexion by Lynette Fromme ©2018 Peasenhall Press

In, fact the teen had to be led to the shower by the other women, to be bathed.

By the summer of 1969, things were continuing to decline for the Manson Family. They were reduced to stealing for food, and remaining at Spahn Ranch which was in rather derelict conditions.

That summer, 15-year old Sherry Cooper started working at Spahn Ranch as a caretaker for the horses. On July 22nd, the Manson Family initiated Cooper (who they called Simi Valley Sherry) with a group orgy that verged on rape. According to later testimony by Linda Kasabian (who accompanied the killers to Sharon Tate’s home the night of the murders but did not participate in the killings), she saw Manson try to perform intercourse with the girl, who bit him. Charlie slapped her in the face, knocked her down, and engaged in an undetermined sexual act. He then told the male and female members of the Family to engage in sexual acts with Sherry. They each took off their clothes as directed and followed his orders.

Sherry Cooper was a 15-year old horse groomer at Spahn Ranch when she was raped by Manson and the Family

Meanwhile, law enforcement was building a significant case against the Family. Deputy Sheriff William Gleason of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office . Gleason was investigating reports of auto theft at the ranch. He’d compiled a dossier of information about Manson and the Family and interviewed one of the young members (16-year old Kitty Lutesinger). Kitty told Gleason about the auto thefts, drugs and guns, stolen credit cards plus the underage runaways living at Spahn Ranch. Gleason looked up Manson’s record and discovered the statutory rape arrest on June 4th.

Days after seven people were murdered in August 1969 by the Manson Family, Gleason and his associates raided Spahn Ranch. Everyone was arrested, but released days later due to an administrative error with the warrant. One of the deputy sheriff’s involved with the raid never understood the leniency that was given to Manson and his gang:

“You have to remember that Charlie was on federal parole… Do you realize all the shit he was getting away with while he was on parole? Now here’s the kicker: Before the Tate killings, he had been arrested… twice for statutory rape. Never got imprisoned for parole violation. During the Tate killings and the Spahn Ranch raid, Manson’s parole officer was on vacation, so he had no knowledge of Manson being incarcerated, so naturally Manson was released, but why wasn’t a parole hold put on him?” — Preston Guillory, former deputy sheriff at the Malibu Sheriff’s Department, quoted in Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture by Paul Krassner ©1993 Simon & Schuster

After the murders, Charlie and the Family escaped to Death Valley to avoid being inplicated. Weeks later, Charlie tried to force Simi Valley Sherry to perform oral sex on ranch hand Juan Flynn. Sherry refused and Charlie beat her soundly for her insubordination. He then forced another girl, 17-year old Barbara Hoyt, to do what Sherry refused and in fear for her safety, Hoyt complied. The two girls ran away the following day.

Manson and the other members of his Family were arrested a month after this incident on charges of arson, but after someone started talking, police eventually realized that some of them were also suspected of the Tate/LaBianca murders.

Charlie was tried for murder and found guilty, as were six other members of his Family.

Manson was never convicted of rape.

Dianne Lake wrote a memoir about her life with the Family (Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties by Dianne Lake, Deborah Herman ©2017 William Morrow)

Simi Valley Sherry married a member of the Straight Satans motorcycle club, had a daughter with him, divorced, lost her daughter in a car accident in 1991, remarried and now lives in the greater Los Angeles area.

Barbara Hoyt was poisoned with a LSD-laced hamburger by another member of the Family to prevent her testimony during Manson’s 1970 trial. Hoyt survived the attack and went on to testify during the trial, as well as during parole hearings to prevent the release of any of the killers. Barbara died in 2017 of kidney failure.

C. Smith has never been identified.

Learn more about the Family by visiting MansonFamily.net