Special: Neil Gaiman is charged with sexual assault

Special: Neil Gaiman is charged with sexual assault

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Author denies allegations by two women who had been in consensual relationships with him.

Two women with whom Neil Gaiman had consensual relationships have accused him of sexual assault, and a police complaint has been filed in New Zealand regarding this. 

 

Gaiman maintains that he vigorously refutes any claims of having non-consensual sex with the women and that the fact that the New Zealand police declined his offer of support in response to a single woman's complaint in 2022 is evidence of the case's lack of merit.

 

However, New Zealand police said it made a “number of attempts to speak to key people as part of this investigation and those efforts remain ongoing”, adding that there are “a number of factors to take into consideration with this case, including location of all parties”. 

 

The allegations span two decades and concern young women who came into contact with Gaiman – the 63 year-old bestselling author of The Sandman, Good Omens, and American Gods – as a nanny to his child and as a fan of his writing.


Listen to the four audio segments of Tortoise's investigation.

• Episode one: the bath

• Episode two: the WhatsApps

• Episode three: the pond

• Episode four: the fan


The women’s allegations were first reported in Tortoise’s podcast ‘Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman’, released on Wednesday. The four-part series examines the women’s accounts of rough and degrading sex with the author, which they say was not always consensual. 

 

Although the vast majority of cases of sexual assault happen within relationships, most allegations go unreported, and therefore unprosecuted, because of the expectation that alleged victims would not be in a relationship with their alleged assailant. While the law says that consent is for each and every sexual act, many people assume that a relationship provides ongoing consent. 

 

Scarlett, 23, alleges that Gaiman sexually assaulted her within hours of their first meeting in February 2022 in a bath at his New Zealand residence, where she worked as a nanny to his child. Tortoise is aware that according to Gaiman's account, they merely "cuddled" and "made out" in the bathtub, and he had gotten their consent. According to his perspective, during the course of the subsequent three-week sexual relationship, they only ever participated in consensual digital penetration.

 

Scarlett alleges that within this otherwise consensual relationship Gaiman engaged in rough and degrading penetrative sexual acts with her. Tortoise has seen contemporaneous messages, notes, and spoken to friends who Scarlett talked to at the time, which supports her allegations.

 

The second woman, K, was 18 when she met Gaiman at a book signing in Sarasota, Florida in 2003. She began a romantic relationship with him when she turned 20, and Gaiman was in his mid-40s, but alleges that she submitted to rough and painful sex that “she neither wanted nor enjoyed.” In one incident she alleges Gaiman penetrated her despite her asking him not to as she was suffering from a painful infection. Gaiman’s position is that he denies any unlawful behaviour with K and is disturbed by her allegations.

 

Tortoise understands that he believes K’s allegations are motivated by her regret over their relationship and that Scarlett was suffering from a condition associated with false memories at the time of her relationship with him, a claim which is not supported by her medical records and medical history.

 

Gaiman is on Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Credited with bringing comics to a global audience, he has been called “the most loved living writer”. His writing has been adapted for Netflix and Amazon mini-series, Hollywood films, and West End shows. He delivered the last annual Tolkien Lecture at Oxford University and was selected to open the latest season of the Queen’s Reading Room podcast.

THE FULL SERIES

The fan in episode fourWhen she was eighteen, the second woman to accuse Neil Gaiman of sexually abusing her first got to know him as a fan. Two years later, they started a consensual sexual relationship. She claims he once touched her without permission and was abusive. He vehemently disputes any illegal behavior and insists that their entire sexual relationship was consensual.

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