Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman - The pond | Ep 3

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

New Zealand police tell the former nanny there isn’t enough evidence to actively pursue her sexual assault complaint against Neil Gaiman. He says he offered himself up for an interview with the police. But the facts may indicate otherwise.Clip: 1968 interview with Neil Gaiman - BBC Clip: Big Bang Theory, series 11, episode 21 - CBS/Warner BrosClip: Newsnight - BBC Clip: William Morrow 2014Clip: Politics and Prose bookstore 2013Reporter: 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.

TORTUS TORTUS Scarlett, I apologise for upsetting you. It's OK. It's a really hard situation, Mother. I can never be sitting here where you are. I never will be. I've been doing this job for 37 years. Scarlett is at a police station in Auckland to get an update on her complaint of sexual assault against Neil Gaiman.

It's the first week of March 2024. The complaint is one she filed more than a year earlier. It centres on that evening in the bath, the first time she'd met Neil Gaiman. In your explanation in your interview, you've neither said anything to the other person, according to your interview, and neither have you carried out any physical actions that might suggest that you weren't consenting. I can't keep lying there like a freaked out fish. Scarlett's description of lying there like a freaked out fish isn't enough.

It's about our role in protecting the victims from putting them through another trauma in court where the question marks that I've got only get bigger in court. When a defence lawyer comes onto where I'm at now, a defence lawyer will make you look like you asked for it and everything else because... The police are telling her, in summary, that her complaint wouldn't stand up in court because they say they don't have the evidence to bring a prosecution. In your case with the Guymon matter, it wouldn't stand up in court and you would probably come off for the worse if we took this to court.

It's not just that New Zealand police think Scarlett's case doesn't meet the evidential threshold. They're saying that if it went to court, the process would be too punishing for her to handle. On the face of it, the police's decision should give us pause. They've looked at her complaint and said that Scarlett's behaviour with Neil Gaiman means that they do not think there's a reasonable prospect of conviction.

And yet, we're examining her case. Why? Alongside the general question that so many people ask of why the police don't seem to pursue allegations of sexual abuse with more zeal, there's a specific one here. How can the police investigate such allegations when there is wider evidence of consent?

In other words, is it possible that the man can assume he has consent, the woman believes she has not consented to what he is doing, and the complaints still be properly investigated? Is there still a gap between the protections individuals might expect and the protections the law actually provides. There were a couple of questions I wanted to ask, if that's okay, just for my own solution. Have you interviewed Neil or Amanda or anyone? Neil Garman?

Yeah. No. No, yeah. Or Amanda Palmer? No. Okay. He has explained to you when we spoke, Amanda wasn't present. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And anyone else?

No. No, okay. As I said to you when we kicked off Scarlett, this is purely based on your interview alone. Yeah, yeah. The police don't say why they didn't talk to Neil Gaiman. According to his account, they never even asked him for an interview. We've tried to get to the bottom of this, because it matters. How can the police be so sure Scarlett's complaint doesn't meet the evidential threshold without interviewing the suspect?

For all they know, he might have given useful evidence. So, from Neil Gaiman's account, we're told that when he learnt about the allegations against him, he hired a lawyer in New Zealand to offer the police both an interview and the transcript of his messages with Scarlett. But, according to his account, the police advised him the file would be closed. His position is that this reflects a lack of substance in Scarlett's complaint. We asked New Zealand police why they didn't take up Neil Gaiman's offer of assistance,

and when it was made. Police have made a number of attempts to speak to key people as part of this investigation and those efforts remain ongoing. At this stage there is insufficient evidence to proceed with charges. Currently police have reviewed the matter and will continue to consider further possible lines of inquiry. If further information comes to light, police are open to reassessing the matter and would encourage anyone with information that may assist to contact us. When we then asked New Zealand police to help us reconcile what they told us with Neil Gaiman's position that he wasn't asked,

they added There are a number of factors to take into consideration with this case, including location of all parties. Meaning, Neil Gaiman wasn't in New Zealand, and police forces don't have much power to compel a person to return to a country and cooperate. So was Neil Gaiman's offer of assistance specifically for an interview in person in New Zealand? The police said they couldn't comment.

Neil Gaiman's account was that his future travel plans were made known to the police. Back in the meeting, devastated that the police are telling her they won't actively pursue her complaint, Scarlett asks the officers one more question. I wanted to know if anyone else had come forward, but that's clearly not the case. Well, I've taken on board what you said about other people, and I've done an open-source search, and I've found nothing that supports, that is up to mischief with other people as well.

Okay. It was sort of like one issue over there. Yeah. I think that's everything. Yeah, thank you. It might seem like a strange question to have to ask. What other potential crime would require the victim to track down other victims to be believed? We don't ask, but who else did he kill, and disbelieve an allegation of murder simply because the accused hasn't faced previous allegations of murder. In the event of a murder though, there's a body. In a case of sexual abuse, it's often only two people in the room, one person's account versus another. The reason police look for previous cases is that people have a sexual fingerprint. The same behaviours in and around sex. When it comes to abuse, assault and sexual violence, one of the ways that prosecutors

may seek to prove the case in court is to show a pattern of behaviour. Scarlett asks the police if other women have come forward. They tell her they couldn't find anything on the internet. They tell her that, as things stand, they can't pursue her complaint any further. The news devastates her, but she saw it coming. The police had called her months earlier to suggest her complaint might not go forward. That's why, on the 3rd of October 2023, Scarlett turns to journalists. When I reached out to you, I think it was evident to me that there was nothing that was going to happen. And I can fucking see why people don't do it, because it almost makes it worse. Well, it does make it worse because it's so invalidating, because it took a lot to sort of galvanise

that courage in myself to go to the police and to believe myself enough, you know, to go to the police. We start searching, not because we have to do the police work ourselves. Journalists rightly don't have the powers of the state to investigate. But because Scarlett gives us another lead, she alleges to us that Neil Gaiman's treatment of her is part of a wider pattern of behaviour, that she's one part of the story. It takes months.

Months of interviewing people from California to New Zealand, from London to New York, even chasing leads around a sleepy market town in the south of England. We spoke to his friends. One says she's known Neil Gaiman for 12 years. She says that while she's alive to his faults, she doesn't believe him capable of the sexual misconduct alleged against him, that she'd go to the wall for him on this, that she'd be stunned if the allegations were true. This friend also said that, like her, Neil Gaiman has autism. On his social media, he's described autism as both his superpower and his kryptonite. His friend said that his autism

may explain what she called some of his mistakes, that it contributes to what she called his naivety. And then we spoke to another woman who's known him for about a decade, a woman who enjoys rough sex and has enjoyed it with him as his on-and-off lover. She said her experiences with him have been incredible. This friend, in fact, said she has nothing but positive things to say about Neil Gaiman, that he has helped her through hard times and that she loves, respects and cares about him. You'll hear all sides as we try to find out if Scarlett is alone or if her question to the police about other women

might yield a different answer. In the process, we learn a lot more about Neil Gaiman. We go right back to the beginning, all the way to, as his autobiographical novel puts it, the ocean at the end of the lane. I'm Rachel Johnson. And I'm Paul Caruana Galizia. You're listening to Master from Tortoise, episode three, The Pond. One moment we're amongst tidy, detached homes and neat gardens of a housing estate on the edge of east grinstead in sussex and the next we're on a winding narrow country lane banked by hedges

we know neil gaiman lived in a house at the top of this lane but we want to follow it to the bottom and locate the body of water that's at the heart of his best-selling novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The ocean that was a duck pond was the place that I went into the story with. It was the thing that was there. In the book, the pond morphs into a magical, time-shifting ocean. A short story really about a sort of a seven-year-old me. The family wasn't quite my family, but the world was my world. Neil's given lots of interviews where he says the inspiration for the story is here from his own childhood. The magic of a book, the magic of a story,

is it's only this many pages. But you can fit the universe inside. There are people in there. There's a world in there. There's Sussex in 1968 in here. It's an idyllic pastoral setting. The lane crosses over a stream and is bordered by clumps of wild garlic and bluebells. Right, we're almost at the end of the lane. It turns out there are several farms on this lane. In the 70s at some point they built that whole estate that you can

see, but when my parents bought it 44 years ago, that was all barley fields. There was no estate there at all. We chance upon a woman who lives in a nearby farm. Shall I show you the ocean at the end of the lane? That's what we're looking for. I know that. We clearly aren't the first to make this literary pilgrimage and walk down the lane in search of a pond. So the ocean at the end of the lane is down here.

Have you got jeans on? Oh, you'll be all right. So just see, huh? This is the ocean at the end of the lane. It was always a dark ocean surrounded by- The inspiration for the fantastical world of the ocean of Neil Gaiman's imagination is actually a sleepy oblong pool of uninviting dark green water

at the bottom of a steep overgrown slope. It looks quite ordinary as large-ish ponds go an unremarkable backdrop to Neil Gaiman's life in 1968. Though, in truth, life wasn't that ordinary for seven-year-old Neil Gaiman. Have you heard this since this was broadcast? I haven't. This is you at the age of seven. Go for it.

It is an applied philosophy dealing with the study of knowledge. It helps you to handle quite a lot of problems. But what problems do you have as a little boy that this helps you with? Only one big problem. What's that? My friend Stephen. Oh, I see. that this helps you with? Only one big problem. What's that? My friend Steven. Oh, I see.

At the age of seven, Neil Gaiman is interviewed about Scientology by the BBC. His father was probably the most famous Scientologist in England at the time. And they lived by the headquarters there and they took in lodgers. David Gaiman moved the family to East Grinstead when Neil Gaiman was five. The early 60s, Scientology was growing so fast. Young people were coming from all over the world. Tony Ortega is a journalist and former editor of The Village Voice, who now writes a blog called The Underground Bunker.

He's been writing about and investigating Scientology for years. For young people from the United States, Australia, South Africa, they would all come to England to go to that place. St. Hill was huge. For a time in the mid to late 60s, that place, St. Hill, was the epicentre of the Church of Scientology. It's no longer the global HQ for the movement. But it's still there, just to the south of the town.

The founder of Dianetics and Scientology, L. Hubbard, he owned it for many many years. You enter through imposing metal gates before glimpsing a new-built castle that operates as the church. A little bit further down is an 18th century manor house set in 50 acres of landscaped grounds, straight out of the prime property pages of Country Life. When the Gaimans moved nearby, this place was also the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard's family home. Neil Gaiman's father worked for him. They usually come from all over the planet and they like live in this green state and all those international

visitors needed places to stay so the gay men's took in lodgers back in the late 60s though things were starting to turn sour after a spate of lurid stories and negative media attention about the church exposing the way it allegedly disconnected members from their families, founder L. Ron Hubbard was declared a persona non grata by the British government, and foreign Scientologists were banned from entering the UK. And then by 1966-67, it became an issue in Parliament. So that's when David Gaiman, who was, like I said, one of the top two or three Scientologists in all of England,

puts his son out for this interview with the BBC to show what a talented young Scientologist kid he is. It was then that David Gaiman, whose title was Worldwide Communications Head, deployed his young son Neil Gaiman as a PR tool. But I mean, how does this grade that you've got, Problems Release, help you to deal with Stephen? Well, you know, I've dealt with every single problem except Stephen. One thing Problems Release can't help me do handle.

So you still fight with Stephen? It's more of a question he fights with me. BBC interviews him. They then take a transcript of the interview, put together a pamphlet and mail it to every member of parliament to say, look, Scientology is great. Look at this kid. He's amazing. After he finished school, Neil Gaiman worked as a counsellor for the Church of Scientology for about three years. Scientology has a series of steps or courses. When Neil Gaiman gave that interview to the BBC in 1968, he had just achieved his first grade. That's the problems release grade he refers to. The one that wasn't helping him deal with his classmate Stephen. Tony Ortega says Neil Gaiman became a Scientology

class 8 auditor by the early 1980s, and then went on. My understanding that he was OT4 or 5. And became something called an operating teething, a Scientologist who's able to separate their soul from their body and see into past lives. But his father standing in Scientology was moving in the opposite direction. A document leaked from the Church of Scientology, dated 15 February 1983, says that David Gaiman is a suppressive person. The term is used to describe Scientology's enemies, or people it excommunicated.

The document claims that David Gaiman had launched mindless attacks on the British government to grow his status and popularity, and that he bullied staffers into joining these attacks. While behaving in this way, the document claims that David Gaiman presented himself as mild-mannered and quite sociable. This, according to the document, was an additional offence of covert hostility. To support its claims of covert hostility, the document cites David Gaiman's history of sexual misconduct over many years. Here, the document History of Sexual Misconduct Over Many Years.

Here, the document provides no details of David Gaiman's alleged sexual misconduct. It only cites the formal charge in Scientology. Sexual or sexually perverted conduct contrary to the well-being or good state of mind of a Scientologist in good standing, or under the charge of Scientology such as a student, a pre-clair, a ward or a patient. This is not to suggest any link between David Gaiman's alleged misconduct and his son's alleged misconduct. It's not to say like father, like son, because it's not even clear whether these are trumped up charges, as Tony Ortega explains. In Scientology, once you have fallen out of favor, they're going to say anything about you. So I wouldn't rely on that. I would say Scientology made these allegations about him as they kicked him out.

But that doesn't mean it happened. I wouldn't trust Scientology with that. We asked the Church of Scientology about the leaked document. It said our question was in poor taste, before adding that David Gaiman was a beloved and active member of the Church of Scientology in the UK for decades, who dedicated much of his time to helping others and his community. In any case, the Gaiman family connection with Scientology persisted. The business that David Gaiman had set up with Neil's mother continued to thrive. G and G vitamins sold supplements ones prescribed as essential for observant Scientologists. And Neil Gaiman, at 25 years old, married one of the Gaiman family lodgers, a Scientology student a few years older than him,

and went on to have his first three children with her. Much of Neil Gaiman's family remain members of the Church of Scientology. Mary McGrath, his first wife, is involved with a Scientology church in the US. One sister works for a Scientology church in LA. There's Russia here. Oh, that's very kind, thank you. It tells you a bit about us, obviously you'll get more information. Another sister, Lizzie Calcioli, and his mother, Sheila Gaiman, are still pictured in the brochure for G&G Vitamins in East Grinstead.

Neil Gaiman remains a shareholder in the firm according to its most recent company filings. The firm hosts Scientology courses and remains linked to the organisation. But for Neil Gaiman, things had started to change by the mid-1980s. And then something happened and he walked away. He has said since that he no longer considers himself a member of the Church of Scientology as such. His walking away from Scientology coincides with the start of his writing career,

but we don't know if this was the reason. He didn't answer any of our questions about this period of his life. Neil Gaiman's upbringing was unconventional in a world that to many would seem like a fantasy. Publicly, his persona was shaped by a very different, equally fantastical world, the world of comic books. And it's his phenomenal success in this world that coincides with him walking away from Scientology.

Look at that, Neil Gaiman tweeted about my store. What did he say? The Big Bang Theory, the hugely popular US sitcom that centred around four socially awkward physicists who were, crucially, massive comic book fans. If you're interested in alternate histories, Neil Gaiman wrote one called 1602. I'm sorry, we're in the middle of something here. It is pretty good actually. He takes the Marvel superheroes and he puts them into Elizabethan England. Let me guess, everyone thinks the X-Men are witches.

Yeah. In one episode, Neil Gaiman makes a guest appearance as a customer in the comic book store. And there's no doubt playing yourself in a fictional TV show, or making it into The Simpsons twice, is a pretty sure sign you've made it. His reputation had been growing over many years. He's now rich and famous. In the late 80s, Neil Gaiman wrote the first Sandman comic or graphic novel. At the time, comics tended to feature superheroes.

Sandman did not. It was a work of literature based on ideas and concepts, not superheroes. The Sandman universe is full of LGBTQ characters. It since spawned a Netflix hit with a budget of millions of dollars per episode. Neil Gaiman is an industry. His other works, Coraline, Good Omens, American Gods, Stardust and The Ocean at the End of the Lane have all been made or are being made into TV series or films. The books themselves sell millions of copies around the world. They are a source of enormous revenue for his publishers, including Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and DC Comics. But it was Sandman that broke the mould, and in doing so attracted a whole new readership. Women. It was also

among the first graphic novels to ever feature on the New York Times bestseller list. There is no suggestion that any of these organisations knew or ought to have known about the allegations against Neil Gaiman in this podcast. By 2008, Neil Gaiman is living in the US and seeing the feminist rock star icon Amanda Palmer, lead singer of the Dresden Dolls. They marry in 2011. In interviews, they describe their marriage as open, with what they called slutty compassion. Neil Gaiman's liberal, progressive image is boosted by this partnership

with famous feminist punk performer Amanda. Sure, we're watching celebrities talk about this, but this is happening to all women everywhere. Both of them are very vocal on sexual violence against women. This is just this insidious, you know, cultural sickness that we're hopefully starting to air out. Neil Gaiman also frequently speaks out

and especially tweets in support of women who've suffered at the hands of men. Just looking back over his tweets, and on Twitter he's got three million followers, on the 21st of April 2010 he tweeted it's sexual assault awareness month and linked to a web page where people could buy a painting of his wife Amanda Palmer to raise money for a sexual abuse charity. And on the 31st of October 2014 he references the hashtag that went viral in that year and he tweets reading the been raped never reported hashtag. It's hard reading, makes me slightly ashamed to be human

and much more ashamed to be male. If you're still struggling with consent, just imagine instead of initiating sex, you're making them a cup of tea. Then he retweets this video published by Thames Valley police about consent and understanding consent. Then you can make them a cup of tea or not but be aware that they might not drink it and if they don't drink it then and this is the important bit don't make them drink it. And then in 2018, he tweets, There are so many women whose innocence is not presumed when it comes to matters of sexual assault and rape.

We understand Neil Gaiman considers any allegation of hypocrisy in this respect to be misguided. His position is that he stands by his prior public statements about sexual violence against women, as well as on the issue of consent, that the statements are compatible with his personal conduct, and that the suggestion these statements are an attempt to conceal any unethical behaviour is false. There is another cause that Neil Gaiman has said is close to his heart. He has described himself in a recent New York Times interview as a First Amendment absolutist,

the capstone of the American constitution that protects freedom of speech and the press. When it comes to this podcast, Neil Gaiman's position is that its publication would expose Tortoise to significant legal risk, as he believes it is not based on reporting that's accurate, responsible, and is not in the public interest. We have thought long and hard over eight months about the public interest in this story. It's one that touches on the intimate lives of various people, not least Neil Gaiman. It's one that, in his PR advisor's words, has implications for everyone involved. So the public interest has to, and in our view does, justify its publication, for many reasons.

It was after we researched how New Zealand police handled Scarlett's complaint and how the police appear to have been limited by the law itself. After we examined her allegations of abuse against Neil Gaiman, some of them if proved criminal. After we reported on what we were told of the concealment of his alleged behaviour, including Scarlett's backdated NDA, Amanda Palmer's reference to 14 others and the use of the family therapist. And after we understood the laws around consent during rough sex. It was after all this that we came to believe that was a clear and convincing public interest here, and one supported by a second woman's allegations of similar behaviour by Neil Gaiman to that alleged

by Scarlett. After weeks of speaking to people in the world of comics, I get a message from someone else who worked in the industry. I had contacted this person asking about sexual misconduct, but without mentioning Neil Gaiman. We agree to speak, and when we do, this person tells me, when I read your message, I thought,

if this guy is working on a story about Neil Gaiman, then he's hit the jackpot. The jackpot, it turned out, was that this person once knew a girl who was once a fan of Neil Gaiman, and that almost two decades ago, she met him at a book signing. It's such a murky line, and it's also part of why it's hard for me to talk about it, and it's not something that I've had during the Me Too movement. I was like, well, I can't. I don't have a leg to stand on.

I don't have video proof of this. But it didn't happen. Decades and continents separate Scarlett from this second woman. They've never met or spoken. She was 18 years old when she met Neil Gaiman in the noughties.

And the way she talks about her time with him is familiar. Neil Gaiman's position is that the only similarity between her account and Scarlett's is that, in both cases, contemporaneous messages contradict their narratives. 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 Swinburne. Artwork is by John Hill. The series editor is Matt Russell. The editor is Jasper Corbett. Die Welt ist eine Welt.