Manufacturing consent
Manufacturing consent
Untangling the Neil Gaiman sexual assault allegations, and the Tortoise Media investigation that is both flawed and important
TRIGGER WARNING: this piece contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault.
I came across the Neil Gaiman story via a post that landed in my Instagram feed on Friday morning. I saw that Gaiman had been accused of sexual assault and as someone who reports on sexual assault committed by powerful figures, I immediately wanted to know more.
I found the podcast that had broken the story two days prior and started listening. I ended up devouring all four episodes of Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman in one go, equally horrified and compelled. Horrified at Gaiman’s alleged assaults — one of a 21-year-old in 2022, when he was 61, and one of a 20-year-old in 2005, when he was 45 — described in shocking, graphic detail. Horrified at what had also been revealed about his ex-wife, Amanda Palmer and about how New Zealand police responded to Gaiman’s accuser when she went to them for help.
Compelled because, as a journalist who has written extensively about sexual assault, I know how difficult it is to report on. I had never heard it covered quite like this before, and by a company I had never heard of — Tortoise Media. I was stunned by what was revealed — in far more detail than what has been permitted by the lawyers I’ve worked with when covering stories of this nature — and was incredulous that so much of what is traditionally withheld out of extreme legal prudence was divulged. The experience became even more surreal when I realised that one of the main journalists investigating was Rachel Johnson, sister of former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, an avowed TERF who opined in The Spectator, “It’s hard not to pity Ghislaine Maxwell.” Problematic doesn’t begin to describe it, but this was not a calculated commission on Tortoise’s part. Johnson, host of the podcast Difficult Women, was the journalist originally contacted by the main accuser, Scarlett. Johnson then teamed up with award-winning reporter Paul Caruana Galizia to investigate. I’ll talk more about the reporting of the case later. First though, a recap of what the podcast reveals.
Scarlett described herself as a friend of Amanda Palmer before Palmer hired her as a live-in au pair/nanny to help care for Palmer and Gaiman’s young son, Ash. In February 2022, on Scarlett’s first day working for the couple, Ash was at a friend’s house and Scarlett was left alone with Gaiman in his Waiheke, New Zealand home. Within a few hours of their meeting, Gaiman climbed into an outdoor bath that Scarlett had run for herself and according to Scarlett, anally penetrated her with his fingers without her consent. This was the beginning of a three-week sexual relationship between Scarlett, then 21, and Gaiman, then 61, in which Scarlett says:
— Gaiman entered her anally without consent or warning in their second sexual encounter, and used butter as a lubricant.
—on another occasion that he anally penetrated her, the pain was so intense she passed out. Scarlett described the pain as “celestial”.
— Gaiman repeatedly subjected her to degrading sexual acts including having her perform oral sex on him as punishment when she screamed as a result of painful anal sex, which she referred to as having to “clean him up”. She says he also “used his belt” on her.
According to Gaiman, Scarlett had agreed to share a bath on that first night, in which they merely “made out” and cuddled consensually. He says he never penetrated Scarlett with his penis and that within days of their meeting she “expressed an interest in mild BDSM.” He says their relationship was entirely consensual.
A court of law might agree with Gaiman, because although Scarlett went to Johnson alleging assault (and before that, to the New Zealand police), she did express enthusiastic consent throughout her relationship with Gaiman. Scarlett hands over to Tortoise Media the entire archive of Whatsapp messages between her and Gaiman and on the podcast, Johnson describes Scarlett as seeming “besotted” with him.
At the same time that she texted a friend the next day telling them about the bath with Gaiman and saying that he “crossed the boundaries”, Scarlett also texted Gaiman. She signed off her message, “Thank you for a lovely, lovely night. Wow. x”
“This is where things get messy, emotionally and evidentially,” Caruana Galizia narrates. But anyone who’s worked with victims of grooming and assault can tell you how common it is for survivors to develop feelings for their abusers, as an expert points out on the podcast.
Scarlett says she told Amanda Palmer about what happened with Gaiman the following month and that Palmer told her she was “the 14th fucking woman who had gone to her.” According to Scarlett, when she broached the subject with Palmer saying, “Neil made a pass at me,” Palmer responded, “I bet he did.” Palmer did not respond to Tortoise’s numerous emails and Whatsapp messages requesting comment.
Horrified by what these allegations inferred, on Saturday morning I went to Palmer’s Instagram page to see if she had addressed them. She hadn’t, and the vast majority of comments on her page were offering love and support. When one person expressed sympathy that Palmer had “involuntarily” gotten caught up in this, I felt compelled to interject. “Involuntarily?” I wrote. “Apparently this young woman was the 14th to tell Amanda about Neil doing this kind of thing.” I made several more comments interacting with fans who clearly hadn’t listened to the podcast. I explained why I agreed with one commenter who felt that feminist icon Palmer — who has been, like Gaiman, outspoken in her support of survivors of sexual assault — owed it to her fans, many of them patrons, an explanation. By Saturday night, my comments, alongside the few others querying Palmer’s involvement, had been deleted.
When Scarlett eventually went to New Zealand police to report what had happened with Gaiman, she was told they weren’t going to pursue the case because she’d have a hard time making the allegations stick in court. In a recording of her conversation with a police officer, Scarlett asks if he has interviewed Gaiman or Palmer and the policeman tells her no. It’s one of many examples in the podcast of the type of evidence that is almost never shared publicly, for better and for worse. I was grateful to have been made privy to it while praying that Tortoise’s lawyers knew what they were doing.
During his investigation, Caruana Galizia came across a source who connected him with another woman who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Gaiman during their relationship. “K”, an American, was 18 when she met Palmer in 2003 at a book signing in Florida. A year later, K says Gaiman invited her and another female friend to come to bed with him when they went back to his place after they all went out for dinner. The 19-year-olds declined. The following year, when she was 20 and Gaiman was 45, K entered a romantic and sexual relationship with the author. K alleges that in one incident while on holiday in the UK, she pleaded with Gaiman not to penetrate her vagina as she had a painful UTI at the time. She says he ignored her and did it anyway, causing her agony.
Again, the details of their relationship are nightmarishly complicated for law enforcement and media lawyers. As with Scarlett, the assault happened in the context of a consensual relationship, and Gaiman and K continued to maintain a friendship up until 2022, at which point K says she “saw the relationship for what it was.” Gaiman “denies any unlawful behaviour with K and is disturbed by her allegations,” according to Tortoise Media. But even if these relationships were as Gaiman described them, both betray a huge imbalance in power dynamics, with Gaiman being at least 25 and up to 40 years older than the sub-22-year old-women in question, and with one meeting him as a fan and another starting out as an employee.
My experience in investigating sexual assault has taught me that where there’s smoke, there’s usually a blazing inferno. In the few days since the podcast was released, many commenters on Reddit have alluded to rumours of sexual impropriety that have swirled around Gaiman — and Palmer — for decades. When investigating these kind of stories, I typically speak with many survivors who either choose not to share their stories publicly, or whose accounts don’t pass risk-averse legal muster. It seems highly probable that there are many more survivors of Gaiman’s abuse out there, and Tortoise have already teased (somewhat tawdrily) on social media, "Since publishing, we’ve come to realise that the problem is much bigger than we realised..."
I am glad that Master has kicked off the investigation into Gaiman’s sexual (mis)conduct and hope he will be held accountable for his actions. I have no connection with Tortoise or anyone involved but I do recommend listening to the podcast (currently free) in its entirety as there are too many shocking revelations to describe in detail here, many of which had me open-mouthed in disbelief. Responding to Scarlett’s allegations, Gaiman described her as “mentally ill” and said she had a condition “associated with false memories”, a condition there is no medical record of, according to Tortoise. Scarlett blessed the reporters with a goldmine of material (evidence that should have been more than enough for New Zealand police to follow up with her complaint), including voice messages sent to her from Gaiman, messages she sent to friends the night of and morning after the bath, and notes she wrote in her phone contemporaneously. Following their brief relationship and a period in which Scarlett was suicidal, Gaiman offered to pay her rent for six months while she got back on her feet. At this time he also had Scarlett sign an NDA dating back to her first day of employment, the day he got into a bath with her.
I appreciated that the podcast shared many of these lesser-heard details which provide important insight and context, but apart from the unforgivable fact of one of the reporters being a defender of Ghislaine Maxwell, I had other criticisms of Master. The third episode goes on a tangent about Gaiman’s Scientologist upbringing without connecting it in any meaningful way with the current allegations, beyond the unfounded claim that Gaiman’s father was a sexual assaulter (an accusation levelled by the notoriously untrustworthy Church of Scientology).
When interviewing Scarlett and in her narration, Johnson regularly slips into victim-blaming lines of questioning, both directed at Scarlett and rhetorical. Did you jump out of the bath at any point? Why would anyone stay around for this? These questions might have been posed on the part of Johnson’s imagined audience, but they’re raised indelicately and do her credibility no favours.
I also questioned the editorial judgment in involving certain people in the story. Gaiman had actor Fiona Shaw, who stars in the Amazon adaptation of his novel Anansi Boys, record a sympathetic message for Scarlett while she was suicidal, which you can hear in the podcast. We’re told that it’s unclear what Shaw knew of Gaiman and Scarlett’s relationship, which makes you wonder why she was dragged into this at all.
Gaiman and Palmer’s therapist, who had a conversation with Scarlett regarding what happened but who couldn’t talk to Johnson or Caruana Galizia out of client confidentiality, is mentioned by name, which seemed unnecessary and imprudent.
There is another former nanny, unnamed, who may or may not have had an experience with Gaiman and who allegedly asked Scarlett in an email if she had signed an NDA, followed by a sad face emoji. I hope this person consented to having their correspondence included in this podcast.
I applaud Scarlett’s bravery in sharing her story and she clearly gave Tortoise permission to call her by her first name in the podcast, but this information alone makes her an easy target on and off the internet. I’m genuinely fearful of the backlash and victim-blaming from Gaiman’s fans that she might endure for years from now. I sincerely hope she is receiving appropriate protection and care.
I am very, very interested to see how this case unfolds from here. I am interested to see how many more women will come forward. I am interested to see if New Zealand police will take belated action. I am interested to see if Amanda Palmer will respond to the inference that she, at best, left a vulnerable young woman alone with her husband, knowing about his sexual proclivities, and at worst, was part of the grooming process. I am interested to see how Gaiman will try to defend having sexual relationships with vulnerable, subordinate women less than half his age, consensually or otherwise.
Despite wishing desperately that Scarlett had chosen someone other than Rachel Johnson to share her story with, I’m glad that Caruana Galizia came on board. A reputable reporter and the son of the assassinated investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, about whom he wrote an award-winning book, he lends some much needed credibility to the proceedings. I know little about Tortoise Media, which has been described in The Guardian as a rich person’s club, and I groaned when a conservative-leaning news podcast was advertised mid-way through one episode, but I am glad that Tortoise took this project on where many others may not have. After listening to Master I also listened to their recent two-part series Taking The Stand, illustrating how two rape survivors were failed by the UK justice system. I’m yet to explore more of their journalism but I am impressed with Tortoise’s work covering sexual assault in much-needed ways.
To say Master was imperfectly executed is an understatement, but I’m grateful for it, both as a means of hopefully helping to ensure that Gaiman is held accountable for his behaviour, and for its willingness to explore the “gray area” of consent that so often impedes the police, courts, and other media outlets from helping survivors in any meaningful way.
Fans of Gaiman and/or critics of Tortoise and Johnson might be inclined to seize upon some of the podcast’s flaws, but let us not lose sight of the main news here: Neil Gaiman took advantage of two vulnerable young women sexually, and this is likely the tip of the iceberg. The messenger might not have been ideal, but let it not detract from this essential truth.