Best-selling British author Neil Gaiman released a statement Wednesday denying he had ever engaged in non-consensual sex after a magazine this week published allegations from several women, accusing him of sexual assault.
The 64-year-old author of The Sandman comic book series and novel American Gods was responding to a New York Magazine article that detailed allegations of assault, abuse and coercion levelled by eight women. The allegations of four of them had been broadcast in July in a Tortoise Media podcast.
Gaiman said he had watched stories about him circulate on the Internet for months with "horror and dismay.”
"As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever,” Gaiman posted on the social media platform Tumblr.
Gaiman said he had read back message exchanges he had had with his accusers. They still read like "two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again,” he said.
"And I also realise, looking through them, years later, that I could have and should have done so much better. I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people’s hearts and feelings, and that’s something that I really, deeply regret,” Gaiman said.
Most of the allegations relate to occasions when Gaiman was in his 40s or older and living in the United States, Britain and New Zealand.
One of the accusers, Scarlett Pavlovich, told New York Magazine she met Gaiman through his then-wife, US performer Amanda Palmer, on a New Zealand island where the couple lived with their son in 2022. Pavlovich alleges Gaiman abused her several times starting the night they met.
The Associated Press doesn’t identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they publicly identify themselves.
Some of Pavlovich’s allegations were first made public six months earlier in the podcast. She told the magazine she filed a police report in January 2023 accusing Gaiman of sexual assault.
New Zealand Police this week would not say whether Gaiman was, or had been, under investigation.
"In general, Police cannot respond to queries which seek to establish whether specific individuals are, or have been, under Police investigation. Additionally, anyone who makes a complaint to Police has the right to privacy,” New Zealand Police told AP in an email on Tuesday.
The AP’s messages to Gaiman’s agent, his office and to Bloomsbury, publisher of several of his recent books, were not returned.
Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, which both have Gaiman-related projects scheduled for this year, haven't responded to the AP’s messages.
Several of Gaiman's works have been turned into movies and television programmes. - AP
