Crime Neil Gaiman Accused of Sexual Assault, Author Denies Allegations

Acclaimed author Neil Gaiman is facing multiple allegations of sexual assault, making him the subject of a police complaint in New Zealand. Gaiman has offered a response as well, refuting the accusations.

Per Tortoise Media, two women have accused Gaiman of sexual assault while in consensual relationships with the author. The allegations go back two decades, but they were first reported on in Tortoise's podcast Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman, which was released on Wednesday. The women describe allegations of "rough and degrading sex," alleging that these instances were not always consensual.

One of the two accusers, a 23-year-old woman named Scarlett, claims she was sexually assaulted in February 2022 just hours after first meeting Gaiman. According to Scarlett, the assault happened in a bath at Gaiman's New Zealand home where she was hired to work as a nanny for his child. Gaiman says that the two merely "cuddled" and "made out" that day, adding that a three-week sexual relationship ensued, but was entirely consensual. Scarlett insists that Gaiman was "rough and degrading," and reportedly, messages, notes, and accounts from friends support her allegations.

Another accuser, identifying herself as K, says she was an 18-year-old fan when she first met Gaiman at a book signing in Sarasota, Florida, in 2003. K claims that she began a romantic relationship with Gaiman after she turned 20, resulting in engaging in rough sex that she "neither wanted nor enjoyed." It's alleged that one particular incident saw Gaimain forcefully penetrating K despite her objections.

Gaiman has denied this claim as well. The Sandman author maintains that his relationship with K was never unlawful and that he's "disturbed" to be accused of such behavior. According to Gaiman, K's allegations stem from "regret" over the relationship she had when it was over. He also attributed Scarlett's allegations to a condition she has that's associated with false memories, but the Tortoise report noted that this isn't supported by the accuser's medical records.

Additionally, Gaiman has strongly denied all allegations of non-consensual sex at any time with the women accusing him of sexual assault. He also claimed that New Zealand police ignored his offer for assistance with one woman's complaint in 2022, suggesting that shows a lack of substance in the investigation. New Zealand officers have responded by saying they made a "number of attempts to speak to key people as part of this investigation and those efforts remain ongoing." It was added that there are "a number of factors to take into consideration with this case, including location of all parties.”

Gaiman has long been one of pop culture's most revered authors, bringing to life acclaimed stories like The Sandman, Good Omens, and American Gods. Just recently, Netflix has been promoting the upcoming second season of The Sandman, which is based on Gaiman's source material; he also executive produces the series.

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Honestly while Gaiman was not on the top of my "insufferable and terminally overhyped geek culture retards I cant wait to get outed as sex predators for my own amusement" list (currently being topped by Wil Wheaton followed by Alan Moore) I cannot deny feeling that little bit jollier with the thought I may never have to hear him mentioned again

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Reminder that Neil Gaiman helped promote and fund the scumbag commie Mark Waid in his lawsuit and also promotes the SFWA. Get fucked, commie scum.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

Friendly reminder if you were falsely accused of rape people like Gaiman wouldn't wait to hear all sides and evidence before condemning you.

This is just like Kutcher and Kunis. Don't give these assholes the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Overly Serious]

So is he a pedo or not? It's just that he really, really looks like one, in all photographs of him at all ages. I don't trust that constant-rage-autistic-mallgoth personality type at all.

Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman? Alan Moore made some book where underage fictional girls like Alice and such do debauched things, apparently (I've always avoided looking it up). Gaiman I don't think they were underaged, just you know 30 years younger than him!

Not sure ever any evidence of more with either. Alan Moore probably the most suspect as he likes to tout weird magick stuff (with a 'k').

 

[Weeb Slinger]

Gaiman once made repeated use of the word "icky" and I have never forgiven him for it. I think that it was in reference to the sexual misdemeanours of another creator. There is something about that word coming out the mouth of a man. You can't take him seriously afterwards. You wouldn't take such a person on an expedition to the North Pole or on a rafting expedition through the jungles of Borneo.

Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman? Alan Moore made some book where underage fictional girls like Alice and such do debauched things, apparently (I've always avoided looking it up). Gaiman I don't think they were underaged, just you know 30 years younger than him!

Not sure ever any evidence of more with either. Alan Moore probably the most suspect as he likes to tout weird magick stuff (with a 'k').

Moore is into some very dubious, kinky shit, but it's over intellectualised and over-conceptualised. He's never struck me as an active predator. Gaiman, on the other hand, always came across as the archetypal alpha geek cynically taking advantage of his position.

 

[Billy Idol]

So is he a pedo or not? It's just that he really, really looks like one, in all photographs of him at all ages. I don't trust that constant-rage-autistic-mallgoth personality type at all.

Doesn't seem like he's done it with any underage girls. Both women who claimed he assaulted them were 18+ at the time of the alleged assaults. But who knows what'll come out next.

It should be noted that Gaiman wrote a bit about his opinions on drawn child pornography in a blog entry he titled Why Defend Freedom of Icky Speech? Make it what you will.

 

[The Hardest R]

On one hand, male feminists are often sexual deviants. On the other hand, he’s fucking stupid for trying to dip his wick into radfems who would make accusations against you the second you pissed them off. But since he’s part of the #BelieveAllWhammens crowd, he’s on his own on this one, fuck him.

 

[Forgotten Beast]

I've been doing a little lazy snooping and it seems like Neil has gone radio silent in all social media since the accusations went live, and if my data is correct* this has been the longest he has abstained from engaging with the digital dopamine devil in AT LEAST four years (I couldn't find much before 2020 and I'm not going to manually check). I would not be surprised if this was the case for a decade or more.
He must be experiencing worse withdrawal symptoms than BossmanJack by now. Old Neil would appreciate the beauty of cosmic forces linking two individuals so fundamentally different on the same day.

Spoiler: * My "data"

Checking Bluesky is a pain in the ass, but the trend seems to check out. I may have missed something.

 

[Dr. Butt]

Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman? ... Alan Moore probably the most suspect as he likes to tout weird magick stuff (with a 'k').

Moore. Sorry but he just looks very yewtree, in any photo, from any year. And like you said, magick with a k tends to be popular with a certain type of very angry man.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Sir Terry Pratchett would be appalled and ashamed.

Unlikely. He turned into a Woke, Muslim-loving, LGBPedo Ally in the end.

 

[Dr J]

Alan Moore probably the most suspect as he likes to tout weird magick stuff (with a 'k').

Isn't it Grant Morrison who's into magick? Moore's just a straight up ceremonial magician. One of his beefs with Morrison is that he claims Morrison keeps copying him with that magick shit and all sorts of other stuff

Moore is into some very dubious, kinky shit, but it's over intellectualised and over-conceptualised. He's never struck me as an active predator.

I don't think he's an active predator. During the 80s he and his first wife had a mutual girlfriend (I think he may have described her as his wife's girlfriend) and he was active on the LGBT scene as a result but I think that's as extreme as it got. Regular three-ways.

His wife and the girlfriend both dumped him and took his daughters and the money he made from self-publishing Big Numbers with them sometime in the early 90s

 

[Overly Serious]

sn't it Grant Morrison who's into magick? Moore's just a straight up ceremonial magician. One of his beefs with Morrison is that he claims Morrison keeps copying him with that magick shit and all sorts of other stuff

I don't know to be fair. I just read a graphic novel of his called Promethea (well, the first, I didn't bother with the sequels) and it had a bunch of qabbalah stuff. I think I recall some Crowley stuff associated with him. But I think I'm probably outside my knowledge now so I'll leave it to others. I'm not really much of a comics person. I really liked the Watchmen movie though. Moore hated it, I think.

 

[Dr J]

Moore hated it, I think.

Moore never saw it. To be fair, I didn't care for it, think Zack Snyder's a hack and don't think he was the right person to handle that material

 

[behindyourightnow]

No. Equating coercion to rape cheapens how fucked up and traumatizing actual rape is. There is a world of difference between saying yes when you wish you hadn't versus being beaten, held down and forcibly penetrated while screaming no. Pick another word.

You're missing the point, which was that many predators prefer to operate without using physical force and that most "male feminist" type rapists fall into this category.

Also, note I specified "teenager" when I spoke about coercion. Teenagers are generally immature and easily manipulated by adults, which is why under a certain age we still call it "rape" to have sex with them even when no force is involved. Once you're talking about older teenagers it gets fuzzier legally, obviously, but any significantly older person who makes a habit of trying to pester 18-year-olds into sex should be considered a creep and shunned even if they're not technically a rapist.

Gaiman is structure and scaffolding. He can write, he can do structure competently, etc. But I feel very strongly that he's like someone building outward from the appearance. He does it to such a degree that I think many people don't notice there's something not there. He's like a Chinese Room applied to faerie tales and myth. Or like someone doing a careful copy of a famous painting.

Someone on Twitter said that his characters are just empty shells, and that resonated with how I felt when I attempted to read one of his books years ago. Characters go around doing things, but they just don't have any interior lives, even if the book has the kind of close third-person narration that should give them one. There's no feeling or connection with any of the characters even though you feel like it should be there, given there's nothing missing from the structure.

It's like he's just moving chess pieces around thinking "this is cool, and then this happens, and it's so cool!" but with no sense that the chess pieces are supposed to be humans interacting with other humans.

 

[dick brain]

You're missing the point, which was that many predators prefer to operate without using physical force and that most "male feminist" type rapists fall into this category.

Also, note I specified "teenager" when I spoke about coercion. Teenagers are generally immature and easily manipulated by adults, which is why under a certain age we still call it "rape" to have sex with them even when no force is involved. Once you're talking about older teenagers it gets fuzzier legally, obviously, but any significantly older person who makes a habit of trying to pester 18-year-olds into sex should be considered a creep and shunned even if they're not technically a rapist.

I'm not missing the point, you're telling me to broaden my interpretation of rape to include behavior that isn't rape and I'm telling you no, I'm not going to do that, because it diminishes the gravity of actual rape. Pick another word. It's creepy enough as it is without hyperbolically equating it to something unequivocally worse.

 

[Nick Obre]

Isn't it Grant Morrison who's into magick?

Morrison is into what he calls "pop magick", a sort of postmodern mysticism, in which brand logos are hypersigils that get charged every time a consumer buys and uses the associated products, thus growing in power and dominance over the world. He's talked about some his books being spells of sorts being charged by the readers as they read.

Someone on Twitter said that his characters are just empty shells, and that resonated with how I felt when I attempted to read one of his books years ago. Characters go around doing things, but they just don't have any interior lives, even if the book has the kind of close third-person narration that should give them one. There's no feeling or connection with any of the characters even though you feel like it should be there, given there's nothing missing from the structure.

It's like he's just moving chess pieces around thinking "this is cool, and then this happens, and it's so cool!" but with no sense that the chess pieces are supposed to be humans interacting with other humans.

I disagree with this take rather intensely. I don't know how someone could read, say, American Gods or Anansi Boys and come away with that impression. Maybe in the short stories I guess.

Since I was just talking about him, I feel that applies much more to Morrison, at least when he's using pre-existing characters in large stories. If he's working with with new, or at least relatively isolated characters (see Seven Soldiers), or large characters in relatively isolated stories (see All-Star Superman), he's good, but otherwise he's liable to fall into the chess piece thing, where it could be any character doing anything, regardless of their personal character; it's just toys being moved around, more preoccupied with what I'd call thematic color-coding than with internal consistency (see Final Crisis).

 

[Manat]

he can do structure competently

Hard disagree. He has a problem with climaxes, they are never satisfying nor appropriate in scale in his stories.

That imaginary fight between Lucifer and the main guy (can't remember, don't care) in sandman is literally copied from 1001 nights but shittier, stupider AND somehow lamer. Diana Wayne Jones kept the spirit of this fight scene better in a children's book.

We were in terrible fear of him but the King's daughter cried at him, "No welcome to thee and no greeting, O dog!" whereupon he changed to the form of a lion and said, "O traitress, how is it thou hast broken the oath we sware that neither should contraire other!" "O accursed one," answered she, "how could there be a compact between me and the like of thee?" Then said he, "Take what thou has brought on thyself;" and the lion opened his jaws and rushed upon her; but she was too quick for him; and, plucking a hair from her head, waved it in the air muttering over it the while; and the hair straightway became a trenchant sword-blade, wherewith she smote the lion and cut him in twain. Then the two halves flew away in air and the head changed to a scorpion and the Princess became a huge serpent and set upon the accursed scorpion, and the two fought, coiling and uncoiling, a stiff fight for an hour at least. Then the scorpion changed to a vulture and the serpent became an eagle which set upon the vulture, and hunted him for an hour's time, till he became a black tom-cat, which miauled and grinned and spat. Thereupon the eagle changed into a piebald wolf and these two battled in the palace for a long time, when the cat, seeing himself overcome, changed into a worm and crept into a huge red pomegranate,[250] which lay beside the jetting fountain in the midst of the palace hall.

Whereupon the pomegranate swelled to the size of a water-melon in air; and, falling upon the marble pavement of the palace, broke to pieces, and all the grains fell out and were scattered about till they covered the whole floor. Then the wolf shook himself and became a snow-white cock, which fell to picking up the grains purposing not to leave 135one; but by doom of destiny one seed rolled to the fountain-edge and there lay hid. The cock fell to crowing and clapping his wings and signing to us with his beak as if to ask, "Are any grains left?" But we understood not what he meant, and he cried to us with so loud a cry that we thought the palace would fall upon us. Then he ran over all the floor till he saw the grain which had rolled to the fountain edge, and rushed eagerly to pick it up when behold, it sprang into the midst of the water and became a fish and dived to the bottom of the basin. Thereupon the cock changed to a big fish, and plunged in after the other, and the two disappeared for a while and lo! we heard loud shrieks and cries of pain which made us tremble. After this the Ifrit rose out of the water, and he was as a burning flame; casting fire and smoke from his mouth and eyes and nostrils. And immediately the Princess likewise came forth from the basin and she was one live coal of flaming lowe; and these two, she and he, battled for the space of an hour, until their fires entirely compassed them about and their thick smoke filled the palace.

This also applies to American gods.

 

[Haramburger]

He has a problem with climaxes, they are never satisfying nor appropriate in scale in his stories.

The way post-modernism is right now with writers, he probably considers that a feature and not a bug. Grandiose characters and scale, whimpering conclusions, the serial Sandman format was really where he belonged, and ultimately dumped the theme of each and every book in one spot. Funny 2 out o' 3 bri'ish birds are named Lettie, innit?

 

[theapropos]

these stories sound like standard "i was a shameless little groupie whore and now i regret it" stuff tbh
don't know or care about the guy, heard he's an annoying libshit, but that's not enough to convince me that he's also a rapist

Oh you are going to be attacked by the self righteous lynch mob now.

 

[Overly Serious]

Hard disagree. He has a problem with climaxes, they are never satisfying nor appropriate in scale in his stories.

I'll accept the correction. I was perhaps trying to balance my criticisms out of rhetorical habit. Thinking back to works of his I read (Good Omens, because I liked Terry Pratchett as a child, Sandman because I fell for a goth girl as a teenager, Coraline for reasons unknown...) and thinking them over none of them have exceptional structure and the best is Good Omens which Pratchett co-wrote. Fair enough - I'll concede it.

That imaginary fight between Lucifer and the main guy (can't remember, don't care) in sandman is literally copied from 1001 nights but shittier, stupider AND somehow lamer. Diana Wayne Jones kept the spirit of this fight scene better in a children's book.

Diana Wynne Jones (RIP) is my favourite children's author and her books were very important to me as a child. The Ogre Downstairs or Wilkin's Tooth were much needed sources of happiness for me as a child. Some people might know her work via the adaptation Howl's Moving Castle. Fond memories of her stories.

 

[pwnest injun]

Reminder that Neil Gaiman helped promote and fund the scumbag commie Mark Waid in his lawsuit and also promotes the SFWA. Get fucked, commie scum.

He also bankrupted Todd McFarlane over not getting consistent enough royalty payments over some stupid musclewoman character he made up when he was guest-writing Spawn.