Editor’s note: This article contains references to sexual violence and child abuse. Reader discretion is advised.
At dinner following my high school graduation, a friend of the family handed me a wrapped package. “Congratulations,” she said. I opened it up and found a hardcover book, green and black: on the cover a highway, lightning. I opened it to the front page, where a pen and ink portrait of a bearded man with a glass eye looked back at me. “To Eric Scott – believe!” read the inscription, and below that, the author’s signature.
I was speechless: a signed first edition copy of my favorite book, the book that had come to define much of my personality, American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
Gaiman is a strange figure for contemporary Paganism; he has never, to my knowledge, claimed to be one of us, but his work has been incredibly influential on the movement. My own story is hardly unique – many, many Pagans I know have described how American Gods or, even more likely, The Sandman shaped their perceptions of the gods. It’s not that Gaiman’s work introduced us to Paganism per se, much less to mythology in general – we came to his work because we liked those things already. But he introduced us to a new sort of theology, a conception of gods that we could imagine walking on shattered glass in dirty alleyways as easily as through the halls of Mount Olympus, and it was irresistible. If you have ever seen a DeviantArt drawing of Loki grinning in a hoodie, you have seen an artist only a few links removed from Gaiman.
Neil Gaiman at New York Comic Con in October 2018. Photo Credit: Rhododendrites CCA-SA 4.0
I had fallen away from Gaiman over the years, as he moved on from novels and comics into mostly writing for television, but still, innumerable aspects of my personality were anchored in his work. Just last year, I borrowed a guitar at an open mic night and sang a Tom Waits song, “Tango ‘til They’re Sore”: I’ll tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past / so send me off to bed forevermore. I remembered after I got off stage, where I had first heard of that song: it was the epigraph to a chapter of American Gods.
This morning, Vulture, part of New York Magazine, published an exhaustively researched report that alleges Gaiman has, for decades, groomed, abused, sexually assaulted, and raped women, many of whom were either fans or in his employment. The story has been out there since last July, when the Tortoise podcast released a series of episodes featuring interviews with women whom Gaiman had allegedly assaulted, but the Vulture article is the first time a major journalistic outlet has reported on the story. Not only did Vulture confirm the accounts from the podcasts, but it reports that there was both more and worse abuse than even Tortoise has suggested.
On that note: I read the entirety of the Vulture piece, and at multiple points, I felt physically ill. The article is important, but it’s horrific; I can’t imagine the kind of toll it might have taken on the reporter, Lila Shapiro. On social media, one warning keeps being shared: don’t feel like you have to read the whole thing to understand what’s going on, especially if you have triggers surrounding sexual violence.
One of the most detailed accounts in Vulture‘s article comes from Scarlett Pavlovich, who met Gaiman’s wife, Amanda Palmer, in New Zealand when she was 22. (Palmer and Gaiman are in the midst of a divorce whose proceedings have continued for the past five years.) Palmer is a musician, performance artist, and author best known for her work with the punk cabaret band The Dresden Dolls and for her solo career. Palmer and Pavlovich developed a friendship, and Pavlovich was later asked to act as a nanny to Gaiman and Palmer’s child. Pavlovich, who was at the end of a temporary sublet and was worried that she would soon be homeless, accepted.
Pavlovich alleges that during her time as a babysitter, Gaiman sexually assaulted her multiple times. She recounted one particularly harrowing sexual incident, only hours after she had first met Gaiman when he offered her a bath in a claw-foot tub in his garden and then sexually assaulted her.
A recurring theme in descriptions of Gaiman’s assaults is his insistence on being called “Master” and inflicting various kinds of humiliating, degrading, or violent sexual acts on his victims. As the Vulture piece notes, these acts can be done consensually, and indeed, many in the kink community may enjoy them. Gaiman’s representatives played on this in their response to the allegations: “Sexual degradation, bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism may not be to everyone’s taste, but between consenting adults, BDSM is lawful.” (Gaiman himself has remained silent since the accusations first came to light last year.)
As Shapiro explains, however, BDSM has a long-established code of community conduct to make sure consent and safety are maintained. If just one party consents, that isn’t kink – it’s abuse and potentially rape.
Pavlovich’s testimony is exceptionally shocking. She said in reports that she is gay and had never engaged in sexual activity with a man before Gaiman’s alleged assaults. She also described a disturbing incident where Gaiman, after being told by Amanda Palmer that he “couldn’t have” Pavlovich, expressed a wish for “the good old days” when both he and Palmer could have sex with her.
Another accuser, identified only as Caroline, worked as a caretaker on Gaiman’s Woodstock, New York property. Caroline alleges that Gaiman began a physical relationship with her after her husband left her in 2017. She recounted an incident where Gaiman climbed into bed with her and Gaiman’s young child, placing her hand on his genitals. “He didn’t have boundaries,” Caroline said, recalling how she jumped out of bed in shock.
Caroline at the time had no income and no other home for herself and her children. She says Gaiman framed their sexual relationship as a quid-pro-quo: in exchange for sex, he would allow her to continue living on his property. “You take care of me,” Caroline recalls him saying, “and I’ll take care of you.”
In December 2021, Gaiman’s business manager reportedly offered Caroline $5,000 to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and leave the property. Caroline demanded $300,000 instead, which Gaiman eventually paid. His representatives claim that Caroline initiated the sexual encounters and denied any inappropriate behavior in front of his son.
There are other descriptions in the Vulture article that involve Gaiman allegedly assaulting Pavlovich and Caroline in view of his child. One of the most disturbing allegations is that at one point, Gaiman’s child began referring to Pavlovich as a “slave.”
Both Pavlovich and Caroline reportedly signed non-disclosure agreements after their respective incidents, with Pavlovich receiving $9,200 in multiple payments. In January 2023, she filed a police report accusing Gaiman of sexual assault, but authorities have since closed the case.
Despite the allegations, Gaiman has denied any wrongdoing, maintaining that all interactions were consensual. His representatives dismissed Pavlovich’s claims as “false and deplorable.”
One thing that strikes me even now is how even if one were to take Gaiman at his word, to assume that Pavlovich, Caroline, and the six other women who have accused Gaiman of assault are all embellishing their stories for publicity, one is still left with a man who thinks it’s possible to have “consent” with women whose choices are to either assent to sex or find themselves homeless. This is the version of the story he wants the world to believe. This is his best-case scenario.
Since Tortoise’s initial report, Gaiman’s professional life has faced some disruptions. According to New York Magazine, Season 3 of Prime Video’s Good Omens will now conclude with a single 90-minute episode, reportedly without Gaiman’s involvement. Disney has paused production on its adaptation of The Graveyard Book, while Netflix has canceled Dead Boy Detectives. It remains unclear whether these decisions are directly related to the allegations.
Nevertheless, Gaiman’s major projects, including Season 2 of Netflix’s The Sandman and Prime Video’s Anansi Boys adaptation, are still slated for release. Neither Netflix nor Prime Video responded to requests for comment on the status of these shows.
There are a couple things I am sitting with, that I have been sitting with since July, and are at the front of my mind today.
First, there will be two competing instinctive responses to today’s article. The first is to burn all Gaiman’s books and damn his name to oblivion; the second will be to declare our love for the art, if not the artist, and attempt to separate them. Neither of these are especially productive approaches in my mind. I don’t think it’s a worthy idea to spend money on new Gaiman projects or promote him as a cool author for new Pagans to read. But as I said at the beginning, he has had a profound influence on modern Pagan culture, and that influence will still be there even if we try to ignore it. We have to grapple with our heritage, even the awful parts of it, and figure out how to grow and evolve beyond it. That can’t happen unless we acknowledge our influences and understand the context in which they arose.
And secondly, and most importantly, is this: Pavlovich, Caroline, and the other women Gaiman has assaulted – and there are surely more than even the eight women documented by Vulture – are real people who have suffered real harm. I think there is a tendency to dismiss this point in favor of focusing on what was going on in the abuser’s head, or the reaction of fans to a fallen creator’s work. I don’t want to say those things should be completely silenced; I opened this editorial by engaging in a few paragraphs of the latter, after all. But as we discuss this news and move forward from it, we should remember their humanity, their reality as human beings, first and foremost. It matters more than our love for a novel or a comic book. Or even for a theology.
Manny Tejeda y Moreno contributed to this article.
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