More Women Accuse Author Neil Gaiman of Sexual Assault
More women have come forward with sexual assault allegations against author Neil Gaiman, including a woman who worked as a babysitter for him. The story in New York Magazine, which was published early this morning, offers a deep dive into Gaiman’s life, marriage, and split with Amanda Palmer, and the assault and abuse allegations that first emerged against the author last year.
Eight of Gaiman’s accusers spoke for the story — including four who previously shared their claims on the 2024 podcast series Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman — though it largely centers on claims brought by the former nanny, Scarlett Pavlovich. New York Magazine also reviewed texts and emails between the women and friends, as well as messages sent between Gaiman and the women.
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Gaiman did not speak for the piece, though denied several specific claims through legal representatives. Gaiman has denied the previous allegations against him, too, claiming all of his relationships have been consensual. Palmer also did not speak for the piece, though several of her friends did. Representatives for Gaiman did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
Pavlovich, who’d struck up a friendship with Palmer in June 2020, started working as a nanny for Gaiman and Palmer in New Zealand in February 2022 (the couple finalized their divorce later that year). She alleges that, on multiple occasions, Gaiman raped, assaulted, and degraded her, including one instance that she said took place in a small hotel room while Gaiman and Palmer’s son was also in the room, playing on an iPad.
The first alleged attack, according to Pavlovich, took place the first day she babysat. Gaiman and Palmer’s son was actually away on a playdate for most of the day, so, Pavlovich says, Gaiman offered her the chance to take a bath in a clawfoot tub in the garden. She did, but was surprised when Gaiman came back naked and allegedly got into the tub with her, and asked Pavlovich to sit on her lap.
“The next part is really amorphous,” Pavlovich told New York. “But I can tell you that he put his fingers straight into my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass. And I said, ‘No, no.’ Then he tried to rub his penis between my breasts, and I said ‘no’ as well. Then he asked if he could come on my face, and I said ‘no,’ but he did anyway. He said, ‘Call me “master,” and I’ll come.’ He said, ‘Be a good girl. You’re a good little girl.’”
Soon after, according to texts reviewed by New York, Palmer asked Pavlovich not only if she would babysit again but if she would consider staying at the house for the foreseeable future. Pavlovich, who was broke and had struggled with homelessness in the past, accepted.
She also admitted to feeling confused in the wake of the attack, saying, “You’re not thinking in a linear or logical fashion, but the mind is trying to process it in the ways that it can.”
After accepting Palmer’s offer, Pavlovich texted Gaiman, “I am consumed by thoughts of you, the things you will do to me. I’m so hungry. What a terrible creature you’ve turned me into.”
While Palmer and Gaiman were divorcing at the time, Palmer’s friends said Palmer “still had some faith in [Gaiman’s] decency,” according to the magazine, and even warned Gaiman to stay away from Pavlovich: “I remember specifically her saying, ‘You could really hurt this person and break her; keep your hands off of her,’” said one friend, who is not named in the story.
But according to Pavlovich, Gaiman attacked her on multiple occasions. She claims Gaiman made her perform oral sex while his penis had urine on it, and once allegedly pushed his penis into her mouth with such force that Pavlovich vomited. Gaiman then allegedly told her to lick the vomit off his lap and the couch.
She also accused Gaiman of beating her with his belt, then anally raping her, first without lubricant, and then using butter as a lubricant. Afterward, Gaiman allegedly called Pavlovich a “slave” and told her to “clean him up.” Pavlovich refused at first, to which she claims Gaiman replied, “Are you defying your master?” Pavlovich said she “had to lick my own shit.”
Other women have also said Gaiman told them to call him “master,” and Pavlovich even claims that, after a week working as a babysitter, Gaiman and Palmer’s son began demanding she call him “master,” as well. Gaiman allegedly once told his child, “Now, now, Scarlett’s not a slave. No, you mustn’t.”
According to Pavlovich, though, Gaiman did not seem to have boundaries around his son. She claimed that she once sat with Gaiman and the boy as they watched a TV show. Gaiman allegedly put his arm around them both, then grabbed Pavlovich’s breasts under her shirt.
The hotel incident allegedly occurred on Feb. 19, 2022. The story states that Gaiman sometimes took his son to a hotel for a night as a treat, and this time, Pavlovich claims he asked her to babysit while he got a massage. Later that night, while the boy played on his iPad, Pavlovich claimed that Gaiman claimed that Gaiman pulled Pavlovich onto the lone double bed in the room, put the covers over them, and began to have sex with her while speaking to his son. Pavlovich said she mouthed, “What the fuck are you doing?” to Gaiman. She recalls him telling his son, “You should really get off the iPad.”
Afterward, Pavlovich claimed Gaiman went to the bathroom, urinated on his hand, returned to the bed, and told Pavlovich to “lick it off.” Gaiman then allegedly returned to the bathroom, naked from the waist down, and demanded oral sex from Pavlovich before she could leave while the door was still open.
Gaiman, through his legal representatives, denied the allegations, calling them “false, not to mention, deplorable.”
Pavlovich said she eventually told Palmer about some of these alleged incidents (including those in the bath and hotel room), though did not describe them as sexual assault at the time. According to one of Palmer’s friends, the musician Lance Horne, Palmer called Gaiman that night and asked about the alleged hotel-room incident and if their son had been wearing headphones. Horne said Gaiman replied “no,” then hung up.
Pavlovich shared a text she received from Gaiman afterward: “Amanda tells me that you are having a rough time and you are really upset with me about what we did. I feel awful about this. Would you like to talk about it? Is there anything I can do to make anything better?” Pavlovich said she was hopeful she’d be able to fix the situation and responded the following day, “Hey. We’ll speak soon … hope you are doing good.”
Pavlovich also spoke about Gaiman with a friend named Misha Anaru. Both Anaru and her partner, Kris Taylor, a doctor of psychology who’d lectured on coercion, consent, and rape, said they believed Gaiman had raped Pavlovich, even though Pavolvich had not used that word or “sexual assault” to describe what had happened. Anaru shared texts between herself and Palmer, where Anaru said “the majority of my rage is directed at Neil,” but also expressed her dismay with Palmer for putting Pavlovich in that situation. “Did you not see this coming a mile away?” Anaru wrote.
In a different text exchange between Pavlovich and Gaiman, Gaiman mentioned Anaru’s texts, which Palmer had allegedly told him about. “I’m a monster in it, and Amanda seems to have bought it hook line and sinker,” Gaiman wrote. He also apologized for “bringing any upset” into Pavlovich’s life, adding, “I thought that we were a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed.”
Pavlovich said she was feeling “disconnected from everybody else” at the time and worried about upsetting Gaiman. She texted him back, “It was consensual (and wonderful!),” adding that Anaru had been “triggered by something I think.”
Pavlovich’s allegations, like others against Gaiman, often involve acts associated with BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism). While several of Gaiman’s accusers say that, at points, they went along with Gaiman, they also claim that he frequently crossed the crucial boundaries BDSM requires: That all parties consent to every action.
Two women who spoke for the story and who’d never spoken to each other each compared Gaiman to an anglerfish, which lures its prey with a bioluminescent bulb: “Instead of a light,” one said, “he would dangle a floppy-haired, soft-spoken British guy.”
Another woman who spoke for the story, Kendra Stout, says she met Gaiman when she was 18 in 2003. “He talked at length about the dominant and submissive relationship he wanted out of me,” Stout said, though he claimed he never asked what she wanted, nor did they establish any “safe words,” “aftercare,” or “limits,” which are standard elements of BDSM negotiations. Stout said Gaiman once penetrated her with his finger and penis while she had a painful UTI while she told him, “No.” She filed a police report against Gaiman last October. (A rep for Gaiman did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.)
Pavlovich filed her own police report against Gaiman in New Zealand in January 2023, accusing him of sexual assault. A spokesperson said that the “matter has been closed.”
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