Back in the summer of 2024, a media outlet Tortoise released a six-episode podcast that exposed five sexual assault cases against novelist Neil Gaiman. This Monday, some more were added to the list after a report from Vulture. More than a dozen women have come forward with allegations against Neil Gaiman and their stories are very similar.
JK Rowling called out the literary community’s silence and compared it to Harvey Weinstein’s case, which was the center of the MeToo movement. Rowling tweeted on Monday comparing the multiple accusations against Neil Gaiman from young women who have never met each other yet—as with the case of Weinstein— “tell remarkably similar stories.”
And the stories really are remarkably similar. It is a classic case of power disparity between perpetrators and victims. His alleged victims were in their 20s, while the youngest was 18, while Gaiman was in his 40s. Some of the women who have come forward, like Scarlett Pavlovich and Caroline, were hired as babysitters and caretakers for Gaiman’s son – both were struggling financially at the time. Neil Gaiman denied the allegation, but he signed an NDA with both the women and also paid $300,000 to Caroline.
Men Still Don’t Understand Consent or Don’t Care About It
A report by Variety stated that some of the women who came forward, at some point, did play along. However, specific BDSM activities were not discussed or agreed upon, which the publication highlighted as a lack of proper consent. It shows that either Neil Gaiman doesn’t understand consent or doesn’t care about consent.
A study by Dr. Mattson showed how little men understood about consent. According to him, many men usually conflate consent with sexual desire, and in cases when women stopped responding to sexual advances, it was still hard for men to understand.
A separate 2011 study highlighted that men are perfectly capable of understanding “No” and other forms of refusal, including non-verbal ones, but they choose to ignore it. A 2016 study also showed that when it comes to sexual violence against women, consent doesn’t change the entitlement to sex and women’s bodies that men feel.
Neil Gaiman’s Case Is About More Than Just Consent
At the core of the allegations against Neil Graham lies the power imbalance in the perpetrator-victim relationship. A rich and powerful perpetrator versus financially and socially weak victims.
This can also be seen in the case of Scarlett Pavlovich. She said in the podcast that she couldn’t quit her job after the first incident with Graham as “she was broke” and “homeless since the start of the pandemic.”
The allegations against Neil Gaiman are the reason why we need collective movements like MeToo, to address the complex power dynamics at play in cases of sexual harassment and assault.
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