Neil Gaiman Faces New Sexual Assault Allegations
New allegations of sexual misconduct and assault have surfaced against Neil Gaiman, the best-selling fantasy author whose books Good Omens, American Gods and The Sandman have become TV series.
On Monday, New York Magazine published a cover story titled, “There Is No Safe Word,” with writer Lila Shapiro’s piece detailing new claims against Gaiman based on interviews with eight women. This follows the July 2024 release of the Tortoise Media podcast Master, which reported earlier graphic accusations by five women against the celebrated genre writer. (Four of those women were among those who spoke for the New York Magazine piece.)
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One of the claims comes from Scarlett Pavlovich, a former babysitter for Gaiman and his ex-wife Amanda Palmer, who described being sexually assaulted in February 2022 by Gaiman in New Zealand in a backyard bathtub.
She also alleged Gaiman assaulted her under the blankets on a hotel room bed while his son played with an iPad in the same room. (Gaiman’s reps denied this claim, calling them “false, not to mention, deplorable,” to New York Magazine.)
A police report accusing Gaiman of a sexual assault was made in January 2023, but the investigation was eventually dropped.
Another sexual misconduct claim detailed in the New York Magazine feature comes from Brenda (a pseudonym), who recalled meeting Gaiman in the 1990s at a book signing. A few years later, she and Gaiman had a sexual encounter at a horror convention.
“He seemed to have a script,” Brenda recounted. “He wanted me to call him ‘master’ immediately… It was like he’d gone into this ritual that had nothing to do with me.”
Upcoming Gaiman book-to-screen adaptations include The Sandman season two at Netflix, the Amazon miniseries Anansi Boys, and the concluding 90-minute episode of Good Omens, also at Amazon. The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Netflix and Amazon for comment on the status of those projects, and also has reached out Gaiman for direct comment on the magazine cover story allegations.
Gaiman has also written screenplays for Neverwhere and Mirrormask, penned an episode of Doctor Who, co-wrote Beowulf with Robert Zemeckis and produced the film Stardust.
Gaiman, via his representatives, told the New York Magazine he and the women had engaged in “consensual encounters.” And on Tuesday, the day after the article published, he wrote a response on his personal blog.
“As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever,” Gaiman wrote. “I went back to read the messages I exchanged with the women around and following the occasions that have subsequently been reported as being abusive. These messages read now as they did when I received them – of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again. At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides.”
Added the author: “And I also realise, looking through them, years later, that I could have and should have done so much better. I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been.”
Jan. 14, 1:32 p.m. Updated with excerpts from Gaiman’s blog post.
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