Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman - The lawsuit | Master ep 7

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Neil Gaiman faces a lawsuit in the United States. The first woman to come forward and accuse the best-selling author of sexual assault has filed a complaint against him and his estranged wife, Amanda Palmer. In this episode she explains why she’s taking action. Neil Gaiman denies the allegations and says he has ‘never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.’Reporter: Rachel JohnsonProducer: Katie GunningSound Design: Dominic DelargyArtwork: Lola WilliamsEditor: Jasper Corbett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was a while back in October 2023, was a one-off event, you just never know, right? Scarlett had filed a police report in New Zealand alleging that Neil Gaiman had assaulted her, but felt that New Zealand's police were dragging their heels. So when she got in touch it was in part because she felt she had nowhere else to go. And you know I stepped over those guardrails and I walked down that trail and believed in you and believed in Paul and believed in Tortoise. With Paul Caruana Galizia, then a reporter at Tortoise, now at the Financial Times, we spent months investigating Scarlett's allegations.

Scarlett's account was of degrading, violent and rough sex that she says she never consented to. Her story was complicated and nuanced, and she knew that. As time went on, we learnt just how complicated it was. The interesting thing is, last night, Scarlett shared her WhatsApp history with me, and 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 my delusion. I'm so furious with myself. She shared with us a long trail of affectionate and flirtatious messages between her and Neil Gaiman that appeared to verify his side of the story, that any sexual contact he had with Scarlett or any of the other women who spoke to us was consensual. Across the series we heard the accounts of four more women, Kendra, Julia, Claire and Caroline. You guys break the story with Scarlett. And when I listened to that, it was absolutely my story with, you know, with with different details, but the same thing, the master, the the coercion, the the having no money and being incredibly vulnerable.

All of it was just my story. This is Caroline Walner, an artist who lived on Neil Gaiman's estate in Woodstock in upstate New York. She had a loose deal that she and her family could live there, in exchange for her and her husband doing errands and caretaking. But after her marriage broke down, she says she felt pressured into having sex with Gaiman in return for him allowing her and her three teenage daughters to stay in the house. Eventually, she was ordered to leave. Following treatment for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, Caroline received a payment of $275,000 from Neil Gaiman,

along with a non-disclosure agreement, which prohibited her from talking about Gaiman with members of her family, any friends or associates, or from taking any court action against him. I had to keep all this stuff secret and it was an incredibly unhealthy experience for me and I didn't really even know it you know because I don't know I was just trying to get past it and I couldn't because I hadn't spoken about it then your story comes out and then it was just this moment of clarity and I decided to do it and I called Paul and you know and I was really hesitant at first. Caroline disregards her NDA and speaks out.

For Scarlett, hearing the accounts of the other women was healing. You don't know if when you walk through that trail you're going to find another person and what an experience it was to be in those woods and then to and what an experience it was to be in those woods and then to step into an open meadow full of wise women that understand. And now we hold each other and what an honor. It feels like a counterrevolution against the isolation and alienation of abuse.

Yeah, we've found great solace in each other. Then, this January, New York Magazine publishes a cover story entitled There is No Safe Word, how the bestselling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades. The article is built on Tortoise's reporting and also extends the number of women making allegations to nine both on and off the record. The next day, the author releases a statement on his website entitled Breaking the Silence. stories now being told simply never happened, while others have been so distorted from what actually took place that they bear no relationship to reality. I am prepared to take responsibility for any missteps I made. I'm not willing to turn my back on the truth and I can't accept being described as someone I am not, and cannot and will not admit to

doing things I didn't do. And there was a strenuous denial that any of the sex was unconsensual. 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 am far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone, ever. As I reflect on my past and as I re-review everything that actually happened as opposed to what is being alleged,

I don't accept there was any abuse." Amanda Palmer also posts a much shorter statement on social media. She can't offer comment, she says. She is first and foremost apparent. And then, just one day before the three-year statute of limitations to file a case in the U.S. is about to expire, dated February 3, 2025, United States District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, Scarlett files a civil lawsuit in three U.S. states.

Scarlett Pavlovich, plaintiff, against Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, defendants. This claim arises out of defendant Neil Gaiman's sexual abuse of plaintiff and his wife Amanda Palmer's role in procuring and presenting plaintiff to Gaiman for such abuse. What's immediately striking is that the filing includes allegations against Amanda Palmer, as well as Neil Gaiman. It alleges that together they violated laws on human trafficking. And as well as complaints of assault, battery and inflicting emotional distress against Neil Gaiman, there's an accusation of negligence against Amanda Palmer.

Of course, Scarlett's lawsuit is just one side in a legal case, it's not yet been heard or cross-examined in court, and neither Neil Gaiman or Amanda Palmer have filed their defence. Nevertheless, it's a detailed and in places graphic document. Not necessarily because many new allegations have emerged from it, but because of what we can now report and what it means. I 7. The Lawsuit. Scarlett, I can't believe you're here. Same. Same. After dozens of hours of online conversations and phone calls, I'm finally sitting opposite Scarlett in Tortoises Studio in London. It's always surprising who you hear from.

Extended friends have reached out to me from years ago, you know, or people that I worked with years and years ago, and the support has been really, really emboldening. What about your family? It's been a challenge because they don't understand what I'm going through and they don't have the vocabulary to understand what I'm going through. My family think that this is about publicity, which is extraordinary.

And they don't seem to understand the danger that comes with speaking out as a woman about abuse and speaking out publicly with where you are and what you look like. And so, yeah, my family, it's difficult. Scarlett's now a student at St Andrews University in Scotland reading history of art and a long way from home. Even when I'm alone in Scotland or, you know, chipping away at books and just knowing that there are people that get it, you know, there are women, you know, they really feel like families that understand so instinctively. Chief among her supporters are Kendra and Caroline.

I'm struck by the incredible bond between them. We're both like, we don't have any money. We don't have any power. The only thing that we have is our courage, you know. Our courage and our voices and that's what we're using. They have, it seems, drawn strength from each other. I cannot tell you what an act of recovery that is. You know, this year is about continuing that. What she means by this year is the lawsuit filed in three states against Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. When we left your story back in July, Scarlett, it was really unfinished and you felt, as I remember, that you'd never had any accountability. Is this filing one way that you are now trying to get the accountability that you feel you've been denied.

I think this is about how can, as a woman, how do you get justice? I think this is about also about the journey from being a victim to a survivor. A lot of that involves being the adult in the room that maybe your younger version of yourself needed at that time. When Scarlett met Amanda, she was 22. When she was allegedly first assaulted by Neil Gaiman, she was 23. She's now 26, but she says she won't let this go for the sake of any young people who might come after her. If you have the strength to be able to do it, I do think it's a responsibility. Scarlett has tried to get justice before. She reported allegations of abuse by Neil

Gaiman to the police in New Zealand and was interviewed in January 2023. But the police felt Scarlett's messages and interactions with Neil Gaiman meant there wasn't a reasonable prospect of conviction. This time, Scarlett is using the civil courts. Gaiman has a decades-long history of sexual misconduct consistent with the actions that will be described in the following paragraphs. The lawsuit is a 27-page document which painstakingly lays out allegation after allegation. Scarlett didn't want to discuss the allegations in detail.

Her view is that the claim should stand on its own as a record of what happened to her, but she did read some parts of it out. This misconduct includes sexual contact with multiple women who have not consented to his actions. In cases where his victims submitted to sexual contact with Gaiman, his actions have often exceeded any consent that might have been granted. That line, his actions have often exceeded any consent that might have been granted,

acknowledges that grey area that we frequently referred to throughout this story, that if you're in a relationship with someone, what does consent for each and every sexual act look like? The lawsuit goes on. Since at least 2015, Palmer has been aware of Gaiman's pattern of sexual misconduct. One thing the claim does which our original reporting didn't is accuse Amanda Palmer of complicity of enabling Neil Gaiman's behaviour towards Scarlett. In a statement to us, a spokesperson for Amanda Palmer said, Amanda Palmer denies the allegations made against her by Scarlett Pavlovich.

She first became aware of the sexual assault allegations against Mr. Gaiman from the Tortoise podcast. While Ms. Palmer finds these allegations disturbing, she will not comment further at this time. Scarlett is seeking at least $7 million in damages. That's about five and a half million pounds. I think the main thing is this shift in focus onto Amanda. I'm going through the lawsuit with Paul Caruana Galizia. There's a heading that says Palmer as in Amanda Palmer targets Scarlett and makes very clear

that Scarlett was brought into this whole story by Amanda Palmer in Auckland, New Zealand in 2020 it says and we knew that. But the way it's written out in this lawsuit is to say this started with Amanda, later on it says Amanda aided and abetted Neil Gaiman's behaviour. So Amanda goes from being a kind of almost background figure to a protagonist. And a co-defendant. That's right. It's filed against both of them. And I think that's significant. I think that's really significant actually, because when we were working on the podcast,

it was this kind of question we were always asking. What role did she play? Did she know? How much did she know? I think it's become impossible to ignore her role. At one point the civil claim alleges that Amanda Palmer had told Neil Gaiman that Scarlett was vulnerable. It's something we reported on, that Scarlett said that Neil Gaiman had told her, Amanda told me I couldn't have you. It sounds there like Amanda Palmer is trying

to keep the two separate to protect Scarlett, but the legal filing implies a different motive. Interestingly Scarlett's lawsuit says that even if Amanda Palmer told Neil Gaiman he couldn't have Scarlett, saying that would have fuelled Neil Gaiman he couldn't have Scarlett saying that would have fueled Neil Gaiman's desire to have Scarlett as a sexual partner regardless of scholars desire or consent. And then in fact on page eight we have Palmer in other words either knew or should have known that she was marking Scarlett as prey in Gaiman's eyes. The job required her to care for the child at both Palmer and Gaiman's houses. Palmer and Gaiman promised that Scarlet would be paid for the work,

but Palmer and Gaiman did not pay Scarlet for the work. She was, in effect, an economic hostage to Palmer and Gaiman. Scarlet's told us that some money was eventually transferred, but insists she wasn't paid by the couple until after she'd stopped working for them. Non-payment is something that Caroline also accuses Neil Gaiman of. He didn't pay.

He took away my living situation. He took away my work. You know, what he did to me was, you know, it was basically like prostitution. I mean, I don't know. It was like he was threatening me with eviction and making me give him blowjobs. And I was terrified.

And then when I stopped, he evicted me immediately. and then when I stopped he evicted me immediately. Neil Gaiman's position is that the oral sex for rent arrangement is an outrageous and false claim. In the words of his account, their relationship was entirely consensual and she instigated sex with him. In addition, Neil Gaiman's position is that asking Caroline to leave the property was always a possibility, as she'd been living there with her family, rent-free, for the preceding six years. Caroline says she was dependent on Neil Gaiman for keeping a roof over her and her three daughter's heads. She alleges that she was providing sexual services and domestic services for a number of weeks without any recompense at all, and the instability it caused made her vulnerable and

unable to consent. I think the story really tested our understanding of consent and coercion. of consent and coercion. So there is a tendency for people to report on quite clear-cut sexual misconduct stories, like a clear-cut case of assault or rape. When you have situations like the ones the women we spoke to described where the allegations of assault existed within these strange problematic relationships, it becomes very hard because you do have these, you do have this kind of evidence of consent. You know, you have people saying,

I miss you, I love you and so on. There were multiple messages from Scarlett along these lines. This one that reads, it was consensual. How many times do I have to fucking tell everyone? And another that says, I think you're a wonderful person and a friend. I would never me to you. I don't know where that came from. And I have told Amanda that even though it began questionably, eventually it was undoubtedly consensual and I enjoyed it. I began thinking differently about these issues that I remember thinking, you can't expect someone to make a free choice under the conditions you

described, whether dependent on the man in this case for housing, employment, all stability really Scarlett had in her life at that point. The key question for us was consent freely given. The key question for us was consent freely given. He came back to us via his lawyers and said, what was I supposed to think? Look at all these messages they sent me. But even when such messages appear to show love and support and when in this case, they also implied that consent was freely given, there are still questions to answer about how a person who has power and wealth treats someone who is reliant on them for their housing and their

job. Can there be reasonable belief in consent when the power imbalance is so stark? There's something else in the legal filing. Some incidences took place in the presence of Gaiman and Palmer's child. Scarlett's claim details an allegation of sexual assault that she says took place in a hotel room in Auckland in New Zealand in February 2022, while Neil Gaiman's child played on an iPad nearby. Neil Gaiman has vehemently denied this version of events. His account is that on this day they cuddled fully clothed under the bedclothes, and that his son was not exposed to any sexual act. His position overall is that he never had full penetrative

sex with Scarlett. He has described her version of events as false and defamatory. I wanted to know what Scarlett's life had been like since she shared her story with us. Did having her story out there change anything? What has this cost you? What have you lost? I think it feels so cliché to say youth, doesn't it? No. And yet, I used to have a lot more trust in terms of other people and my day-to-day relationships. And I think I've just, you know, naturally one wants to sort of clench up. And so it's

a constant kind of like act of surrender every day to remember to not seize up whenever I'm having a real conversation or you know there's a sense of intimacy I think that I had before with how I engage with the world and the loss is definitely around the barriers that I have that I have erected you know that are hard as stone. Privacy. For Scarlett, all the details are exposing. She gets online hate as well as support. And it's hard when you meet new people, especially when you're starting out at university. You're that Scarlett. That's hard to navigate, knowing that they've probably read, like, some pretty grotesque

stuff about what happened. Yeah. And now she faces the prospect of it all being aired in a courtroom. This is terrifying because it's opening myself up to every which way of scrutiny. And that's not because I haven't told the truth or been duplicitous, that's because the role of the law is not to really scrutinise him, it's really to always scrutinise you. Me, correct.

At times she seems strong enough for the ordeal ahead of her, at other times less so. I'm grateful to be able to talk to you right now. It's still colored by this, the most horrible thing and the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to me. And the thing that almost took my life more than a few times, you know, that continued to make me suicidal last year. And that doesn't leave as brave of a face as

I can put on right now today and the exhaustion. I'm exhausted. I am so exhausted. Scarlett draws most of her strength and her stamina from the other women, including Kendra and Caroline. Scarlett, she's a queen, just the courage and the tenacity and just of her staying with this. And I think that once you hear all these stories from other women, like I know Scarlett feels like this because I feel like this too, you know that you have from other women, like I know Scarlett feels like this because I feel like this too, you know that you have to do this, you know.

Like it's the only right thing to do. And the right thing to do, say Caroline, Kendra and Scarlett, is to try and get some form of accountability. Some of the women have formed a WhatsApp group and a couple of months ago, they got together in person. I was coming on Christmas Eve in Scotland and everyone had left St Andrews and I got an email from a mysterious benefactor and women who will not be named knew that I was having a really lonely, lonely December period at St. Andrews because truly it felt like I was the last student standing. And I had a ticket in my inbox. Scarlett got on a plane and flew to the US. Kendra picked me up from the airport with her husband and we drove that night, it was Christmas Eve, we drove to a cabin in the woods and

I met her parents and we all had a beautiful wholesome Christmas. But Kendra and I just spent, it was like meeting a sister truly. Will you look alike of course? Yes we do, we do. And then a few days, after a few days in the cabin, we drove to Athens and had New Year's with Caroline and Michael Stipe. Yes, that Michael Stipe lead singer of REM and an old friend of Caroline Walners. I was staying at his house over New Year's.

I always do. I always spend New Year's with him. And just Scarlett came and Kendra and it was amazing. I mean it was honestly like the best feeling in the world. We all had a bonfire and wrote things. We wrote resolutions for 2025 and threw them into the fire. The things we wanted the New Year to bring, the things we wanted to let go of. Mine was about reclamation and, you know, a real act of repair. This year I have to be a survivor. And I like that word, you know.

I'm really interested in how you can alchemize, you know, when you're in such a state of subordination, disempowerment, you know, transforming that into stamina, truth, knowledge, power, and just standing up to bullies. We approached Neil Gaiman directly and via his lawyers for his response to the allegations in the legal claim filed against him and Amanda Palmer. We received no reply. Thank you for listening.

This episode was written and reported by me, Rachel Johnson, and by Katie Gunning, who is also the producer. Additional reporting was by Phoebe Davis. Sound design was by Dominic DeLargie. The executive producer for the slow newscast is Matt Russell. The editor was Jasper Corbett. Tortoise