Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman - The bath | Ep 1

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Neil Gaiman is one of the world’s most successful authors. And one of the most loved. His works have been adapted for film, TV and the stage. Now two women, a former nanny and a fan, allege he sexually assaulted and abused them while they were in consensual relationships with him. He strenuously denies all the allegations.Clip: The Sandman trailer - DDC comics / Netflix Clip: The Ocean at the End of the Lane trailer - National theatre Clip: The Simpsons - DisneyReporter: Paul Caruana Galizia and Rachel JohnsonProducer: Katie GunningAdditional reporting: Jess SwinburneOriginal music and sound design: Tom KinsellaSeries editor: Matt RussellEditor: Jasper CorbettTo find out more about Tortoise:Download the Tortoise app - for a listening experience curated by our journalistsSubscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts for early access and ad-free contentBecome a member and get access to all of Tortoise's premium audio offerings and more Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, I'm Paul Caruana Galizia from Tortoise. Before we begin, I just need to warn you, this is a hard listen at times. This episode, and the whole whole series contains graphic descriptions of sex and of allegations of sexual abuse. The four episodes are designed to be listened to in their entirety because this is a story of conflicting accounts. Eight months ago, a young woman got in touch with the broadcaster Rachel Johnson. It all starts with a message on Instagram. Welcome to my podcast, Rachel Johnson's Difficult Women.

I present a show on LBC and the podcast called Difficult Women and I get a ton of messages. This one seems no different. It's from a young New Zealander called Scarlett. We're using her first name only to protect her identity. She wishes me a lovely day and says she's got a question. It's friendly, breezy even. No hint there of the bombshell email that arrives a week later. The email includes allegations of serious sexual assaults carried out by a famous man, a man who was 61 when Scarlett was 22 and worked as his child's nanny. In that first email, Scarlett doesn't name the author who she alleges sexually assaulted her within hours of their first meeting. And she says, continue to assault me over the coming month.

I arranged to talk to Scarlett and what emerges is a more complex picture. Her allegations are of abuse within a consensual sexual relationship. She tells me she did not consent to everything this author did, nor every time he did it. But in her texts and video messages to him during their brief relationship and afterwards, she declared not just her consent, but her gratitude, appreciation, affection, and even love. In other words, Scarlett's email opens a chapter of investigation into the greyest of grey areas when it comes to our sex lives. The area where the scope for genuine misinterpretation,

but also for the possibility of serious abuse. Where it can take time, even for someone to make sense of what happened, while the police, if they're called upon, often look in vain for quick and clear evidence from the start, in large part because that's what they think a jury needs for a verdict. Any one of us can be on a jury, so it's also about our understanding of consent within a sexual relationship. People still expect sexual assault to happen between strangers, when in fact

the vast majority of assault victims are or were in relationships with their assailants. It's still often assumed that by being in a relationship you provide ongoing consent for sex. It's an assumption that used to be codified. Until 1992 UK law said there could be no rape between husband and wife as by the contract of marriage a wife submitted herself irrevocably to sex at all times. Other jurisdictions have also removed the marital rape exemption, but across countries people still cling to the assumption that simply being in a relationship provides ongoing sexual consent. The law says that consent is for each and every act, whether you're in a relationship or not. But when

prosecutors bring cases of sexual assault to court, they come up against that assumption in its different forms. To people, to jurors, the behaviour of sexual assault victims conflicts with the behaviour they expect from a real victim, for them to scream, to forcefully resist, to immediately make a police report to avoid their assailant. But in fact in most cases there's no screaming or physical resistance. Police reports are delayed or never happen. And victims continue to have contact with their assailants. Often, they continue to have sex with them.

It's why Scarlett's allegations are so difficult to tell and so complicated. And why, I'd say, so important. She and the man in question look back on it in ways that sometimes overlap. They agree about details, dates, places and times of what happened between them. But not always. And when it comes to the really important questions, what was the sex really like? Was it okay? Were they both clear at the time that it was okay? They couldn't be further apart. She says it was abuse from the very beginning. In his account, the sex was loving and consensual and didn't involve full intercourse. Faced with two diametrically opposed accounts, it's inevitable that this can't be just Scarlett's

story. It has to include as much as possible of the man's version of events as well. Not just out of fairness, important though that is, but so that Paul and I, and you, have a chance of making sense of the relationship Scarlett had. A relationship, in this case, with the author, Neil Gaiman. A man who's never faced allegations of sexual misconduct before. A man who's on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Neil Gaiman is credited with bringing comic books to a global audience. His novels sell tens of millions of copies worldwide. Your waking world is shaped by dreams.

His writing has been adapted for TV miniseries on Netflix and Amazon. It isn't pretend, it is real. All of it was reamed into existence there's been a western theater show and several hollywood films he's won most international awards going in fantasy horror comic books sci-fi and children's literature i've heisted my way to the bestseller list once again he's even appeared in The Simpsons, twice. And the most brilliant part is, I don't even know how to read. He's known for his friendly interactions with his legions of fans, and his public persona is low-key, understated. But he's a creative colossus nonetheless. You know, he sort of lured me, me if you will into his psychological labyrinth so it was not straightforward at all when scarlett says in her first instagram message that she has

a question for me what she really means is she wants my help i guess that he's held to account that's literally all i want journalists don't have the same powers as the state to investigate criminal allegations, nor should we assume that role. Scarlett is exceptional in that she even went to the police in the first place, but she's unexceptional in the fact that the system seems to have failed her. So now she's turning to the press. But how could I help? Should I even? Given the seriousness of the allegations, I needed someone with experience on these kinds of stories. But this story was different. There are usually rumours swirling around. This time, there were none.

Certainly none that had reached the media. There's one lone negative news story about Neil Gaiman. That he once broke pandemic lockdown rules. And what's more, Neil Gaiman has long been outspoken in his support of women and against sexual abuse. Support that he believes to be sincere and unwavering. We understand he sees himself as highly attuned to issues of consent, and his position is that he strongly denies any allegation of sexual misconduct. Some women who I spoke to have nothing but positive things to say about him. They say they love and respect him, that they care about him and that he's helped them.

Yet what this young woman told Rachel and me painted a much more disturbing picture of Neil Gaiman. She alleges that he groomed her and repeatedly sexually assaulted her. His position is that her allegations are fantastical and false. It was so confusing because I feel like at the end of it, false. As we set out to examine her allegations, working over many months, we tried to get every side of the story and gather as much material as possible. We questioned what we were hearing the whole way through. We wondered whether it would be possible to really know what happened between two people when often no one was around, when one person says one

thing and the other has a very different account. At the same time, we felt we couldn't ignore what this young woman told us. And when Rachel and I learnt of another woman with sexual allegations like these against Neil Gaiman, a woman separated by decades and continents from the first, we felt we had to pay attention. Because here again, the woman was much younger than him. She first met him as a teenage fan, and began a sexual relationship with him when she was 20 and he was in his 40s, and already famous. It was a relationship in which, she now alleges, he performed non-consensual sex on her.

And here again, they exchanged loving and flirtatious emails, both during and long after their relationship had ended. I never wanted any of the stuff he did to me, including the more violent stuff. But I did consent to it, you know. Because even if consent for sex was given or assumed to be there, there are still questions to answer about how a powerful person treats a vulnerable one. Do they really believe that the other would say yes to sex if they didn't have power over them? Don't they have a heightened duty of care,

a greater burden to seek consent? And for the other person, where do you go when no one will listen, when the law, the police, the courts will tell you that you can't be both a lover and a victim, or first one, then the other. What you'll hear in this four part series is disturbing in its allegations of certain sexual acts. We've thought long and hard about this point of view before publishing. Neil Gaiman's position is that sexual degradation, bondage, domination, sadism and masochism

may not be to everyone's taste, but between consenting adults BDSM is lawful. Only that's not quite what the law says. It's more nuanced than that. This story plays out in three countries and in each one there are legal protections in place to stop people feeling pressured into consenting to sex that harms them. In the UK, sex that causes actual bodily harm, that is minor injuries, pain or discomfort, is unlawful even if consent is given. American criminal law generally doesn't allow consent to serious harm in sex.

And in New Zealand, the court considers the circumstances and rationality of consent in each case. The idea, of course, isn't to police what people do in their bedrooms and it's not to embarrass or shame them either, it's to prevent abuse. It's to stop consent being used as a defence when harmful sex becomes a matter of dispute. But the law or its enforcement isn't keeping up everywhere. Some people say that women are increasingly being seriously injured in what men claim to be consensual sexual acts. What you will hear is disturbingly common. One in three women faces sexual assault. It is the most prolific human rights abuse in the world. And if we can't talk about it and report on it,

then how are we ever going to grapple with it or resolve it? I'm Rachel Johnson. And I'm Paul Caruana Galizia. You're listening to the Slow Newscast from Tortoise. This is Master. Episode 1. The Bath. Just give me a timeline. Can we start with a timeline of what happened? Yeah, yeah.

When we first talk, it's on a video call. I'm in London, Scarlett's in Auckland in New Zealand. She's 23 years old but seems younger. Elfin, with wide awake eyes, her hair scraped back into a bun. So I knew Amanda as a friend and she messaged me one weekend last minute she starts her story one friday on the 4th of february 2022 when she gets a call that weekend she desperately needed help because she was recording music or something and i was like yeah sure i just stopped working weekends i've been working in like a perfumery.

Her friends, Amanda Palmer, the globally successful singer-songwriter and lead singer of the Dresden Dolls. Scarlett's been a fan of Amanda's for years, but they've been friends since 2021 after they met by chance on the street in Auckland. Amanda offers Scarlett tickets to gigs and asks her to run errands for

her. Scarlett's recently given up a job working in a perfume shop and she likes being part of Amanda's world. She's also drawn to the idea of being part of Amanda Palmer's household. But Scarlett's never met Amanda's husband, Neil Gaiman. The couple are living in separate houses on Waiheke, an exclusive island that's a short ferry hop from Auckland. On this Friday, the 4th of February, Amanda wants Scarlett to look after their six-year-old for the day on the mainland. It's a casual arrangement, there's no contract, just an offer of 25 New Zealand dollars an hour. That's about £12.

It goes well in Auckland that morning. So Amanda suggests that Scarlett travels to the island Waiheke to babysit that afternoon and evening as well. And ended up going there that weekend and she said, can you just work me full time? The role being offered to Scarlett is more like that of an au pair than a formal nanny. Scarlett will live with the family and help both parents with childcare and, as it turns out, cooking and cleaning too.

We've got the WhatsApp exchanges from that afternoon of 4th February. From them, we can work out that the first time Scarlet meets Neil Gaiman is just before 2pm at the ferry terminal. Neil Gaiman and the child go on ahead to Waiheke. Scarlet grabs an overnight bag and follows them on a later ferry. From the whatsapps we can see Neil Gaiman then arrange to meet Scarlet at his house. At five minutes past two, he writes, it's a 12 minute bus ride and a five minute walk over a secret wetland path. Later, he asks, have you got off the bus yet? Scarlett replies, yep, just walking along the wetlands. Beautiful. At 4.26pm, Neil Gaiman then messages, brilliant, see you in five minutes.

So we know that Scarlet arrives at the house at around 4.30pm. When she gets there, there's little babysitting to be done, as the child is dropped off at a pre-arranged playdate at one of Amanda's friends nearby. The child's pick-up time is left vague, and Scarlett finds herself on her own with Neil Gaiman and confused. We were alone in his house together. It was fucking awkward, to be honest. He was like on work calls and stuff and I was like, what the hell am I doing here? This is, I mean, I was like kind of stoked to be getting paid to just read basically. After he's finished his work calls, Neil Gaiman suggests they get a pizza.

And Scarlett goes to pick it up. Scarlett WhatsApps Neil Gaiman as she's waiting for the pizza. We know from her message that it's now 7.39pm. Three hours have passed since Scarlett arrived at Neil Gaiman's house. And then he came and ate outside with me and i was like it was quite baffling it was kind of peculiar but also flattering because because he's famous he certainly is he sold tens of millions of books he's had a hit show in the west end based on his book the ocean at the end of the lane and his Sandman comic series is now a Netflix smash. Also, he's recognisable.

Only wears black. Black jeans, black leather jacket, black woolly hair. Handsome in a crumpled way. You'd likely recognise him. We still had, like, time to kill, apparently. So he said, do you want to have a bath? And I was like, oh, yeah, sure. He said, OK, cool, I'll bring you a bath.

And I thought nothing on it. Rachel, I know it sounds crazy, but I truly thought nothing of it. So he runs me a bath. The bath is outside, down at the bottom of the garden, under what we call a pahutakawa tree, which is a big tree with red flowers. And he gives me a towel and says, just, you know, feel free, you know, come out, you know, when you're ready.

So I got in and, you know, it was just sort of on my phone. So Scarlett says Neil Gaiman leaves her to get into the bath alone and tells her to get out whenever she's done. She says he then goes into the house and when he comes out again, she says, he's naked. And then I hear, you know, like maybe five minutes later, clunk, clunk, clunk down to the bath, you know, the stones. And I was like, what the fuck? But also was like, maybe thinking it was normal. It's now about 9.25pm. The sun has set about an hour earlier. Neil Gaiman brings candles with him and puts them around the bath. And then he got in the bath with me in the most unfazed way, like completely nonchalant, like no issues,

just like in the least sexual way possible, basically, that I was just shookest. But like, also, is this normal? And I sat down one day and immediately went like, you know, this with my legs. Scarlett pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. She says she doesn't ask Neil Gaiman anything because she's shocked and bewildered and that his nonchalance makes her question her own discomfort maybe this is normal i've seen amanda naked many times because

that's just how she lives her life basically and she would walk around the house naked and she would go swimming naked and has a very sort of, yeah, liberal attitude towards nudity. In Neil Gaiman's account, he had invited her to take a bath with him. At 9.31pm, Scarlett sends a text to her friend in Auckland. It says, I am naked in the bath with Neil. I don't know how this happened. Don't reply, but fuck. And her friend doesn't reply, not until the next day anyway. Remember, he's 61. She's his son's nanny. She says she's not sexually attracted to him. I've just always known I love women and have been sexually attracted to women and

sort of made myself this unabashed, vocal lesbian around town, but actually I've never had any sex. But, yeah. Not with a woman. But she told us that she did have a negative sexual experience with a middle-aged man once before, when she was a teenager. It's only been five hours since Scarlett first met Neil Gaiman at the house on Waiheke Island. And now, they're sitting at opposite ends of the

same bathtub facing each other. The bath is a claw-footed roll-top old-fashioned tub. It's filled with hot water via a hose from the house to its position under an ancient spreading Pohutukawa tree. We've got a photo of the bath. It's idyllic. In his account, Neil Gaiman asks Scarlett to participate in intimate contact. And, according to his account, she agrees in a way that is pleasant and unforced. In Neil Gaiman's account, it is no more than cuddling and making out.

I should warn you that what follows is, according to Scarlett, quite graphic. He ended up sort of asking me to put my legs down and I ignored him and then he said, come on, like get comfortable. And you know, again, I was like, you know, I'm good. I'm a bit shy. And then he asked me again and sort of you know gestured and so I put them down and he started he started sort of caressing my legs. Scarlett then says that Neil Gaiman tells her to come over to his side of the bath so that she can see more of the pahutukawa tree. Silent and scared she says she does this. she says she resists more of his touching by

pulling forward and sitting up she puts her phone down on the pebbles by the bath uh it's quite i don't know it's sort of hard to talk about on zoom um but yeah made me next thing i knew his fingers were in my ass and and i wasn't really sure what was happening and um and then he made me give him a hand job. And I said, no, first, cause I'm not interested in that anatomy. And then he said, you don't know what you're missing out on, you know, come on, come over here.

And then kept pushing it and kept pushing it to the point where I was just like, fine. And then he just jerked off over me. Did you jump out of the bath at any point? Or were you like? Utterly in a state of complete bewilderment. I wasn't really sure what was happening and feeling really confused. And he started to

say really kind of quite filthy things and sort of ordering me to call him master. We understand that Neil Gaiman accepts that what he describes as digital penetration did happen between him and Scarlett, though without specifying when or how. And that Neil Gaiman's belief is that he established consent for this episode, which did not go beyond cuddling and making out in the bath. By now, it's late in the evening, and the child needs collecting from what's become an extended playdate with a group of other children at Amanda's friend nearby. They both go.

Which was fucking awkward because Neil and I both had wet hair, like at 11 o'clock at night, you know, alarm bells. Remember, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are co-parenting, but they live apart. So after collecting the child, Scarlett asks Neil Gaiman to take her to Amanda Palmer's house. Scarlett says she felt unsafe returning to his. At 11.23, Scarlett makes a note on her phone.

She records some of the things she's just described and what Neil Gaiman apparently says to her, including, I'm your master. Call me master and I'll come. In the morning, at 7.35am, Scarlett texts her friend in Auckland again. Hey, sorry for that message.

I was pretty shocked when it was happening, and I'm still in a state of shock. Haven't slept at all. Her friend finally replies and tells Scarlett to look after herself and asks if she needs to talk. Scarlett replies saying, I'm pretty calm but confused to be honest. And in the same reply, to be, it all sounds very dramatic and strange, but I'm calm and everything is okay. And I am really sorry for texting you. A cry for help? I don't know. But I know it crossed the boundaries. Everything just happened so quickly.

I was up the whole night feverish and so confused and was and sort of could conceptually understand what had happened and was googling things like Neil Gaiman, Me Too, like sexual assault Neil Gaiman, like trying to find anything in the you know sort of underbelly of the web and couldn't find anything. Scarlett says she uses private browsing to Google things she finds embarrassing, weird or sexual. As it's private browsing, there's no record of these searches, but there's copious other contemporaneous material. So it's really useful for our reporting that Scarlett recorded all her notes and texts and the timings. And there's been so much of it too, but it's really, really tough to read at times, isn't it? Yes. So that same morning on the Saturday,

the 5th of February, she texts a friend just before 8am to say, Neil and I had sex in the bath last night. She then sends another message 40 minutes later saying, but I know it crossed boundaries. The sex Scarlett mentions in her text is shorthand for what she says happened in the bath the previous night. Later on the Saturday, Scarlett says she searches online on private browsing Neil Gaiman sexual assault and Neil Gaiman me too. She texts one friend about the boundaries being crossed and another about being shocked. So Scarlett knows something's not right at this stage. But as she tries to make sense of everything, to normalise it, she also sends messages to Neil Gaiman

that appear to contradict the feelings she's disclosing to her friends. So, at 8.48am on the Saturday, just minutes after texting the friend about the crossed boundaries, she whatsapps Neil Gaiman to plan out the day ahead looking after the child. And here's where things start to get messy, emotionally and evidentially. She signs off with, Thank you for a lovely lovely night. Wow. Kiss. kiss. It was so confusing because I feel like at the end of it, he made me feel like it was consensual, but it wasn't consensual.

And the anal was the basically the last thing on the fucking planet I think is like I want to do. That same Saturday evening after she's put the child to bed, Neil Gaiman anally penetrates her. She says without asking and without using a condom. And she says that he uses butter as a lubricant. Scarlett messages another friend on the Monday. To her friend, Ms. Ma, she says, Hello, darling. I've had a crazy weekend,

to getting bitten by a spider, to ridiculously crazy and rough and kind of amazing sex. Misma remembers receiving this text. She framed it as both a positive and a negative thing in the same sentence. Like that she just had a good bit quite rough or a good bit violent or something sex with a man. And not to tell anyone we understand that neil gaiman was by this point already aware of scarlett's only previous sexual experience which was negative and with a man his position is that he was considerate of Scarlett because of this, that full penetrative sex would have been akin to taking her virginity, and so in his account, he only used his fingers.

We're told that Neil Gaiman's position is that within two days of meeting her, he discovered Scarlett was interested in mild BDSM, which they then engaged in during their three-week sexual relationship. That was the start of a month, basically, of being choked and utterly humiliated. Two weeks later on February 19th, they're in a hotel on the mainland, the Sky City Grand, Auckland, room 1619, a small double room with an en suite bathroom. It's understood that in Neil Gaiman's account of this evening, she only went to

his room to make a drop off. Again, in Scarlett's telling, what follows is graphic. NIA GAMMAN, It's so weird just saying it, it never gets organic saying this stuff because it's so outlandish and, and, and, um, sort of, yeah, pulled my, pulled my pants down and started penetrating me. And he put his hand around my mouth. I was not given any consent or space for agency. Neil Gaiman's account of this scene is that Scarlett was not meant to stay in his hotel room for long, but that at a certain point they found themselves cuddling together fully clothed under

the bedsheets. Afterwards, Neil Gaiman sends Scarlett for takeout. He has a detailed order. Street dog, no mustard or mayo, only tomato sauce. Montreal poutine, large, root beer float. It's worth pointing out that at this stage, Scarlett has nowhere else to go. She's estranged from her parents. She's no money, apart from what Neil Gaiman gives her. She's dependent on him for bed, board and income and in return he uses her as, in her words, hisisma, Scarlett describes the sex as rough, so I asked her if she had any photos of any injuries. She sent one back, a selfie of herself lying in the outside bath at Neil Gaiman's house. It's not taken on that first night, but on a different occasion.

She has a purple bruise on her right breast. There were times where, particularly one time, it was so painful and so violent that I fainted, I passed out, lost consciousness, ringing in the ears, black vision, was the pain was like celestial, you know, which is a strange word to use, but I couldn't even describe it in language. And when I regained consciousness and I was on the ground, I looked up and he was watching the rehearsals from scotland of whatever they were filming i don't know and didn't even notice that i was passed out and you know that there was blood it was so so so traumatic and i asked him to stop I said it was too much and he laughed at me, said I needed to be punished, you know, used his belt on me. One of the questions I keep coming back to is

why would anyone stay around for this? They made me feel part of their family. And they made me feel completely, deeply connected to them. And this was her vulnerability. Scarlett was initially drawn into the Gaiman Palmer celebrity ecosystem by her fascination with Amanda, a feminist rock star. And she stayed in their world because it appeared to be offering her something she didn't have and never really had. A sense that she belonged

and to a creative, eccentric and successful family. We don't know what Amanda Palmer made of this. Over the course of two months, we repeatedly emailed her and WhatsApped her. She never replied or even acknowledged our messages. We emailed two of her friends in New Zealand, asking whether they'd speak to us. One declined, the other didn't answer. And we tried, without success, a number of people who worked with her. Three days into her job as a nanny to Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer's child, or, in other words, three days after Neil Gaiman allegedly assaulted her for the first time,

Scarlett whatsapps Amanda. She said, Love hanging out with you lot. My heart is so full and it's nice to have friends again, honestly, I can't even tell you. I cried on the ferry because I realised how lonely I've been for the last six months. He'd say things to me, Rachel, that made me feel reliant on him. He'd say, I'm going to help you and I'm going to take you to London. And if you ever need anything anywhere, you know, all that stuff.

And when you're a young person, you know, it's nice to hear that stuff. It's like, oh, cool. Like if I go to London, I'll have somewhere to stay. You know, I'm thinking quite practically how old was he at this point 61 and you didn't find him attractive you never in love of course not no i never found anything erotic ever about it at all about any of it um was so abhorrent and degrading it seems actually outrageous to say some of the stuff like i do find it abstractly funny but it wasn't funny you know and it wasn't funny that when he when he left because he upped and left, it wasn't fucking funny when three weeks

later I ended up in hospital, suicidal. The way Scarlett came to see her time with Neil Gaiman appears very different to how she described it at the time. Remember, she told one friend at the time that the sex was ridiculously crazy and rough and kind of amazing. Scarlett says this reassessment began when she was hospitalised and talked to a nurse about what had brought her to the point of suicide. On the 25th of February, Neil Gaiman leaves Waiheke and New Zealand and flies to the UK. The thing that he said the morning that he left was, which I didn't understand at the time, but I completely understand now. He looked at me and said,

you're going to be the death of me girl and I was like what do you mean? He said I would have never laid a finger on you had I known you were this inexperienced and this vulnerable he knew, he fucking knew Rachel The day Neil leaves, Scarlett catches COVID. Amanda and Scarlett's friend Misma look after her.

But with Neil Gaiman gone, Scarlett feels mentally and physically broken. On the 7th of March, she's in Amanda's kitchen and she confides in her. I told her 10 days after he left, I told Amanda. Her words were, and I quote, I said, I said, Neil made a pass at me. And she said, I bet he did. Quote. Scarlett uses that expression, made a pass at me, to open up a difficult discussion with Amanda Palmer. Scarlett says she told Amanda everything that night. They stay up until two in

the morning talking. As it's too late for Scarlett to go home, she stays over. She says she could hear Amanda pacing around on the floor upstairs all night. Amanda, remember, wasn't just Neil Gaiman's wife. She's the person who hired Scarlett. She's an idol to her young female fans like Scarlett. And Amanda is very outspoken on violence against women and girls. This is what now upsets me to my core. When I told her, and she was so, almost she'd known, she said I was the 14th fucking woman that had gone to her. Scarlett recalls that number, 14, specifically. She had also told a friend at the time that this was the number that Amanda Palmer said. Again, Amanda to Neil Gaiman, advising him it's best to limit any further contact with her, advice that goes unheeded. The fallout from Scarlett's chat with Amanda isn't immediate. Amanda texts Scarlett a few days later saying Neil Gaiman owes her an apology and he whatsapps Scarlett saying

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 Scarlett goes to stay that night with her friend Misma and her partner Chris I remember I'm sitting here, she's over there, she's telling me all of this stuff, what happened in the bath, like things that happened afterwards. She's telling it in a way where it's really disturbing and full-on, but she's also kind of making it funny, I guess.

You'll already have heard how Scarlett does this. She tries to make light even laugh when it comes to trauma. And so they were like laughing. I suppose my initial response was just like, this is really weird and very disturbing. And she couldn't see at that point how much he actually had used her. Whereas to Chris and I, it was quite apparent that he would have known exactly that she was like easy prey for him. As it happens, Misma's partner Chris wrote his PhD under a world-renowned scholar of coercion, consent and sexual assault.

Chris now lectures on these issues at the University of Auckland. Chris and Misma beg Scarlett to go and see one of Chris's friends. Paulette Benton-Greig was living on the adjoining street to Neil Gaiman, although she doesn't know him. She is a lawyer and academic specialising in sexual violence against women. Paulette also used to run a service for victims of sexual assault. While this appears to be a supportive group of people for Scarlett, Neil Gaiman's position is that Chris, Misma and Paulette have an academic interest in sexual consent and so influenced Scarlett to see her relationship with him as abusive. His thinking on them as a group is that they're all of the same world view and that to the proverbial man

with a hammer every problem becomes a nail. Yet no one in this group told Scarlett what to think and that Neil Gaiman and Scarlett had a sexual relationship is undisputed by either. Scarlett went to speak to Paulette as a friend of a friend and Paulette says she was just there to listen. She came to my house and we sat in the sunshine on the deck and we talked with each other. I think like most people after something's happened to them, she needed to kind of process and compute and think about what it meant for her. What was your initial assessment of the relationship between Scarlett and Neil Gaiman?

I do remember very clearly forming the view that he had groomed her into sexual compliance. The stories that she told me about kind of how it was over the time that she was living in his house as a nanny just were classic grooming in my view. She described things like him being naked in the house and, you know, suggesting to her that if she didn't feel comfortable that with that that was just prudish and we're all grown-ups here and you know blah blah blah we understand that neil gaiman views the allegation that he groomed scarlet to be a wholesale

mischaracterization and that the idea that an individual can groom an adult immediately upon meeting them or over a three-week sexual relationship is far-fetched. But law enforcement agencies do police grooming between adults, and experts have established that grooming can take place over a matter of weeks. The New Zealand Supreme Court has found grooming can happen after an initial serious sexual assault. Paulette, Chris and Ms Ma are important in this story, not really because of their academic interests, but because Scarlett confides in them as friends soon after the alleged assault in any normal criminal investigation they would be interviewed by the police as first witnesses

neil had left he had gone overseas and he had taken their child with him but amanda was still in new zealand and she was still living in Neil's house so I said to her well you know maybe you know you really need to leave that place you know what kinds of resources do you have to be able to do that and then she told me that they had not paid her. I remember just about falling off my chair at how extraordinarily clear the exploitation was in that moment. So by the 13th of March, a month and a half after she moved to Waiheke, Scarlett hasn't even been paid properly. Neil Gaiman and his child have been gone more than two weeks, so Scarlett is left without

money or a job, stuck on Waiheke. By this point, she's spoken about what Neil Gaiman did and what they did together to Paulette, to her friends Misma and Chris, and to Amanda. Waiheke is a small island, but Misma and Amanda have only met once. They aren't friends. But later that month, Ms. Ma receives a text from Amanda, thanking her for her part in looking after Scarlett after Neil Gaiman left. She adds, it's been a rough month for everyone.

Ms. Ma is furious and feels Amanda Palmer is massively understating what Scarlett has been through. The casualness, the lack of concern. She sends Amanda an 800-word tirade. Here are some bits of it. She's writing off the back of what she's heard from Scarlett. It strikes me that perhaps you haven't grasped the severity of the situation.

Yes, Scarlett did confide in us, and so we know. That the first time he had anal sex, it was so violent that she lost consciousness from the pain. That her description of watching the sex happen to her from outside of her body is congruent with accounts of rape survivors. We know that he is 40 years older than her and that she was employed as his and your nanny at the time. We know that you knew exactly what kind of person Neil is when you put Scarlett into his house. I consider Scarlett, among many other more positive attributes, to be one of the most vulnerable people I have ever met. I know the thing she most desperately wants is to feel included and loved, to be part of a family. That she would do anything, take any amount of shit, in order to not be rejected.

Chris and I are both so worried about Scarlett, who will spend years coming to terms with this experience. And we are also deeply concerned about the likelihood of this happening to other women. Eventually, this is all going to come out. So how come you wrote that note? You said you didn't know Amanda very well. That was a very punchy note to send to her because i was so fucking angry with the manager for putting scala in that situation i'm glad i wrote that note because it contains a lot of what scala actually told me at the time

i was so blunt and explicit i guess guess, in my message. And her response was not, oh my God, I don't know what you're talking about. This is the message from a crazy person. I did think it was very interesting that she wasn't like, what are you talking about? In her reply to Ms. Ma, Amanda says, I did not know much of this.

It is horrifying. I understand what you have said, and I deeply appreciate you WhatsApp history with Neil. So chats, videos, photos. And the really unusual thing for a reporter is it allows us to see the same issue from very different angles. The messages are really hard for me to go through because of, you know, my delusion and like, and just, you know, I'm so furious with myself. What arrives in my inbox is Scarlett's full WhatsApp history with Neil Gaiman. Not just one or two messages, but everything. Hi Neil, how are you? I miss you so much as I said in my text. I hope that you're doing alright. Let me know, I worry. I am doing better today. I've been terrible. There are files of photos and videos and pages and pages of messages.

It's the messages from Scarlett to Neil Gaiman that bring us up short. There are a lot of messages like this, and they're even more shocking, if anything. They appear to tell a very different story, a story of rough sex and two consenting adults, one that seems to match Neil Gaiman's account. This series is reported by me, Rachel Johnson, and by Paul Caruana Galizia. It is written by us and by Katie Gunning, who is also the producer. Sound design and original music is by Tom Kinsella. Additional reporting is by Jess Winburn. Artwork is by John Hill.

The series editor is Matt Russell. The editor is Jasper Corbett. Thank you. TOTUS