How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.
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On February 3, 2025, Scarlett Pavlovichfiled a lawsuit against Neil Gaimanon human-trafficking charges, among others.
The complaintnamed Amanda Palmer as well.
Scarlett Pavlovich was a 22-year-old drama student when she met the performerAmanda Palmerby chance on the streets of Auckland.
But Pavlovich noticed only Palmer.
On the surface, Pavlovich appeared to be self-assured as well.
Pale and dark-haired and waifish, she favored bold colors and outrageous outfits.
It was Pavlovich who approached Palmer on the sidewalk outside the perfumery.
She was surprised when Palmer texted her a few days later.
Its amanda d palmer, she wrote.
Over the following year and a half, Palmer and Pavlovich occasionally met for a drink or a meal.
Sometimes Palmer asked Pavlovich for favors help running errands or organizing files or looking after her child.
Pavlovich was happy to assist.
She had a crush on Palmer.
She didnt mind that Palmer only occasionally discussed paying her, even though Pavlovich was always strapped for cash.
At the gathering, Palmer asked Pavlovich to babysit while she got a massage.
The years absent of touch build up like a gray inheritance, she wrote.
I am so fucking famished.
Now, hed returned and was living in a house near Palmers on Waiheke.
Their previous nanny had recently left, and they needed help.
Pavlovich agreed and was pleased when Palmer offered to pay her for the weekends work.
For a little while, Gaiman worked in his office while she read on the couch.
Then he emerged and offered her a tour of the grounds.
Around 8 p.m., they sat down for pizza.
Gaiman poured Pavlovich a glass of rose and then another.
He drank only water.
They made awkward conversation about New Zealand, about COVID.
Pavlovich had never read any of his work, but she was anxious to make a good impression.
Ive had a thought, she recalls him saying.
Why dont you have a bath in the beautiful claw bathtub in the garden?
Pavlovich told Gaiman that she was fine as she was but ultimately agreed.
He needed to make a work call, he said, and didnt want Pavlovich to be bored.
A few minutes later, she was surprised to hear Gaimans footsteps on the stones in the dark.
She tried to cover her breasts with her arms.
When he arrived at the bath, she saw that he was naked.
Gaiman put out a couple of citronella candles, lit them, and got into the bath.
He stretched out, facing her, and, for a few minutes, made small talk.
He bitched about Palmers schedule.
He talked about his kids school.
Then he told her to stretch her legs out and get comfortable.
I said, Im not confident with my body, Pavlovich recalls.
He said, Its okay its only me.
Just have a chat.
He looked at her again and said, Dont ruin the moment.
She did as instructed, and he began to stroke her feet.
At that point, she recalls, she felt a subtle terror.
Gaiman asked her to sit on his lap.
Gaiman continued to press.
The next part is really amorphous, Pavlovich tells me.
And I said, No, no.
Then he tried to rub his penis between my breasts, and I said no as well.
Then he asked if he could come on my face, and I said no but he did anyway.
He said, Call me master, and Ill come.
He said, Be a good girl.
Youre a good little girl.
Afterward, Pavlovich crouched down in the water and tried to clean herself off.
Gaiman looked at her and smiled.
Amanda told me I couldnt have you, Pavlovich recalls him saying.
As soon as hed heard this, he knew he had to have her.
God, he continued, I wish it were the good old days where we could both fuck you.
She is Calliope, the youngest of the Nine Muses.
Madoc rapes her, again and again, and his career blossoms in the most extraordinary way.
Like Madoc, Gaiman has called himself a feminist.
In America, people mistakenly assumed he was an English gentleman.
Another gift was his memory.
Norman Mailer called it a comic strip for intellectuals.
One writer recounts running into Gaiman at a World Fantasy Convention in 2011.
His assistant wasnt around, and he was late to a reading.
I cant get to it if I walk by myself, he told her.
They wanted to be entwined with him in ways I was not prepared to defend him against.
A woman fell to her knees and wept.
They wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self-identity, she says.
They want to share their souls with the creators of these works.
And if you have morality around it, you say no.
He was always a gentleman.
The writer Kelly Link, who met Gaiman at a reading in 1997, recalls finding him charmingly goofy.
Hed be very demure.
But there were some who saw another side of the author.
On signing lines, Gaiman had a knack for connecting with each individual.
He would ask questions, laugh, and assure them that their inability to form sentences was fine.
Everyone wanted to be near him, but he was laser focused on me, she says.
The night after the awards ceremony, she and Gaiman ended up in bed together.
He seemed to have a script, she tells me.
He wanted me to call him master immediately.
He demanded that she promise him her soul.
It was like hed gone into this ritual that had nothing to do with me.
Since then, more women have shared allegations of assault, coercion, and abuse.
(Gaimans perspective on these relationships, including with Pavlovich, is that they were entirely consensual.)
I spoke with four of those women along with four others whose stories share elements with theirs.
Most of the women were in their 20s when they met Gaiman.
The youngest was 18.
Two of them worked for him.
Five were his fans.
By then, he had a reputation as an outspoken champion of women.
Katherine Kendall was 22 when she met Gaiman in 2012.
She was volunteering at one of his events in Asheville, North Carolina.
The two struck up a flirtatious correspondence, emailing and Skyping in the middle of the night.
He kept saying, Kiss me like you mean it, Kendall remembers.
She tried to get into it, but she was panicked.
Eventually, Gaiman rolled off her.
Im a very wealthy man, she remembers him saying, and Im used to getting what I want.
Gaiman had been having sexual encounters with younger fans for a long time.
Gaiman sent her long emails and bought her a web camera so they could chat on video.
Around three years after they met, he flew to Orlando to take her on a date.
Gaiman didnt believe in foreplay or lubrication, Stout tells me, which could make sex particularly painful.
When she said it hurt too much, hed tell her the problem was she wasnt submissive enough.
He talked at length about the dominant and submissive relationship he wanted out of me, she tells me.
Stout had no prior interest in BDSM.
Hed ask her to call him master and beat her with his belt.
These were not sexy little taps, she says.
Then she handed him a flogger and told him to use it on her vagina.
This is what gets me off now, Stout recalls him saying.
When Acker asked him to whip her pussy, he found it profoundly unsexual, he told the interviewer.
I did it and ran away.
He identified himself as very vanilla.
In 2007, Gaiman and Stout took a trip to the Cornish countryside.
On their last night there, Stout developed a UTI that had gotten so bad she couldnt sit down.
She told Gaiman they could fool around but that any penetration would be too painful to bear.
It was a big hard no, she says.
I told him, You cannot put anything in my vagina or I will die.
Gaiman flipped her over on the bed, she says, and attempted to penetrate her with his fingers.
She told him no.
He stopped for a moment and then he penetrated her with his penis.
At that point, she tells me, I just shut down.
She lay on the bed until he was finished.
(This past October, she filed a police report alleging he raped her.)
But there is a crucial difference between BDSM and what Gaiman was doing.
And it was a line that Gaiman, according to the women, did not respect.
Instead of a light, one says, he would dangle a floppy-haired, soft-spoken British guy.
She Googled Me Too and Neil Gaiman.
The universe is a karmic mystery, Palmer wrote.
We nourish each other in the most random and unpredictable ways.
Palmer asked if she could babysit again.
She needed so much help.
Would Pavlovich consider staying with them for the foreseeable future?
Pavlovich was living in a sublet that was about to end.
She was broke and hadnt been able to find a new apartment.
The thought of returning to the beach filled her with dread.
She didnt consider reaching out to her own family.
Her parents had divorced when she was 3, and Pavlovich had grown up splitting time between their households.
Violence, Pavlovich tells me, was normalized in the household.
One close family member beat her with a belt.
Another would strangle Pavlovich when she got upset and slap her across the face until her cheeks were raw.
She began to regularly cut her arms and wrists with a knife when she was 11.
She became bulimic, then anorexic.
When she was 15, she left home and never went back.
After all of this, Amanda Palmer was an actual creature sent from a celestial realm.
It was like,Hallelujah, Pavlovich tells me.
Palmer was famous for speaking out about sexual abuse and encouraging others to do the same.
Pavlovich didnt think someone like that could be married to someone who would assault women.
Sexual abuse is one of the most confusing forms of violence that a person can experience.
The majority of people who have endured it do not immediately recognize it as such; some never do.
Whatever had happened in the bath, shed been through worse and survived, she thought.
And Gaiman and Palmer were offering her the possibility of a shared future.
Her idealism could blind her to reality, one friend says.
(Palmer declined to be interviewed, but I spoke with people close to her.)
These conversations filled her head with fantasies of finally being on solid ground in the world.
What a terrible creature youve turned me into.
The following weekend, she packed up her sublet and boarded the ferry to Waiheke.
Throughout his career, Gaiman has written about terror from the point of view of a child.
At dinner one night, the boy refuses to eat the food his nanny has prepared.
The nanny, the boy knows, isnt really a human but a nightmare creature from another world.
When his father demands to know why he wont eat, the boy explains, Shes a monster.
His father becomes enraged.
I had read many books in that bath, the boy says.
It was one of my safe places.
And now, I had no doubt, I was going to die there.
While much of it is fantastical, Gaiman has said that kid is me.
The book is set in Sussex, where Gaiman grew up.
In the story, the narrator survives otherworldly evil with the help of a family of magical women.
As a child, Gaiman had no such friends to call on.
I never feel the past is dead or young Neil isnt around anymore.
Yet there is reason to believe that some of the most horrifying events of the novel did occur.
Gaiman has rarely spoken about a core fact of his childhood.
David and Sheila were among Englands earliest adherents to Scientology.
By the late 60s, David was the churchs public face and chief spokesperson in the U.K.
It was a challenging job, to say the least.
Back in England, David gave interviews to the press to smooth over such troubling accounts.
The church was under particular pressure to assure the public it was not harming children.
He was confined to the locker for two days and nights.
David used Neil as an exhibit in his case to the public.
In 1968, he arranged for Neil to give an interview to the BBC.
According to someone who knew the Gaimans, David and Sheila did apply Scientologys methods at home.
It was unusual for a teenager to have completed such a high level of training, he tells me.
But the Gaimans were like royalty, he says.
But the same year, he fell from grace.
A document declaring David a Suppressive person was released a few years later.
It accused him of a range of offenses, including sexual misconduct.
His greatest offense, it seemed, was hubris.
Gaiman required others to look up to him instead of to Source, it reads, referring to Hubbard.
In the 80s, David was sent off to a sort of rehabilitation camp.
It was around this time that Gaiman set out to make a living as a writer.
Gaiman and Palmer met in 2008, when she was 32 and he was 47.
Both were at a turning point in their lives and careers.
Gaiman was the first to propose a romantic relationship.
She had no savings and didnt own a car, real estate, or kitchen appliances.
Gaiman owned multiple houses.
He was too rich, too famous, too British, too awkward, too old.
And they didnt have great sexual chemistry.
She also felt a little sorry for him.
But thats impossible, she told him.
Hed written stories and scenes of people in love.
Thats the whole point, darling, he said.
Writers make things up.
They wed in 2011 in the Berkeley home of their friends Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the novelists.
They became darlings of the TED talk circuit and regulars at Jeff Bezoss ultrasecret Campfire retreat.
Palmer, in turn, leaned into her growing reputation as a crowdfunding genius.
Online, they flirted, went after each others critics, and praised each others progressive politics.
This wasnt strictly a metaphor.
After one of Palmers next shows, the women had sex.
Palmer joked in response, i think the fun is finding out on your own.
Looking back, she feels Palmer gave her to him like a toy.
For Gaiman and Palmer, these were happy years.
With his editing help, she wroteThe Art of Asking.They toured together.
But he seemed unable to string more than a few sentences together.
He refused to see a therapist.
In 2014, the cracks in Gaiman and Palmers marriage began to show to those around them.
While they were at Bard, they decided to buy a house upstate.
Palmer would have preferred to live in New York City, but Gaiman liked the woods.
Eventually, he picked a sprawling estate set on 80 acres in Woodstock.
Later that year, Palmer got pregnant.
She wanted to wrap up the relationship, and he agreed.
Now, Gaiman told her, the girl was going crazy.
He promised to change, and they met with a couples counselor.
Gaiman was prone to panic attacks and had never been in treatment.
Gaiman had made them an offer that seemed too good to be true.
In 2017, Phillip moved out of their house.
Wallner, 54, spent her days in bed crying and drinking.
She stopped eating and, for the most part, stopped working.
It was then that Gaiman began paying attention to her.
He would bring juices up to her cabin and fret that she was losing too much weight.
Gaiman told her, You need a hug.
She does not recall saying or doing anything in response.
I was stunned, she says.
Over the next two years, they had a series of sexual encounters, always when Palmer was away.
When Gaiman wasnt around, they occasionally engaged in phone sex.
At first Wallner, who hadnt been with anyone since Phillip left, went along willingly.
He was difficult to avoid.
On one of these visits, he found her crying by the fireplace.
He walked over to her, stuck his thumb in her mouth, and twisted her nipples.
She told Gaiman the arrangement was making her feel bad.
She recalls him replying, I dont want you to feel bad.
Wallner had no income at the time and was borrowing money from her sister to get by.
I like our trade, she remembers him saying.
You take care of me, and Ill take care of you.
Sometimes she would babysit.
Once, Wallner and the boy, then 4, fell asleep reading stories in Gaiman and Palmers bed.
Wallner woke up when Gaiman returned home.
She says she jumped out of the bed.
He didnt have boundaries, Wallner says.
I remember thinking that there was something really wrong with him.
In April 2021, Gaiman informed Wallner that the land hed promised her was no longer available.
Wallner recalls saying to Bird, What am I going to do with $5,000?
This is maybe $300,000.
Two months later, Pavlovich arrived on Waiheke.
By then, Palmer and Gaiman were divorcing.
She was hurt but unsurprised.
I find it all very boring, she later wrote to Rachel, who recalls the exchange.
Just the lack of self-knowledge and the lack of interest in self-knowledge.
In late 2021, Palmer found out about Wallner, too.
I cant believe he did it again.
Still, she knew enough to warn Gaiman to stay away from their new babysitter.
She found a school for their child and the two houses on Waiheke.
One evening, Palmer dropped Pavlovich and the child off with Gaiman and retreated back to her own place.
It all happened again so quickly, Pavlovich says.
Gaiman pushed down her pants and began to beat her with his belt.
He then attempted to initiate anal sex without lubrication.
I screamed no, Pavlovich says.
But that would have required careful negotiation in advance, which she says they had not done.
After she said no, Gaiman backed off briefly and went into the kitchen.
When he returned, he brought butter to use as lubricant.
She continued to scream until Gaiman was finished.
When it was over, he called her slave and ordered her to clean him up.
She protested that it wasnt hygienic.
He said, Are you defying your master?
I had to lick my own shit.
It had a grainy texture and tasted of metal, acid, and herbs.
She noticed blood swirling down the drain.
He hadnt used a condom, and she worried she might have gotten an infection.
She had a migraine, and her whole body ached.
But she didnt consider leaving.
Shed heard of how some would stay in the room even after they were allowed to leave.
People keep licking the floor in that horrible room, she says.
The nights with Gaiman blurred together.
There was the time she passed out from pain while Gaiman was having anal sex with her.
He made her perform oral sex while his penis had urine on it.
Then he told her to eat the vomit off his lap and lick it up from the couch.
Gaiman seemed to find it amusing.
No, you mustnt.
Gaiman put his arm around them both, reached into Pavlovichs shirt, and fondled her breasts.
She says he didnt make any effort to hide what he was doing from the boy.
He would never shut a door, she says.
It was a small room one double bed, a television, and a bathroom.
When he returned, Gaiman and the boy ate dinner, takeout from a nearby delicatessen.
Afterward, Gaiman wanted to watch a movie, but the child wanted to play with the iPad.
The boy sat against the wall by the picture window overlooking the city, facing the bed.
He lifted the covers up over them.
She tried to signal to him with her eyes that he should stop.
She mouthed, What the fuck are you doing?
She didnt want the child to overhear what she was saying.
You should really get off the iPad, she recalls him saying.
Pavlovich, in a state of shock, buried her head in the pillow.
After about five minutes, Gaiman got up and walked to the bathroom, half-naked.
He went back to the bathroom, naked from the waist down.
Before you leave, he told Pavlovich, you have to finish your job.
She went to the bathroom, and he pushed her to her knees.
The door was open.
(Gaimans representatives say these allegations are false, not to mention, deplorable.)
That morning, Pavlovich came down with COVID.
Palmer and Gaiman agreed that she could isolate in Gaimans empty home.
They still hadnt paid her for a single hour shed worked for them.
Ten days after Gaiman left New Zealand, Pavlovich went to Palmers house for dinner.
She asked Palmer if she could tell her something in confidence and made her promise not to tell Gaiman.
She begged for reassurance that she would still keep her job as the childs nanny.
Palmer assured Pavlovich her employment was not in danger.
Sitting in the kitchen, Pavlovich told Palmer that Gaiman had made a pass at her.
She told Palmer about the bath.
I didnt have any choice in the matter, she said.
He just did it.
She said he had been having sex with her ever since.
Palmer did not appear to be surprised.
Fourteen women have come to me about this, she said.
Pavlovich waited until the end to tell Palmer about the child being present in Auckland.
Afterward, she recalled, Palmer was silent.
Palmer insisted that Pavlovich spend the night in her guest room.
She told her, Ive had to do this before, and I can do this again.
I will take care of you.
He replied no, then hung up.
Everyone was trying to make the best of what was clearly a difficult situation, Muller tells me.
Palmer then flew to Edinburgh, where Gaiman was staying with their son, whom she collected.
I feel awful about this.
Would you like to talk about it?
Is there anything I can do to make anything better?
Pavlovich didnt respond immediately.
My reflex was to fix the situation, she tells me.
The next day, she wrote, Hey.
Well speak soon … hope you are doing good.
That is tenfold so now.
She helped Pavlovich find a temporary apartment and invited her over for meals.
Im glad she had you to take care of her, she wrote.
Its been a rough month for everyone.
Anaru felt Palmer bore a share of the blame.
Replying to Palmer, she wrote that the majority of my rage is directed at Neil.
Did you not see this coming a mile away?
Around the same time, Pavlovich followed up with Gaiman.
I had a very intense dream about you last night, she wrote.
Are you doing okay?
In his reply, he made a reference to something that had happened two weeks earlier.
I wanted to kill myself, he wrote.
Fragile but not great.
He expressed dismay at Anarus message, which Palmer had told him about.
Pavlovich remembers her palms sweating, hot coils in her stomach.
She was terrified of upsetting Gaiman.
I was disconnected from everybody else at that point in my life, she tells me.
She rushed to reassure him.
It was consensual (and wonderful)!
Anaru had been triggered by something I think, she added.
I am so glad that you messaged me, Gaiman wrote.
I thought you were a monster.
Gaiman asked Pavlovich to speak with Muller.
Muller reached out to Pavlovich to offer a safe harbor.
After listening to Mullers esoteric, spiritual claptrap, she felt worse.
I really felt it was all my fault.
I accompanied her on a journey to help her figure out the answers for herself to that issue.
But Gaiman never followed through.
I dont remember why not, Muller says.
She hoarded zopiclone and aspirin and walked around the city surveying bridges.
She decided shed take the pills and told Palmer about her plan.
At Palmers urging, she checked into an emergency room.
You are loved, Palmer texted.
The apartment Palmer had set her up with was temporary, and she needed a place to stay.
Your job is to care for you, she replied.
There is a reason I have divorced my parents, she wrote.
Im starting to feel very much on my own and like I hate everyone.
Babe I am more alone than Ive ever been in my life, Pavlovich replied.
That night, Pavlovich texted Gaiman.
Amanda keeps saying she will help but it seems more philosophical rather than actually like she will help.
Two minutes later, she added, Ive been thinking of you so much.
Gaiman replied that hed be happy to help in a tangible way.
A month later, she received a bank transfer from Gaiman: $1,700 for her babysitting work.
Two months after that, she received the first of nine payments totaling about $9,200.
Over the course of the year, Pavlovichs perspective changed.
As he faded away, I began to let other voices in, she says.
(Wallner and Pavlovich broke their NDAs when they spoke out about Gaiman.)
These women encouraged her to go to the police.
In January 2023, Pavlovich filed a police report accusing Gaiman of sexual assault.
At the station, she gave a formal interview about the case.
Pavlovich assured them Palmer would participate.
I said to them, Shes a public feminist, and she knows what happened.
Shell want to protect me.
Im sure shell speak.
When the police contacted Palmer later that year, she declined to talk with them.
Gaiman never spoke with the police either, though he did provide a written statement.
It was called Whakanewha, named after a park near their homes on Waiheke.
As it happens, the university had awarded Gaiman an honorary degree in 2016.
As far as the police report goes, the matter has been closed, a spokesperson says.
Gaimans career, meanwhile, has been marginally affected.
A few pending adaptations of his novels and comics have been puton hold or canceled.
But the second season ofThe Sandmanis set to premiere on Netflix this year, as isAnansi Boyson Amazon Prime.
(Amazon did not return a request for comment.)
He and Palmer are entering the fifth year of an ugly divorce and custody battle.
Gaiman has bled her dry in the divorce proceedings, according to someone close to her.
Shes moved back in with her parents in Massachusetts.
They had been unaware of one anothers existence until theyd heard the podcast.
Since then, they had formed a WhatsApp group and grown close.
Its been like meeting survivors of the same cult, Stout tells me.
Its impossible to understand unless you were there.
Kendall joined them on FaceTime.
With their dark hair and delicate features, they looked like they could be sisters.
Pavlovich had written that she wanted to release the yoke of victimhood and invite in self-acceptance.
she wrote in her journal.
But she also noted that she wasnt alone.
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*At her request, this story has been updated to identify Caroline Wallner by her full name.
