When I got first an Instagram message, then a long email, from a young Kiwi called Scarlett back in October 2023, alleging an unnamed British author was a “predator “and “despot”, only one man’s name came to mind.
I almost dismissed it (only one British male author had a New Zealand connection – he’d hit the headlines for breaking lockdown and flying to his house on Skye).
There was no hint, then, of the explosive international furore that would follow Scarlett’s first email to me, eventually leading to the global cancellation of that author’s work over the course of the past six months.
I replied, “Are his initials N.G?” My heart sank when she confirmed.
I’d met Neil Gaiman a couple of times. He’d dropped into a breakfast off the Portobello Road and joined my group, wearing his uniform of black leather jacket, black Levis and black woolly hair.
I had good friends who loved him and told me to drop it
I had good friends who loved him. Really loved him, and told me to drop it. Like fellow British megaselling author JK Rowling, Gaiman’s creative genius sucked children and non-readers into a lifelong love of books and comics.
He was a cash cow when it came to publishing, film and TV, having sold 50 million books and one-man industry creating hundreds of jobs when those books — Sandman, Good Omens, Anansi Boys etc — got turned into series by Disney, Amazon and Netflix.
He even tweeted about consent and believing women. THAT Neil Gaiman?
Plus, Gaiman was a kind, vocal, public ally of all the most worthy, trendy minorities and causes from refugees to trans kids and what’s more, he even tweeted about consent and believing women.
THAT Neil Gaiman?
I admit, I left it until the New Year of 2024 to dig into the allegations, but Scarlett’s account of being allegedly anally assaulted, then aged 23, in an outdoor bath, on her first day of work, by her boss aged 61, a man she’d never met before, was unforgettable.
The challenge, in terms of publication here in the UK (our libel laws are a hellscape), was to find the fourteen others that Neil Gaiman’s wife Amanda Palmer told Scarlett were out there.
To cut a long story (a story told in the Tortoise podcast series called Master: the Allegations against Neil Gaiman, which I reported with Paul Caruana Galizia, which was followed up by a long read cover story by Lila Shapiro in New York Magazine a couple of weeks ago) there were others. Nine women so far have reported they had relationships of varying shades of grey with Neil Gaiman and all of them alleged the sex within the relationship was “neither wanted nor enjoyed”, painful, unconsensual, degrading, and transactional.
It was only after New York Magazine that Neil Gaiman issued his first public denial, called “Breaking the Silence” and repeated his position, one he had indirectly communicated to Tortoise, that he had “never engaged in unconsensual sex with anyone. Ever.”
But that denial has not prevented Dark Horse Comics being the latest one of his publishers, streamers, or other platforms from dropping the author. In a post on X, Dark Horse Comics this week said: “Dark Horse takes seriously the allegations against Neil Gaiman and we are no longer publishing his works.”
The blanket cancellation of Neil Gaiman was not my intention when I first heard Scarlett’s story. My point was the public interest
The point of me “breaking my silence” now here is to say that the blanket cancellation of Neil Gaiman was not my intention when I first heard Scarlett’s story, then the voices of four more females you hear in Master.
My point was the compelling public interest in reporting her allegations, and others like hers.
All Scarlett said she wanted was “accountability,” or some recognition that she had been abused.
Our intention with Master was to probe the greyest of grey areas – allegations of sexual abuse within an otherwise consensual relationship.
What the police call IPSV – or intimate partner sexual violence – is the most underreported crime. Women don’t report it (even though marital rape has been on the statue book since 1992) because they don’t think they will be believed; they don’t want to think they’ve been abused and themselves as victims, they don’t want their partner, often the father of their children, to go jail. They very often send their alleged abuser loving messages, afterwards, that can be used as the crux of any defence. It’s…complicated.
I hope everyone listens to the podcast.
Rachel Johnson is a London Standard columnist
