Neil Gaiman — the best-selling author whose work includes comic book series The Sandman and the novels Good Omens and American Gods — has denied sexual assault allegations made against him by two women with whom he had relationships with at the time, Tortoise Media reports.
The allegations were made during Tortoise’s four-part podcast Master: the Allegations Against Neil Gaiman, which was released Wednesday. In it, the women allege “rough and degrading sex” with the author, which the women claim was not always consensual.
One of the women, a 23-year-old named Scarlett, worked as a nanny to his child. She claimed Gaiman assaulted her in February 2022, just hours after they had first met, while in a bath at his New Zealand home. Gaiman told the outlet that he and Scarlett “cuddled” and “made out” in the bath and that it was consensual; he added that in the three-week sexual relationship they were in, they only engaged in digital penetration.
Scarlett claims that while they were in a consensual relationship, Gaiman also sexually assaulted her with non-consensual “rough and degrading penetrative sexual acts” per the outlet’s description in its investigation. In one incident, the pain “was so painful and so violent” that she lost consciousness. “The pain was celestial,” she said. When she asked him to stop, “he laughed and said I needed to be punished and used his belt on me,” she said on the podcast, via The Telegraph. Gaiman denied the allegation to Tortoise.
The second woman, who went by K, was 18 when she first met him in 2003 at a book signing event in Florida. She claims they began a romantic relationship when she was 20 and he was in his mid-forties. While they were in a relationship, she alleges she was subjected to rough and painful sex “she neither wanted or enjoyed.” At one point, she alleged that he penetrated her despite her objecting because she was in the midst of a urinary tract infection; the incident left her “screaming” in pain. Gaiman denied K’s allegations and told Tortoise he was “disturbed” by the accusations. (Reps for Gaiman did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s requests for comment.)
According to Tortoise’s investigation, K did not file a police report. Scarlett filed a complaint to New Zealand police in October 2022.
Gaiman told Tortoise that the police did not pursue his offer to assist the investigation regarding the complaint, claiming that this showed the lack of substance of the complaint. But New Zealand police told the outlet it made a “number of attempts to speak to key people as part of this investigation and those efforts remain ongoing,” adding that there are “a number of factors to take into consideration with this case, including location of all parties.”