Neil Gaiman Denies Rape Allegations

One of the many on-the-record accounts came from Scarlett Pavlovich, his son’s former babysitter. By her testimony, she met Gaiman in 2020 and shortly thereafter, alleges he sexually assaulted her. After spending an evening at Gaiman’s home, waiting for his son to finish a playdate, the author allegedly suggested she take a bath in the garden while he took a phone call. When she relented, he suddenly appeared and joined her.

“I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘I’m not confident with my body,’” Pavlovich told NY Mag. “He said, ‘It’s okay—it’s only me. Just relax. Just have a chat.’” She didn’t move. He then added: “Don’t ruin the moment.”

Then, Gaiman pressed her to sit on his lap despite her rejections. She tried to explain she was gay, that she’d never had sex, and that she had been sexually abused by a 45-year-old man when she was 15.

“The next part is really amorphous,” Pavlovich told the publication. “But I can tell you that he put his fingers straight into my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass. 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 I’ll come.’” Gaiman, she said, then called her “a good little girl.”

Pavlovich said she continued to work as the child’s babysitter—largely in part for his then-estranged wife, the singer-songwriter and performance artist, Amanda Palmer—and cited another instance in which Gaiman sexually assaulted her. When she repeatedly said “no,” he allegedly continued anyway. Pavlovich recalled “screaming” the entire time Gaiman anally penetrated her without her consent. When he had allegedly finished, he referred to her as “slave” and demanded she “clean him up.” When she protested, he said: “Are you defying your master?”

“I had to lick my own shit,” she told the publication. Pavlovich further alleged that Gaiman once raped her in a hotel room he shared with his son, then forced her to lick up his urine afterward. Gaiman’s representatives called these particular allegations “false, not to mention, deplorable.”

Most of the women featured in the NY Mag story were in their 20s when they met Gaiman. Two of them were employed for him, while five counted themselves among his fans. Another woman identified as Kendra Stout, said Gaiman asked her to call him “master” and “beat her with his belt” in 2003. “These were not sexy little taps,” she told the magazine. He told Stout: “It’s the only way I can get off.” Stout detailed another incident, in which she accuses Gaiman of raping her. She filed a police report in October 2024.

On Wednesday, Palmer—Gaiman’s ex-wife as of 2022—declined to comment on the allegations via a representative to NME.

“While Ms. Palmer is profoundly disturbed by the allegations that Mr. Gaiman has abused several women, at this time her primary concern is, and must remain, the well-being of her son and therefore, to guard his privacy, she has no comment on these allegations.”