Podcast transcripts

Episode 1:

Paul: Hi, I'm Paul Caruana Galizia from Tortoise. Before we begin, I just need to warn you, this is a hard listen at times. This episode and the whole series contains graphic descriptions of sex and of allegations of sexual abuse. 

The four episodes are designed to be listened to in their entirety, because this is a story of conflicting accounts. 8 months ago, a young woman got in touch with the broadcaster Rachel Johnson. 

Rachel: It all starts with a message on Instagram. Welcome to my podcast, Rachel Johnson's Difficult Women. I present a show on LBC and the podcast called Difficult Women and I get a ton of messages. This one seems no different. It's from a young New Zealander called Scarlett. We're using her first name only to protect her identity. She wishes me a lovely day and says she's got a question. It's friendly, breezy even. No hint there of the bombshell email that arrives a week later. 

Paul: The email includes allegations of serious sexual assaults carried out by a famous man. A man who was 61 when Scarlett was 22 and worked as his child's nanny. In that first email, Scarlett doesn't name the author who she alleges sexually assaulted her within hours of their first meeting. And she says, continued to assault me over the coming month. 

Rachel: I arranged to talk to Scarlett and what emerges is a more complex picture. Her allegations are of abuse within a consensual sexual relationship. She tells me she did not consent to everything this author did, nor every time he did it. 

But in her texts and video messages to him during their brief relationship and afterwards, she declared not just her consent, but her gratitude, appreciation, affection and even love. In other words, Scarlett's email opens a chapter of investigation into the greyest of grey areas when it comes to our sex lives. The area where the scope for genuine misinterpretation, but also for the possibility of serious abuse. Where it can take time, even for someone to make sense of what happened, while the police, if they're called upon, often look in vain for quick and clear evidence from the start, in large part because that's what they think a jury needs for a verdict. Any one of us can be on a jury, so it's also about our understanding of consent within a sexual relationship. People still expect sexual assault to happen between strangers, when in fact the vast majority of assault victims are, or were, in relationships with their assailants. It's still often assumed that by being in a relationship, you provide ongoing consent for sex. 

It's an assumption that used to be codified. Until 1992 UK law said there could be no rape between husband and wife, as by the contract of marriage a wife submitted herself irrevocably to sex at all times. Other jurisdictions have also removed the marital rape exemption, but across countries people still cling to the assumption that simply being in a relationship provides ongoing sexual consent. The law says that consent is for each and every act, whether you're in a relationship or not, but when prosecutors bring cases of sexual assault to court, they come up against that assumption in its different forms. To people, to jurors, the behaviour of sexual assault victims conflicts with the behaviour they expect from a real victim, for them to scream to forcefully resist, to immediately make a police report to avoid their assailant. But in fact in most cases there's no screaming or physical resistance. 

Police reports are delayed or never happen and victims continue to have contact with their assailants. Often they continue to have sex with them. It's why Scarlett's allegations are so difficult to tell and so complicated and why I'd say so important. She and the man in question look back on it in ways that sometimes overlap. They agree about details, dates, places and times of what happened between them, but not always. And when it comes to the really important questions, what was the sex really like? Was it okay? Were they both clear at the time that it was okay? 

They couldn't be further apart. She says it was abuse from the very beginning. In his account the sex was loving and consensual and didn't involve full intercourse. Faced with two diametrically opposed accounts, it's inevitable that this can't be just Scarlett's story. It has to include as much as possible of the man's version of events as well. 

Not just out of fairness, important though that is, but so that Paul and I and you have a chance of making sense of the relationship Scarlett had. A relationship in this case with the author Neil Gaiman. A man who's never faced allegations of sexual misconduct before. A man who's on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. 

Paul: Neil Gaiman is credited with bringing comic books to a global audience. His novels sells tens of millions of copies worldwide. 

[audio clip from show]: Your waking world is shaped by dreams. 

Paul: His writing has been adapted for TV miniseries on Netflix and Amazon.

[audio clip from show]: It isn't pretend it is real. All of it was dreamed into existence. 

Paul: There's been a West End theater show, and several Hollywood films. He's won international awards in fantasy, horror, comic books, sci-fi and children's literature. 

[Neil Gaiman on The Simpsons]: I've heisted my way to the bestseller list once again. 

Paul: He's even appeared in The Simpsons, twice. 

[Neil Gaiman on The Simpsons]: And the most brilliant part is, I don't even know how to read. 

Paul: He's known for his friendly interactions with his legions of fans and his public persona is low key, understated. But he's a creative colossus nonetheless. 

Scarlett: You know, he sort of lured me, if you will, into his psychological labyrinth. So it was not straightforward at all. 

Rachel: When Scarlett says in her first Instagram message that she has a question for me, what she really means is, she wants my help. 

Scarlett: I guess that he's held to account. That's literally all I want. 

Rachel: Journalists don't have the same powers as the state to investigate criminal allegations. Nor should we assume that role. Scarlett is exceptional in that she even went to the police in the first place. But she's unexceptional in the fact that the system seems to have failed her. 

So now she's turning to the press. But how could I help? Should I even? Given the seriousness of the allegations, I needed someone with experience on these kinds of stories. 

Paul: But this story was different. There are usually rumors swirling around. This time, there were none. Certainly none that had reached the media. There's one lone negative news story about Neil Gaiman. 

That he once broke pandemic lockdown rules. And what's more, Neil Gaiman has long been outspoken in his support of women and against sexual abuse. Support that he believes to be sincere and unwavering. We understand he sees himself as highly attuned to issues of consent. 

And his position is that he strongly denies any allegation of sexual misconduct. Some women, who I spoke to, have nothing but positive things to say about him. They say they love and respect him. 

That they care about him and that he's helped them. Yet what this young woman told Rachel and me painted a much more disturbing picture of Neil Gaiman. She alleges that he groomed her and repeatedly sexually assaulted her. His position is that her allegations are fantastical and false. 

Scarlett: It was so confusing because I feel like at the end of it he made me feel like it was consensual. But it wasn't consensual. 

Paul: As we set out to examine her allegations working over many months, we tried to get every side of the story and gather as much material as possible. We questioned what we were hearing the whole way through. We wondered whether it would be possible to really know what happened between two people, when often no one was around, when one person says one thing and the other has a very different account. At the same time we felt we couldn't ignore what this young woman told us. 

And when Rachel and I learnt of another woman with sexual allegations like these against Neil Gaiman, a woman separated by decades and continents from the first, we felt we had to pay attention. Because here again the woman was much younger than him. She first met him as a teenage fan and began a sexual relationship with him when she was 20 and he was in his 40s and already famous. It was a relationship in which she now alleges he performed non-consensual sex on her. And here again they exchanged loving and flirtatious emails both during and long after their relationship had ended. 

K: I never wanted any of the stuff he did to me including the more violent stuff. But I did consent to it, you know. 

Paul: Because even if consent for sex was given or assumed to be there, there are still questions to answer about how a powerful person treats a vulnerable one. Do they really believe that the other would say yes to sex if they didn't have power over them? 

Don't they have a heightened duty of care, a greater burden to seek consent? And for the other person, where do you go when no one will listen? When the law, the police, the courts will tell you that you can't be both a lover and a victim, or first one, then the other. What you'll hear in this four part series is disturbing in its allegations of certain sexual acts. 

We've thought long and hard about this point of view before publishing. Neil Gaiman's position is that sexual degradation, bondage, domination, sadism and masochism may not be to everyone's taste. But between consenting adults, BDSM is lawful. Only that's not quite what the law says, it's more nuanced than that. This story plays out in three countries, and in each one there are legal protections in place to stop people feeling pressured into consenting to sex that harms them. In the UK, sex that causes actual bodily harm, that is minor injuries, pain or discomfort, is unlawful even if consent is given. American criminal law generally doesn't allow consent to serious harm in sex. 

And in New Zealand, the court considers the circumstances and rationality of consent in each case. The idea, of course, isn't to police what people do in their bedrooms, and it's not to embarrass or shame them either. It's to prevent abuse. It's to stop consent being used as a defence when harmful sex becomes a matter of dispute. But the law or its enforcement isn't keeping up everywhere. Some people say that women are increasingly being seriously injured in what men claim to be consensual sexual acts. 

Rachel: What you'll hear is disturbingly common. One in three women faces sexual assault. It is the most prolific human rights abuse in the world. And if we can't talk about it and report on it, then how are we ever going to grapple with it or resolve it? 

I'm Rachel Johnson. 

Paul: And I'm Paul Caruana Galizia. You're listening to the Slow Newscast from Tortoise. This is Master, Episode One, The Bath. 

Rachel: Just give me a timeline, can we start with a timeline of what happened?

Scarlett: Yeah, yeah.

Rachel: When we first talk, it's on a video call. I'm in London, Scarlett's in Auckland in New Zealand. She's 23 years old but seems younger. Elfin, with wide awake eyes, her hair scraped back into a bun. 

Scarlett: So I knew Amanda as a friend and she messaged me one weekend last minute. 

Rachel: She starts her story one Friday, on the 4th of February 2022, when she gets a call. 

Scarlett: That weekend she desperately needed help because she was recording music or something. And I was like, yes, sure. I just stopped working weekends. I've been working in like a perfumery. 

Rachel: Her friend's Amanda Palmer, the globally successful singer-songwriter and lead singer of the Dresden Dolls. Scarlett's been a fan of Amanda's for years, but they've been friends since 2021 after they met by chance on the street in Auckland. Amanda offers Scarlett tickets to gigs and asks her to run errands for her. Scarlett's recently given up a job working in a perfume shop and she likes being part of Amanda's world. She's also drawn to the idea of being part of Amanda Palmer's household. But Scarlett's never met Amanda's husband, Neil Gaiman. 

The couple are living in separate houses on Waiheke, an exclusive island that's a short ferry hop from Auckland. On this Friday, the 4th of February, Amanda wants Scarlett to look after their six-year-old for the day on the mainland. It's a casual arrangement. There's no contract. Just an offer of 25 New Zealand dollars an hour. That's about 12 pounds. It goes well in Auckland that morning. So Amanda suggests that Scarlett travels to the island Waiheke to babysit that afternoon and evening as well. 

Scarlett: And ended up going there that weekend and she said, can you just work here full time? 

Rachel: The role being offered to Scarlett is more like that of an au pair than a formal nanny. Scarlett will live with the family and help both parents with childcare and, as it turns out, cooking and cleaning too. 

Paul: We've got the WhatsApp exchanges from that afternoon of 4th February. From them, we can work out that the first time Scarlett meets Neil Gaiman is just before 2pm at the ferry terminal. Neil Gaiman and the child go on ahead to Waiheke. Scarlett grabs an overnight bag and follows them on a later ferry. 

From the WhatsApps, we can see Neil Gaiman then arranged to meet Scarlett at his house. At 5 minutes past 2, he writes, it's a 12 minute bus ride and a 5 minute walk over a secret wetland path. Later, he asks, have you got off the bus yet? 

Scarlett replies, yep, just walking along the wetlands. Beautiful. At 4:26pm Neil Gaiman then messages, brilliant, see you in 5 minutes. So we know that Scarlett arrives at the house at around 4:30pm. 

Rachel: When she gets there, there's little babysitting to be done as the child is dropped off at a pre-arranged play date at one of Amanda's friends nearby. The child's pickup time is left vague and Scarlett finds herself on her own with Neil Gaiman and confused. 

Scarlett: We were alone in his house together, it was fucking awkward to be honest. He was like on work calls and stuff and I was like, what the hell am I doing here? I mean, I was like kind of stoked to be getting paid to just read basically. 

Rachel: After he's finished his work calls, Neil Gaiman suggests they get a pizza and Scarlett goes to pick it up. 

Paul: Scarlett WhatsApps Neil Gaiman as she's waiting for the pizza. We know from her message that it's now 7:39pm. 

Rachel: Three hours have passed since Scarlett arrived at Neil Gaiman's house. 

Scarlett: And then he came in ate outside with me and I was like, it was quite baffling, it was kind of peculiar but also flattering because he's famous. 

Rachel: He certainly is. He sold tens of millions of books. He's had a hit show in the West End based on his book The Ocean at the End of the Lane and his Sandman comic series is now a Netflix smash. Also, he's recognisable, only wears black, black jeans, black leather jacket, black wooly hair. Handsome in a crumpled way, you'd likely recognise him. 

Scarlett: We still had like time to kill apparently. So he said, do you want to have a bath? And I was like, oh yeah, sure. He said, okay, cool, I'll bring you a bath. And I thought nothing on Rachel. I know it sounds crazy, but I truly thought nothing of it. So he runs me a bath. The bath is outside, down at the bottom of the garden under what we call a Pohutukawa tree, which is a big tree with red flowers. And he gives me a towel and says, just feel free, come out when you're ready. So I got it and I was just sort of on my phone. 

Rachel: So Scarlett says Neil Gaiman leaves her to get into the bath alone and tells her to get out whenever she's done. She says he then goes into the house and when he comes out again, she says, he's naked. 

Scarlett: And then I hear, you know, like maybe five minutes later, clunk, clunk, clunk down to the bath, you know, the stones. And I was like, what the fuck? But also was like maybe thinking it was normal. 

Rachel: It's now about 9:25pm. The sun has set about an hour earlier. Neil Gaiman brings candles with him and puts them around the bath. 

Scarlett: And then he got in the bath with me in the most unfazed way, like completely nonchalant, like no issues, just like in the least sexual way possible, basically. But I was just chockered, but like also is this normal? And I sat down at one end and immediately went, you know, like this with my, with my legs. 

Rachel: Scarlett pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. She says she doesn't ask Neil Gaiman anything because she's shocked and bewildered and that his nonchalance makes her question her own discomfort. Maybe this is normal. 

Scarlett: I've seen Amanda naked many times because that's just how she lives her life, basically. And she would walk around the house naked and she would go swimming naked and has a very sort of, yeah, liberal attitude towards nudity. 

Rachel: In Neil Gaiman's account, he had invited her to take a bath with him. 

Paul: At 9:31pm, Scarlett sends a text to her friend in Auckland. It says, I am naked in the bath with Neil. I don't know how this happened. Don't reply, but fuck. And her friend doesn't reply, not until the next day anyway. Remember, he's 61. She's his son's nanny. She says she's not sexually attracted to him. 

Scarlett: I've just always known I love women and have been sexually attracted to women and sort of made myself this unabashed vocal lesbian around town, but actually, I've never had any sex. But, yeah. 

Paul: Not with a woman, but she told us that she did have a negative sexual experience with a middle aged man once before, when she was a teenager. It's only been five hours since Scarlett first met Neil Gaiman at the house on Waiheke Island, and now they're sitting at opposite ends of the same bathtub facing each other. The bath is a claw fitted, roll top, old fashioned tub. It's filled with hot water via hose from the house to its position under an ancient spreading Pohutukawa tree. We've got a photo of the bath. 

It's idyllic. In his account, Neil Gaiman asks Scarlett to participate in intimate contact. And, according to his account, she agrees in a way that is pleasant and unforced. In Neil Gaiman's account, it is no more than cuddling and making out. I should warn you that what follows is, according to Scarlett, quite graphic. 

Scarlett: He ended up sort of asking me to put my legs down and I ignored him. And then he said, come on, get comfortable. And again I was like, you know, I'm good. I'm a bit shy. And then he asked me again and sort of, you know, gestured. And so I put them down and he started, he started sort of caressing my legs. 

Paul: Scarlett then says that Neil Gaiman tells her to come over to his side of the bath so that she can see more of the Pohutukawa tree. Silent and scared, she says, she does this. She says she resists more of his touching by pulling forward and sitting up. She puts her phone down on the pebbles by the bath. 

Scarlett: It's quite, I don't know, it's sort of hard to talk about on Zoom. Yeah, maybe the next thing I knew his fingers were in my ass and I wasn't really sure what was happening. And then he made me give him a handjob and I said, no, first, because I'm not interested in that anatomy. And then he said, you don't know what you're missing out on, you know, come on, come over here. And then kept pushing it and kept pushing it to the point where I was just like fine. And then he just jerked off over me. 

Rachel: Did you jump out of the bath at any point? 

Scarlett: Utterly in a state of complete bewilderment. I wasn't really sure what was happening and, you know, feeling really confused. And he started to say really kind of quite filthy things and, you know, sort of ordering me to call him master. 

Paul: We understand that Neil Gaiman accepts that what he describes as digital penetration did happen between him and Scarlett, though without specifying when or how. And that Neil Gaiman's belief is that he established consent for this episode, which did not go beyond cuddling and making out in the bath. 

Rachel: By now it's late in the evening and the child needs collecting from what's become an extended playdate with a group of other children at Amanda's friend nearby. They both go. 

Scarlett: Which was fucking awkward because Neil and I both had wet hair like at 11 o'clock at night, you know, alarm bells. 

Rachel: Remember Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are co-parenting but they live apart. So after collecting the child, Scarlett asks Neil Gaiman to take her to Amanda Palmer's house. Scarlett says she felt unsafe returning to his. 

Paul: At 11:23, Scarlett makes a note on her phone. She records some of the things she's just described and what Neil Gaiman apparently says to her, including, I'm your master. Call me master and I'll come. In the morning at 7:35am, Scarlett texts her friend in Auckland again. Hey, sorry for that message. I was pretty shocked when it was happening and I'm still in a state of shock. 

Haven't slept at all. Her friend finally replies and tells Scarlett to look after herself and asks if she needs to talk. Scarlett replies saying, I'm pretty calm but confused to be honest. And in the same reply, To be honest, it all sounds very dramatic and strange, but I'm calm and everything is okay. And I am really sorry for texting you. A cry for help? I don't know. But I know it crossed the boundaries. Everything just happened so quickly. 

Scarlett: I was up the whole night feverish and so confused and was and sort of could conceptually understand what had happened and was googling things like Neil Gaiman Me Too, like sexual assault, Neil Gaiman, like trying to find anything in the, you know, sort of underbelly of the web and couldn't find anything. 

Rachel: Scarlett says she uses private browsing to google things she finds embarrassing, weird or sexual. As it's private browsing, there's no record of these searches, but there's copious other contemporaneous material. 

Paul: So it's really useful for our reporting that Scarlett recorded all her notes and texts and the timings. 

Rachel: And there's been so much of it too, but it's really, really tough to read at times, isn't it? 

Paul: Yes. So that same morning on the Saturday, the 5th of February, she texts a friend just before 8am to say, Neil and I had sex in the bath last night. She then sends another message 40 minutes later saying, but I know it crossed boundaries. 

Rachel: The sex Scarlett mentions in her text is shorthand for what she says happened in the bath the previous night. Later on the Saturday, Scarlett says she searches online on private browsing Neil Gaiman's sexual assault and Neil Gaiman Me Too. She texts one friend about the boundaries being crossed and another about being shocked, so Scarlett knows something's not right at this stage. But as she tries to make sense of everything, to normalise it, she also sends messages to Neil Gaiman that appear to contradict the feelings she's disclosing to her friends. 

Paul: So, at 8:48am on the Saturday, just minutes after texting the friend about the crossed boundaries, she WhatsApp's Neil Gaiman to plan out the day ahead looking after the child. And here's where things start to get messy, emotionally and evidentially. She signs off with, Thank you for a lovely, lovely night. Wow. Kiss. 

Scarlett: It was so confusing because I feel like at the end of it he made me feel like it was consensual, but it wasn't consensual. And the anal was basically the last thing on the fucking planet, I think, is like I want to do. 

Rachel: That same Saturday evening after she's put the child to bed, Neil Gaiman, anally penetrates her. She says without asking and without using a condom. And she says that he uses butter as a lubricant. 

Paul: Scarlett messages another friend on the Monday. To her friend Misma, she says, Hello darling, I've had a crazy weekend, to getting bitten by a spider to ridiculously crazy and rough and kind of amazing sex.

Rachel: Misma remembers receiving this text. 

Misma: She framed it as both a positive and a negative thing in the same sentence, like that she just had a good bit quite rough or a good bit of violent or something sex with a man. And so like, got to tell anyone.

Rachel: We understand that Neil Gaiman was, by this point, already aware of Scarlett's only previous sexual experience, which was negative and with a man. His position is that he was considerate of Scarlett because of this, that full penetrative sex would have been akin to taking her virginity and so in his account, he only used his fingers. We're told that Neil Gaiman's position is that within two days of meeting her, he discovered Scarlett was interested in mild BDSM, which they then engaged in during their three-week sexual relationship. 

Scarlett: That was the start of a month, basically, of being choked and utterly humiliated. 

Rachel: Two weeks later on February the 19th, they're in a hotel on the mainland, the Sky City Grand, Auckland, Room 1619, a small double room with an en suite bathroom. It's understood that in Neil Gaiman's account of this evening, she only went to his room to make a drop-off. Again, in Scarlett's telling, what follows is graphic. 

Scarlett: Neil pulled my pants down and started, oh my God, it's so weird to say it so. It never gets organic, saying this stuff, because it's so outlandish. Pulled my pants down and started penetrating me. And he put his hand around her mouth. I was not given any consent or space for agency. 

Rachel: Neil Gaiman's account of this scene is that Scarlett was not meant to stay in his hotel room for long, but that at a certain point they found themselves cuddling together fully clothed under the bedsheets. Afterwards Neil Gaiman sends Scarlett for takeout. 

He has a detailed order, street dog, no mustard or mayo, only tomato sauce, Montreal poutine large, root beer float. It's worth pointing out that at this stage Scarlett has nowhere else to go. She's estranged from her parents, she's no money, apart from what Neil Gaiman gives her. 

She's dependent on him for bed, board and income and in return he uses her as, in her words, his fuck pig, and makes her call him master. In that text to her friend, Misma, Scarlett describes the sex as rough, so I asked her if she had any photos of any injuries. She sent one back, a selfie of herself lying in the outside bath at Neil Gaiman's house. It's not taken on that first night but on a different occasion. She has a purple bruise on her right breast. 

Scarlett: There were times where, particularly one time it was so painful and so violent that I fainted. I passed out, lost consciousness, ringing in the ears, black vision, was, the pain was like celestial, you know, which is a strange word to use but I couldn't even describe it in language. And when I regained consciousness and I was on the ground, I looked up and he was watching the rehearsals from Scotland of whatever they were filming, I don't fucking know, and didn't even notice that I was passed out and, you know, that there was blood. It was so, so, so traumatic and I asked him to stop. I said it was too much and he laughed at me, said I need to be punished, you know, used his belt on me. 

Rachel: One of the questions I keep coming back to is why would anyone stay around for this? 

Scarlett: They made me feel part of their family and they made me feel completely deeply connected to them. 

Rachel: And this was her vulnerability. Scarlett was initially drawn into the Gaiman-Palmer celebrity ecosystem by her fascination with Amanda, a feminist rock star, and she stayed in their world because it appeared to be offering her something she didn't have and never really had. 

A sense that she belonged and to a creative, eccentric and successful family. We don't know what Amanda Palmer made of this. Over the course of two months we repeatedly emailed her and WhatsApped her. She never replied or even acknowledged our messages. We emailed two of her friends in New Zealand asking whether they'd speak to us. One declined, the other didn't answer. And we tried, without success, a number of people who worked with her. 

Paul: Three days into her job as a nanny to Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer's child. Or, in other words, three days after Neil Gaiman allegedly assaulted her for the first time, Scarlett WhatsApps Amanda. She said, Love hanging out with you lot. My heart is so full and it's nice to have friends again. Honestly, I can't even tell you. I cried on the ferry because I realized how lonely I've been for the last six months. 

Scarlett: He'd say things to me, Rachel, that made me feel reliant on him. He'd say, I'm going to help you and I'm going to take you to London and if you ever need anything anywhere, all that stuff and when you're a young person, it's nice to hear that stuff. It's like, cool, if I go to London, I'll have somewhere to stay. I'm thinking quite practically. How old was he at this point? 

Scarlett: 61. 

Rachel: And you didn't find him attractive? You were never in love with him?

Scarlett: Of course not. No. I never found anything erotic ever about it at all, about any of it. It was so abhorrent and degrading. It seems actually outrageous to say some of this stuff. I do find it abstractly funny, but it wasn't funny. And it wasn't funny that when he left, because he up and left, it wasn't funny when three weeks later I ended up in hospital suicidal. 

Paul: The way Scarlett came to see her time with Neil Gaiman appears very different to how she described it at the time. Remember, she told one friend at the time that the sex was ridiculously crazy and rough and kind of amazing. 

Scarlett says this reassessment began when she was hospitalised and talked to a nurse about what had brought her to the point of suicide. On the 25th of February, Neil Gaiman leaves Waiheke and New Zealand and flies to the UK. 

Scarlett: The thing that he said the morning that he left was, which I didn't understand at the time, but I completely understand now. He looked at me and said, you're going to be the death of me. And I was like, what do you mean? He said, I would have never laid a finger on you had I known you were this inexperienced and this vulnerable. He knew, he fucking knew Rachel. 

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Rachel: The day Neil leaves, Scarlett catches COVID. Amanda and Scarlett's friend Misma look after her. But with Neil Gaiman gone, Scarlett feels mentally and physically broken. On the 7th of March, she's in Amanda's kitchen and she confides in her. 

Scarlett: I told her 10 days after he left, I told Amanda. Her words were, and I quote, I said, I said Neil made a pass at me. And she said, I bet he did. Quote.

Rachel: Scarlett uses that expression made a pass at me to open up a difficult discussion with Amanda Palmer. Scarlett says she told Amanda everything that night. They stay up until two in the morning, talking. As it's too late for Scarlett to go home, she stays over. She says she could hear Amanda pacing around on the floor upstairs all night. Amanda, remember, wasn't just Neil Gaiman's wife. She's the person who hired Scarlett. She's an idol to her young female fans like Scarlett. And Amanda is very outspoken on violence against women and girls. 

Scarlett: This is what now upsets me to my core. It's like when I told her, you know, and she was so, I almost should have known. She said I was the 14th fucking woman that had gone to her. 

Rachel: Scarlett recalls that number, 14, specifically. She had also told a friend at the time that this was the number that Amanda Palmer said. Again, Amanda Palmer didn't respond to any of our inquiries. We understand, though, that Amanda passed on Scarlett's allegations to Neil Gaiman, advising him it's best to limit any further contact with her. 

Advice that goes unheeded. The fallout from Scarlett's chat with Amanda isn't immediate. Amanda texts Scarlett a few days later saying, Neil Gaiman owes her an apology. And he WhatsApp Scarlett saying, Amanda tells me that you are having a rough time and you are really upset with me about what we did. I feel awful about this. Would you like to talk about it? Scarlett goes to stay that night with her friend Misma and her partner, Chris. 

Misma: I remember sitting here, she's over there, she's telling me all of the stuff. What happened in the bath, what things that happened afterwards. She's telling it in a way where it's really disturbing and full on, but she's also kind of making it funny, I guess. 

Rachel: You'll already have heard how Scarlett does this. She tries to make light even laugh when it comes to trauma. 

Misma: And suddenly they're like laughing and then, I suppose my initial response was just like, this is really weird and very disturbing. And she couldn't see at that point how much he actually had used her, whereas Chris and I was quite apparent that he would have known exactly that she was like easy prey for him. 

Rachel: As it happens, Misma's partner Chris wrote his PhD under a world-renowned scholar of coercion, consent and sexual assault. Chris now lectures on these issues at the University of Auckland. Chris and Misma beg Scarlett to go and see one of Chris's friends. Paulette Benton-Greig was living on the adjoining street to Neil Gaiman, although she doesn't know him. She is a lawyer and academic specialising in sexual violence against women. Paulette also used to run a service for victims of sexual assault. While this appears to be a supportive group of people for Scarlett, Neil Gaiman's position is that Chris, Misma and Paulette have an academic interest in sexual consent and so influence Scarlett to see her relationship with him as abusive. 

His thinking on them as a group is that they're all of the same world view and that to the proverbial man with a hammer every problem becomes a nail. Yet no one in this group told Scarlett what to think and that Neil Gaiman and Scarlett had a sexual relationship is undisputed by either. Scarlett went to speak to Paulette as a friend of a friend and Paulette says she was just there to listen. 

Paulette: She came to my house and we sat in the sunshine on the deck and we talked with each other. I think like most people after something's happened to them she needed to kind of process and compute and think about what it meant for her. 

Rachel: What was your initial assessment of the relationship between Scarlett and Neil Gaiman? 

Paulette: I do remember very clearly forming the view that he had groomed her into sexual compliance. The stories that she told me about kind of how it was over the time that she was living in his house as a nanny just were classic grooming in my view. 

She described things like him being naked in the house and suggesting to her that if she didn't feel comfortable with that that was just prudishness. We're all grown-ups here and blah blah blah. 

Rachel: We understand that Neil Gaiman views the allegation that he groomed Scarlett to be a wholesale mischaracterization and that the idea that an individual can groom an adult immediately upon meeting them or over a three-week sexual relationship is far-fetched. But law enforcement agencies do police grooming between adults and experts have established that grooming can take place over a matter of weeks. The New Zealand Supreme Court has found grooming can happen after an initial serious sexual assault. 

Paul: Paulette, Chris and Misma are important in this story, not really because of their academic interests, but because Scarlett confides in them as friends soon after the alleged assault. In any normal criminal investigation, they would be interviewed by the police as first witnesses. 

Paulette: Neil had left. He had gone overseas and he had taken the child with him, but Amanda was still in New Zealand and she was still living in Neil's house. So I said to her, well, you know, maybe you really need to leave that place. You know, what kinds of resources do you have to be able to do that? And then she told me that they had not paid her. I remember just about falling off my chair at how extraordinarily clear the exploitation was in that moment. 

Rachel: So by the 13th of March, a month and a half after she moved to Waiheke, Scarlett hasn't even been paid properly. Neil Gaiman and his child have been gone more than two weeks, so Scarlett is left without money or a job stuck on Waiheke. By this point, she's spoken about what Neil Gaiman did and what they did together to Paulette, to her friends Misma and Chris and to Amanda. 

Paul: Waiheke is a small island, but Misma and Amanda have only met once. They aren't friends, but later that month Misma receives a text from Amanda, thanking her for her part in looking after Scarlett after Neil Gaiman left. She adds, it's been a rough month for everyone. Misma is furious and feels Amanda Palmer is massively understating what Scarlett has been through. The casualness, the lack of concern. She sends Amanda an 800 word tirade. Here are some bits of it. She's writing off the back of what she's heard from Scarlett. 

Misma: It strikes me that perhaps you haven't grasped the severity of the situation. Yes, Scarlett did confide in us and so we know, that the first time he had anal sex, it was so violent that she lost consciousness from the pain. That her description of watching the sex happen to her from outside of her body is congruent with accounts of rape survivors. 

We know that he is 40 years older than her and that she was employed as his and your nanny at the time. We know that you knew exactly what kind of person Neil is when you put Scarlett into his house. I consider Scarlett among many other more positive attributes to be one of the most vulnerable people I have ever met. I know the thing she most desperately wants is to feel included and loved, to be part of a family. That she would do anything, take any amount of shit in order to not be rejected. Chris and I are both so worried about Scarlett, who will spend years coming to terms with this experience. And we are also deeply concerned about the likelihood of this happening to other women. And eventually this is all going to come out. 

Rachel: So how come you wrote that note? You said you didn't know Amanda very well. That was a very punchy note to send to her. 

Misma: Because I was so fucking angry with the man just for putting Scarlett in that situation. I'm glad I wrote that note because it contains a lot of what Scarlett actually told me at the time. I was so blunt and explicit, I guess, in my message and her response was not, Oh my God, I don't know what you're talking about. This is the message from a crazy person. I did think it was very interesting that she wasn't like, what are you talking about? 

Paul: In her reply to Misma, Amanda says, I did not know much of this. It is horrifying. I understand what you have said and I deeply appreciate you sharing it with me. This is a very fucking bad situation. 

The interesting thing is last night Scarlett shared her WhatsApp history with Neil. So chats, videos, photos. And the really unusual thing for a reporter is it allows us to see the same issue from very different angles. 

Scarlett: The messages are really hard for me to go through because of my delusion and I'm so furious with myself. 

Paul: What arrives in my inbox is Scarlett's full WhatsApp history with Neil Gaiman. Not just one or two messages, but everything. 

Scarlett: Hi Neil, how are you? I miss you so much as I said in my text. Um, I hope you're doing alright, let me know, I worry. I'm doing good today. I've been terrible.

Paul: There are files of photos and videos and pages and pages of messages. 

Scarlett: I'm sending you all my love. 

Paul: It's the messages from Scarlett to Neil Gaiman that bring us up short. There are a lot of messages like this and they're even more shocking, if anything. They appear to tell a very different story, a story of rough sex and two consenting adults. One that seems to match Neil Gaiman's account. 

Rachel: This series is reported by me, Rachel Johnson and by Paul Caruana Galizia. It is written by us and by Katie Gunning, who is also the producer. Sound design and original music is by Tom Kinsella. Additional reporting is by Jess Swinburne. Artwork is by John Hill. The series editor is Matt Russell. The editor is Jasper Corbett. 

Episode 2:

Paul: Before we begin, I just need to warn you. This is a hard lesson at times. The series contains graphic descriptions of sex and allegations of sexual abuse. And this episode also deals with suicide. 

Neil Gaiman: Just sending you a message to remind you, it will be ok. That may be hard to believe for you right now, wherever you are. But honestly, it will be ok.

Scarlett: I miss you so much as I said in my text. Um, I hope you're doing alright, let me know, I worry.

Rachel: These are video clips from WhatsApps. We have the notes that were saved or recorded on Scarlett's phone, photographs and pages and pages of messages. 

Scarlett: Thank you for all your help. I'm so grateful. It means a lot because--

Rachel: The messages span the whole story we told you in episode one, the first alleged assault and the following three weeks of what Scarlett says is rough sex. The relationship ends, but the messages continue back and forth over the course of almost a year. The messages are friendly, often affectionate or supportive, but Scarlett has shared the unedited transcripts with us so we can see exactly what they said to each other and when. 

And it feels like a very different story, not so black and white like we're viewing the events through the other end of the telescope. It really throws me because when I read the WhatsApps, I think that Scarlett comes over as besotted. 

Paul: Messages like these appear to be evidence of consent in black and white. And they also appear to show that he could assume consent was there. The two things are separate and both matter when it comes to the law. As the criminal defence lawyer, Catherine Jackson explains. 

Catherine: If you have a complainant who says I wasn't consenting but I'm sure he believed that I was, that is a big red flag. Yeah, it's not as straightforward as I wasn't consenting. 

Paul: Meaning it's not just about what was going on in Scarlett's mind, but what was going on in Neil Gaiman's mind too. If he had reason to believe that Scarlett was consenting, then there isn't a case of sexual assault. In other words, it wouldn't be fair to give someone an indication of consent and then claim a assault. So, understanding whether someone really did have reasonable belief in consent is important. Understanding whether there's more than one way of reading Scarlett's messages to Neil Gaiman is important. Neil Gaiman's position is that the natural and ordinary meaning of the WhatsApp messages is that Scarlett was in a consensual sexual relationship with him. I'm Paul Caruana Galizia. 

Rachel: And I'm Rachel Johnson and from Tortoise, this is Master, episode 2. The WhatsApps. 

Scarlett: The bath is outside--

Rachel: The WhatsApps are unsettling. Before we get to them we need to rewind. 

Scarlett: This big Pahutukawa, what we call a Pahutukawa tree, which is a big-- 

Rachel: Back to the Friday night when Neil Gaiman runs Scarlett an outdoor bath under the Pahutukawa tree when he joins her in the bath and she says he uses his fingers to anally penetrate her. Neil Gaiman's account is that he offered to run a bath for both of them and, after he established consent, cuddled and made out with Scarlett. Remember, she sends a message to her friend the next day saying it had crossed the boundaries. She googles Neil Gaiman and Me Too, but she also messages Neil Gaiman saying thank you for a lovely, lovely night. Wow. 

Scarlett: But it was the following night where the really the just the worst abuse began. 

Rachel: Neil Gaiman's position is that he never had full penetrative sex with Scarlett. We understand it's during this weekend that he discovers this sexual ingenue is in fact into mild BDSM. It's that Saturday that Scarlett alleges he had anal sex with her without a condom and using butter as a lubricant. 

But we can now see what she says to him the morning after on the Sunday. Do you feel like a rain bath? With a smiley emoji. And the next day I am consumed by thoughts of you, the things you will do to me. I'm so hungry. What a terrible creature you've turned me into. I think you need to give me a huge spanking very soon. I'm fucking desperate for my master. 

This is just so hard to make sense of or understand. Scarlett seems eager for more despite what she now says happened. She is calling him master. On face value the messages show a woman making her own choices with agency, a woman who chooses to stay. We decide we need an external opinion on what she's saying to Neil Gaiman on the one hand and what she's telling other people and us about what happened on the other. But to tell this properly we're going to reveal some grim and explicit details. We're talking here about allegations and graphic descriptions of rough and degrading sex. One such allegation takes place two weeks after they first meet when they are in room 1619 of the Sky City Grand Hotel in Auckland. In Neil Gaiman's account of this scene Scarlett wasn't meant to stay for long in the hotel room but that at a certain point they found themselves in bed fully clothed and cuddling under the sheets. 

Scarlett: He went into the bathroom, pissed all over his hand, came back out, put his hand round my face, you know, made me clean him up. 

Rachel: Scarlett's recollection of what happened in that small double room with an en suite bathroom is more graphic. 

Scarlett: Oh my god, clean him up that became a big thing. So he made me vomit multiple times and then I would get punished and have to clean him up or if the anal sex was too painful and I was basically screaming he would get really really angry and I would get punished and have to clean him up which would often mean performing oral sex on him after. Anal sex. Yeah, yeah, yeah and I remember trying to navigate this, you know, and googling if these things were safe, you know, and I sort of knew they weren't and I knew that anal sex without condoms was not safe and you know that I was always bleeding. 

Rachel: Again, in Neil Gaiman's account, they never had full penetrative sex, but what Scarlett tells us sounds extreme, the sort of sex that happens between people who practice BDSM. We've spoken to people in those circles and they've told us that for BDSM practices, precise words and boundaries should be used and established for each and every act. But then she messages Neil Gaiman eight days after that night in the hotel room and a day after he leaves for England, it's the 25th of February and Scarlett's in bed with COVID. She writes, I may be ill but I am lying here with my sick little mind wandering into terrible, filthy, dark places and I want you to, if I'm lucky, occasionally instruct me with naughty things to do so that I can fill all this alone time imagining your cruelty. I'm sorry, I'm such a desperate and perverted and kinky sad little girl. What do they say when you play with fire? 

Paul: Texts back from Neil Gaiman are always carefully worded, neutral, light and short. Scarlett's are longer and there are many more of them. If she ends one to him with extra punishment needed, good night, he'll go, good night dear. His messages are affectionate but non-committal. Neil Gaiman's position is that his replies show that it was Scarlett who continued to initiate sexual contact with him and that he does little, if anything, to reciprocate. At his most intimate, he will tell her, Dream dark dreams, I'm glad you are there with my unwashed clothes in my bed that smells like me. Be safe and I worry about your COVID. But more often they are prosaic. 

There should be a lot of frozen vegetarian meals in the tall freezer. Scarlett knows that if taken at face value, these messages tell a story of a consenting relationship between two adults, one which undermines her allegations of sexual assault. And Neil Gaiman's position is that WhatsApp should be taken at face value. We understand his position is informed by Occam's razor, a philosophical principle in which the most straightforward explanation is usually the right one. 

Scarlett: The messages are really hard for me to go through because of, you know, my delusion and like, and just, you know, I'm so furious with myself. 

Paul: She says she can hardly bear to read them because it's now clear in her mind that that was not how it was. So we start to speak to some of the experts in this field for their opinions. How can we reconcile her WhatsApps to Neil Gaiman with her account to us of what happened? What do you do about sexual assaults within a relationship that was consensual? Is there nothing for it but pained regret? 

Evan Stark: What's your project? You're making a film about the case? 

Paul: A podcast. 

Evan Stark: A what? 

Paul: A podcast. 

Rachel: Podcast. 

Paul: Evan Stark is a sociologist who wrote a book called Coercive Control, How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. He's acted as an expert witness in high profile court cases and his research has influenced laws, not least the Coercive Control section of England's Serious Crime Act. 

There is no specific law against Coercive Control in New Zealand as there is in England. Neil Gaiman's view of Evan Stark's opinion, which follows, is that it is flawed. That, one can find an expert or an academic to support any viewpoint and that we have engaged in expert shopping. With Scarlett's permission, we showed Evan Stark WhatsApp messages between her and Neil Gaiman, including ones in which she said she'd consented to sex with him, along with a chronology of her account and an NDA. We'll come to that document later. 

Evan Stark: Many, many of our cases are filled with instances where victims express affection, love and commitment. 

Paul: Or try to make sense of it. 

Evan Stark: It never happened or it happened but it wasn't bad. I asked for it. That's because that's the nature of the crime. It's a crime of deceit and control. 

Paul: Evan Stark believes physical assault is only the most visible part of domestic abuse. He says that there is usually a wider pattern of exploitation and manipulation that surrounds this abuse. 

Evan Stark: In that sense, it's very much like any con game. 

Paul: And people consent to be conned. That's how it works. 

Evan Stark: I mean, if I was calling you to buy insurance and you didn't write down that you believed everything I told you and that you were doing this at your own free will, I would be a successful con man. I mean, coercive control is a con. 

Paul: And like any con, people afterwards feel shame and embarrassment of their behavior and whatever record of it they put down. Neil Gaiman's position is that the idea he coerced and controlled Scarlett by having non-penetrative sex within hours of first meeting her and then over a matter of weeks is far fetched. 

Evan Stark: The fact that he doesn't the first day she's in the house is very symptomatic of the kind of approach that con men take. They're not subtle. First act is often the most extreme act because from that act everything becomes a litmus test of what is possible and what will come next. That first incident becomes a template for everything that comes later. 

Rachel: The morning after the assault in the bath, she says, wow, last night that was lovely. Kiss. 

Evan Stark: So the con man is reframing right from the beginning. You see, I think you're making too much out of this. It's not that complicated. And the idea that you consent to degradation is such a stupid idea. Only men can think this idea. 

Paul: Neil Gaiman's position is that tendencies to sexual degradation are not uncommon with women as shown by the success of the 2011 novel Fifty Shades of Grey and that such activities between consenting adults are lawful. But context matters too. Many companies now have policies that stop senior employees from even sharing taxis with their juniors or from socializing with them. This isn't to say that an older or more experienced person can't have a sexual relationship with a younger one. They often do. The point here is that given the power dynamics, it's hard to establish that consent was freely given, especially if one party is much more junior to the other. It's hard to say no. 

Rachel: A month after Neil Gaiman leaves New Zealand, the two versions of Scarlett's story come together. Remember her friend Misma? Scarlett confided in her. Misma and her partner Chris, an academic who specializes in sexual abuse, were outraged. 

Misma: It strikes me that perhaps you haven't grasped the severity of the situation. Yes, Scarlett. 

Rachel: Misma wrote that scorching WhatsApp message to Amanda Palmer. 

Paul: And after receiving the message, it appears Amanda Palmer gets in touch with Neil Gaiman, who's in Scotland, to tell him that Scarlett is making serious allegations against him. Two weeks pass before Scarlett happens to send a friendly chatty message to Neil Gaiman. I just wanted to check in and hear about how you are, she says. Neil Gaiman responds quickly, 11 minutes later. 

Rachel: What date are we looking for? 

Paul: 24th of March. 

Rachel: Okay, got it, got it, got it. Yeah, hold on there's tons, tons, tons. 

Paul: Okay, look at this. So on that day, Neil messages Scarlett and he says, honestly, when Amanda told me that you are telling people I'd raped you and were planning to Me Too me, I wanted to kill myself. But I'm getting through it a day at a time. And it's been two weeks now and I'm still here, fragile, but not great. 

Rachel: Scarlett's response to that message from Neil reads, Oh my God, Neil, I never said that. I have been deeply upset about it all because it's triggered things from my past and also for many reasons I feel whiplash, but I'm horrified by your message. Me Too you? rape? What? This is the first I've heard of this. Wow, I need a moment to digest your message. And then at 11:28, she says, okay, it's been blown way out of proportion, it seems my heart is pounding. I'm so sorry, you have been so not okay. I had no idea. I have never used the word rape. I am just so shocked. I honestly don't know what to say. 

Paul: So then he really just a few minutes after that sent her a message saying it was very unstabilizing. I spent a week actively not killing myself. If you see what I mean

Rachel: About her Me Too-ing him?

Paul: Yes, that's right. 

Rachel: And then she responds a minute later. This is 11:32 the same day. The more I hear the more I am dying inside, I can't believe this has been told to you. It's absolutely not true. I feel sick to my stomach. And then Neil Gaiman responds heart pounding. 

Paul: So he's really clearly anxious about the Me Too but it seems--

Rachel: then this from Scarlett, which is 11:39. So still in the same conversation at the same time. I feel like boiling my eyes out. I would never Me Too you. I don't know where that came from. And I have told Amanda that even though it began questionably, eventually it was undoubtedly consensual and I enjoyed it. Heart is pounding too. Neil, I am so deeply sorry to hear how terrifying this has been for you. I feel like I am being head fucked. I am so so shocked. 

Paul: That line, even though it began questionably, eventually it was undoubtedly consensual is really key. Could Neil Gaiman have held a reasonable belief that Scarlett was consenting to sexual activity in the bath within hours of meeting her? Neil Gaiman's position on Scarlett's use of questionably to describe how the sexual relationship began is that he doesn't know what it refers to. And he wishes that he had asked Scarlett about it at the time. And that he can only imagine it was in reference to the impromptu outdoor bath within hours of him first meeting Scarlett. 

There's something else in that message exchange, which is extraordinary to read. Neil Gaiman wants a favor. If I had Wayne, our therapist call you, would you talk to him and just tell him what you've been telling me? Scarlett says, okay, I am nauseous. And yes, of course I will speak to Wayne. 

Scarlett: He had the therapist call me so that I could tell the therapist that he didn't write me and all of this. 

Paul: This is unusual to say the least. Wayne Muller, who is retained by the couple and bound by codes of confidentiality to his clients, not Scarlett, gets in touch with her at Neil Gaiman's request. 

The therapist messages Scarlett saying he'd be happy to speak to her in complete confidence because he had heard that she found herself in his words in the midst of relationships, stories and narratives, not alas necessarily of your own making. Sadly, this is not a surprise. Two creative dynamic people can easily draw others into their orbit unaware of how powerfully the magnetic pull of their influences can have on others. Some people land in places of confusion, un-clarity or uncertainty how to respond to this. We wanted to speak to Wayne Muller. 

Wayne Muller: Hello, you've reached the cell phone to Wayne Muller. This number does not take voice mail, so please don't... 

Paul: But he never responded to our detailed questions about his role in this story. Scarlett does speak to Wayne Muller and she tells Neil Gaiman that she has found it helpful. Again, we have contacted Amanda Palmer on multiple occasions for comment over WhatsApp and email. She never replied to or acknowledged our messages. 

We also tried contacting her friends. On the 25th of March, a day after that long exchange of messages, Neil Gaiman learns from Amanda Palmer that the detail of what Scarlett is alleging comes from the WhatsApp message from Misma. The next day, Neil Gaiman messages Scarlett. Misma's message to Amanda is kind of awful. 

I'm a monster in it. A short while later, he messages again. Knowing that you would be prepared to say it's not true, it was consensual, he's not a monster, makes me a lot more grounded. Scarlett responds, it was consensual. How many times do I have to fucking tell everyone? 

Catherine Jackson: My name's Catherine Jackson and I'm a criminal defence solicitor at the firm Bindmans. I practice a wide range of areas but I think probably sexual offences has been quite a large part of my experience. 

Paul: For defence solicitors like Catherine Jackson, messages like this are important because they can raise questions about the credibility of a complainant. 

Catherine Jackson: One would expect and it would usually be the case that if somebody is the victim of a serious sexual offence, they are going to report it to the police fairly immediately, or they're going to want nothing more to do with that person. So then if you have a scenario where there's further contact in the aftermath, and particularly if it's instigated by the complainant, then that's already potentially undermining the credibility of the complainant, who's saying I'm the victim of a serious sexual offence, and yet here we go, I've actually continued to stay in touch.

Paul: In her experience prosecutors tend to take such messages at face value which makes them, she says, gold dust for defence lawyers. 

Catherine Jackson: I'd say the bulk of my cases actually end at the investigation stage. The bulk of my cases in sexual offences do not result in a charge. 

Paul: Neil Gaiman's position is that messages from Scarlett, particularly the ones where she says their relationship became consensual, should stop us from publishing her belated allegations of sexual misconduct. That the messages are evidence of consent and so there can be no misconduct. 

Rachel: Two days after Neil Gaiman and Scarlett exchanged those messages about consent, Amanda Palmer also leaves New Zealand. It's now late March 2022. Scarlett feels totally abandoned, alone and desperate. By the evening of the 10th of April she's admitted to Auckland Hospital with suicidal thoughts. Neil Gaiman's account suggests we should treat Scarlett's allegations with caution as they first surfaced when she was hospitalised, he says, for the treatment of a condition that's associated with false memories. But we know her allegations predate her admission to hospital. Scarlett's medical records also show us that Neil Gaiman's claim that Scarlett has a serious pre-existing medical condition to be false. According to her records, she presented as a genuinely high risk of suicide and was discharged after recovering overnight. There's no mention even in her previous medical history of any condition like the one Neil Gaiman claimed in his account. The only medication she was on was the sleeping pill, ZopiClone. 

Scarlett: Suddenly when I was in hospital, I remember suddenly he started sending me chocolates and and videos of Fiona Shaw talking to me and you know because he knew I loved Fiona Shaw and had a crush on Fiona Shaw. It was weird shit and kept me sort of just enough. 

Rachel: Neil Gaiman and Scarlett continue to message each other. 

Neil Gaiman: Hello, this is a little film. I really do get it. Get it about just feeling like you're at the end. The one thing that always has kept me holding on so far is just the knowledge that you know suicide can be a very permanent end to some temporary problems. I think you're funny and smart and a good person and I think you have to stick around so I can introduce you to Fiona Shaw at the Anansi Boys premiere or something. 

Rachel: Scarlett messages back. This made me smile to no end. I can't stop smiling. It is so lovely to hear your voice and see you and that hilarious hotel room. Fuck, thank you for overjoying me and touching my heart. The Fiona Shaw idea always helps me escape from the tendrils of suicide. It makes me so elated on a cellular level. Thank you Neil. Neil Gaiman: I'm glad I made you smile. Fiona Shaw and Anansi Boys fancy premiere. Scarlett and Neil both stay alive. 

Scarlett's in a bad place. No job. No where to live. Still feeling suicidal. Neil Gaiman is also feeling suicidal, he tells Scarlett and Scarlett thinks she's supporting him. Neil's position on the messages is again that they must be taken at face value, that he was low too. Neil Gaiman has on his social media often talked about his own struggles with mental health. 

Neil Gaiman: Aya, just sending your message to remind you it will all be okay. That may be hard to believe right now for you, where you are, but honestly it will all be okay. Promise. 

Fiona Shaw: Hi Scarlett, Fiona Shaw here. We're being introduced by Neil Gaiman and I am up in Edinburgh. As you can see I have just been doing some of my work on Neil Gaiman series Anansi Boys. Anyway I understand that you are going through a tough time and a rough time and I hope that you'll be much the better soon and that I will get to meet you with Neil and maybe my hair won't be quite like this when we do. So lovely to meet you. Good luck. 

Neil Gaiman: Right I called but hopefully the sleeping pills have worked and you're fast asleep. So what? So I hope when you wake up the world is easier. Hang in there. We have to keep each other's head above water. I'll help with you and that's all. Okay. 

Rachel: Neil Gaiman didn't respond to our specific question on this video. He didn't tell us whether Fiona Shaw knew the background or reason for it. He didn't tell us what he had asked Fiona Shaw in order for her to agree to the video. On the same day that Neil Gaiman sends those videos, the 15th of April, Scarlett is also reaching out to a former employee of Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. Scarlett does this because she's heard that this young female also had a hard time in the Gaiman-Palmer household. Scarlett tells the former employee she's had some pretty awful things happen to her while working for Neil Gaiman and Scarlett wanted to know did similar things happen to her? The woman responds concerned about Scarlett but doesn't answer the question and all the while Scarlett's messages to Neil Gaiman continue. 

Scarlett: I miss you so much as I said in my text. I hope that you're doing all right. Let me know. I worry. I am doing better today. I've been terrible and not really sure what just happened but it will sink in. I thank you for all your help. I'm so grateful. It will get better for both of us and I can't wait to see you. 

Rachel: She's still holding out for connection, a relationship, a promise, even a lie. 

Misma: Her hope that this hadn't really been an exploitation but was genuine. I'm sure went on for some time because who wants to acknowledge they've been victimised in that way? In fact, your hope is that you haven't been victimised because the person does really care about you. 

Rachel: What's the bit that hurts most? 

Scarlett: Just something fundamentally has shifted in me and I haven't been able to quite get what it was back. The pain is also injustice and you know, horror that I let myself get that subjected to some of that stuff and didn't recognise that it wasn't normal. 

Paul: It's the 10th of May 2022. 

Neil Gaiman: Hello Scarlett. Right I'm in Denver on tour. I'm still alive which is good and doing basically okay I think. Life is just weird and on the rent thing that all looks great and I figured my my idea would be just to look after your rent for about six months which gives you time to get on top of life and the world. Get a job figure out what you're doing, who you are and such like. And there you go. So that was my idea on that and other than that I don't know. Sending love. I hope you're okay. Okay bye. 

Scarlett: He was paying me 350 New Zealand dollars a week not a lot. 175 pounds to get me back on my feet. 

Paul: A day later on the 11th of May Scarlett gets an email from Neil Gaiman's bookkeeper in Los Angeles. How are you? I hope all is well. Attached is an NDA form. We request all service providers for Neil to sign the attached. Would you kindly sign it and email it back to me? I am also sending you a wire for your rent deposit and first week. 

Scarlett: And to get that money he said I need you to sign this NDA. 

Paul: But Scarlett has a question. Why does he want her to sign an NDA now? She's no longer providing services. Her nanny job didn't even come with her contract and she wasn't working for Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer on the 11th of May 2022 when she received the NDA. Neil Gaiman's personal assistant reassures Scarlett it's just the standard form. 

Scarlett: And so I signed the NDA. 

Paul: The agreement binds Scarlett to use her best endeavours to stop the disclosure of any information concerning Neil Gaiman including but not limited to his characteristics, customs, views, opinions, ideas, conduct, habits, purchases, shopping preferences slash habits, personal database slash contacts, photographs and videotapes, travel itineraries, social slash family interactions. Scarlett signed this NDA on the 25th of May. She says she didn't even read it because she doesn't understand legal stuff. It supposedly binds her to confidentiality indefinitely. And here's another thing about the NDA found in its schedule on the last page. 

It's backdated to the 4th of February 2022. That's the day Scarlett first met Neil Gaiman and he ran her that bath. Neil Gaiman didn't respond to specific questions on why he had an NDA sent to Scarlett long after she had stopped providing services. Why it was backdated to the day of the bath or why he couldn't have sent her rent money without it. 

His position is that NDAs are generally standard practice especially for those who supply services to a family in a domestic setting or to people with a degree of public prominence. By the summer of 2022, Scarlett is getting to a point where she feels ready to report Neil Gaiman to the police. We know this because on the 16th of August she messages the former employee again. She tells her that she wants to report Neil Gaiman but that she feels powerless and scared. She adds, there is also a lot of evidence of me writing to his therapist saying everything was consensual when actually of course it wasn't fucking consensual. In her reply, the woman asks Scarlett whether she went to a rape crisis centre and she advises Scarlett not to contact anyone else until she's done that or gone to the police. Then she adds, unsure if you signed an NDA followed by a sad face emoji. Despite her anxieties about the NDA, on the 21st of October, eight months after Neil Gaiman left, Scarlett emails New Zealand police. 

She says she wants to report a sexual assault that happened to her in February. She writes, he's an extremely high profile individual and possesses a great deal of financial and celebrity power. Scarlett and the police officer exchange emails. She also continues exchanging messages with Neil Gaiman. On the 28th of December 2022, she asks Neil Gaiman for help to cover her rent for January because the only work she's been able to find are a few pre-Christmas shifts at a cafe and shops were now closed for the holidays until mid-January. 

Neil Gaiman replies a few hours later, how much do you need? She tells him the rent amount and then, in her last ever message to him, on the same day, she asks how he's feeling about returning to New Zealand. He says he's looking forward to it. In January 2023, Scarlett is formally interviewed by the police in Auckland. 

The interview is videotaped and runs over three days. Scarlett hands in her personal phone with all the WhatsApps. On the 20th of January, Scarlett gets her final unprompted WhatsApp message from Neil Gaiman. ...Are you okay? 

Rachel: Scarlett doesn't reply. She has had no direct contact with him since. She says she cut him off because she'd now been to the police and that she felt like a fraud for taking his money only to report him. But she doesn't hear anything from New Zealand police. After the gruelling three-day interview, after handing in her phone and following up with emails, including sending the police her NDA, it has all seemingly come to nothing. 

Neil Gaiman's position is that this is because her allegations lacked substance and are contradicted on face value by the WhatsApps. Almost a year passes and she still hasn't heard of any progress with her case. And she's not sure what else to do as she's still anxious about her NDA. She still felt like she couldn't, as the NDA dictated, speak to anyone about her experience with Neil Gaiman, about anything at all to do with him. 

Zelda Perkins: It's a clear, you know, as in most cases with NDA's massive disparity of arms. You know, the power disparity between a young woman and an older, powerful, successful man. She was away from home. She was reliant on him financially. 

Rachel: This is Zelda Perkins. She worked as Harvey Weinstein's assistant in the 90s and was made to sign an NDA by him after he allegedly raped one of their colleagues. Zelda Perkins broke her NDA in 2017, helping to precipitate Harvey Weinstein's downfall. She's been campaigning against the abuse of NDA's ever since. In the summer of 2023, Scarlett meets Zelda Perkins thanks to a mutual friend. 

Zelda Perkins: It was clear that she was still very traumatised by what had happened to her. And from the severity of what Scarlett told me, I felt that her best step, actually, at that point was to report it to the police. To me, her NDA was the least of her concerns. 

Paul: And in that context, an NDA, can an NDA stop?  

Zelda Perkins: It's unenforceable. Essentially, 90% of NDAs are unenforceable anyway. 

Rachel: Scarlett had already reported Neil Gaiman to the police. But most people don't know that NDAs can't be used to stop those who've signed them from reporting criminal behaviour. They're designed to frighten them into silence. 

Zelda Perkins: There is a change beginning because it is now very apparent that having an NDA isn't reputational protection. 

Rachel: It's clear Scarlett did initially feel silenced by her NDA and she thought she needed to sign it to have her rent paid. But it didn't stop her from making a police report. And after speaking to Zelda, she's beginning to see that the NDA is part of the abuse, an ongoing part of it. 

Zelda Perkins: That abuse repeats itself every single day because you do not have the right to own your own trauma, to speak your own trauma, to heal, to move on. And the worst of it all when it comes to something like this is you're constantly nagged by that feeling of complicity in the continuation of that behaviour with other people. 

Rachel: Over that summer, Scarlett talks to friends, makes plans for her future and begins her recovery. After speaking to Zelda, she no longer feels silenced. But telling her story to the police hasn't seemingly led anywhere. 

Scarlett: I want to know if anyone else had come forward with what's going on. 

Police: Well, I've taken on board what you said about other people. And I'm doing an open source search and I've found nothing that supports that he's up to mischief with other people as well. There's a lot of glory in that. 

Rachel: But Scarlett isn't alone. 

K: It was all of 2003 when I met him at the book signing and then the next year was when he invited us out and I was 19. And then the next year, that he came out, I would have been 20. 

Rachel: The police haven't found anyone, but we have heard from someone else. 

K: I was employed full time at the zoo. He came to the zoo once actually and like visited and I remember he would not take off his black leather jacket. Even though it was like summer in Florida and he was like, oh, I just, you know, that's my thing. And he's like actively sweating and also like worried about being recognised. 

Rachel: She was in a relationship with Neil Gaiman for about two years. 

K: At this point, like all of my work is attached to like, I am dating a famous person. The really interesting thing about me is that I am dating this guy who has this exciting life. And by proxy, I am exciting. Like, he could do whatever he wanted and I would do whatever it took to keep that relationship going. 

Rachel: She has a story to tell about Neil Gaiman. And like Scarlett, it's not a straightforward one. 

K: And I would say, okay, we can fool around, but you can't put anything in my vagina. You just can't because I will die. And it didn't matter. He did it anyway. 

Paul: He did it anyway. Although you told him you were in pain. 

K: I very specifically said you cannot put anything in me. Please don't. It will hurt very badly and it will make things worse than they already are. Because I know for sure I remember for sure in Cornwall saying those words out loud. 

Paul: Neil Gaiman has a clear position on this woman's story. That it is false. And he denies any unlawful behaviour. It's certainly complicated, but it's a story like Scarlett that's worth hearing. 

Speaker: Shall I show you the ocean in the length? 

Paul: Yes, that's what we're looking for. 

Speaker: I know that. 

Paul: First though, we want to go in search of Neil Gaiman before he became famous. The fame and status that played such a part in both women's relationships with him. 

Speaker: Good to see ya. This is the ocean at the end of the lane. 

Paul: It's a journey that takes us through the worlds of Scientology and Comic Books to the ocean at the end of the lane. The sociologist Dr Evan Stark, who we spoke to for this episode, died on the 18th of March this year, a few weeks after we interviewed him. This series is reported by me, Paul Caranagalicia, and by Rachel Johnson. It is written by us and by Katie Gunning, who is also the producer. Sound design and original music is by Tom Kinsella. 
Additional reporting is by Jess Swinburne. Artwork is by John Hill. The series editor is Matt Russell. The editor is Jasper Corbett. 

Episode 3:
Police: Scarlett, I apologise for sitting here. 

Scarlett: It's a really hard situation, you know. 

Police: I can never be sitting here where you are. I never will be. I'll be doing this job for 37 more years. 

Rachel: Scarlett is at a police station in Auckland to get an update on her complaint of sexual assault against Neil Gaiman. It's the first week of March 2024. The complaint is one she filed more than a year earlier. It centres on that evening in the bath the first time she'd met Neil Gaiman. 

Police: In your explanation in your interview, you've neither said anything to the other person according to your interview and neither have you carried out any physical actions that might suggest that you weren't consenting. 

Scarlett: Apart from lying there like a freaked out fish. 

Rachel: Scarlett's description of lying there like a freaked out fish isn't enough. 

Police: It's about our role in protecting the victims from putting them through another trauma in court where the question marks that I've got only get bigger and cooked. When a defence lawyer comes on to where I'm at now, a defence lawyer will make you look like you asked for it and everything else. 

Paul: The police are telling her in summary that her complaint wouldn't stand up in court because they say they don't have the evidence to bring a prosecution. 

Police: The reason is because there will be a question mark over what you felt was consent at the time. What I'm saying to you is in your case with the Gaiman matter, it wouldn't stand up in court and you would probably come off for the worse if we took this to court. 

Paul: It's not just that New Zealand police think Scarlett's case doesn't meet the evidential threshold. They're saying that if it went to court, the process would be too punishing for her to handle. On the face of it, the police's decision should give us pause. They've looked at her complaint and said that Scarlett's behaviour with Neil Gaiman means that they do not think there's a reasonable prospect of conviction. And yet, we're examining her case. 

Why? Alongside the general question that so many people ask of why the police don't seem to pursue allegations of sexual abuse with more zeal, there's a specific one here. How can the police investigate such allegations when there is wider evidence of consent? In other words, is it possible that the man can assume he has consent? The woman believes she has not consented to what he is doing and the complaints still be properly investigated. Is there still a gap between the protections individuals might expect and the protections the law actually provides? 

Scarlett: There were a couple of questions I wanted to ask. Is this okay? Just my own solution. Have you interviewed Neil or Amanda or anyone? 

Police: Neil Gaiman? No.

Scarlett: No. Or Amanda?

Police: No. It was explained to you when you spoke. Amanda wasn't present? 

Scarlett: Yeah. Anyone else? No. 

Police: As I said when I kicked off Scarlett, this is purely based on your interview alone. 

Scarlett: Yeah. 

Paul: The police don't say why they didn't talk to Neil Gaiman. According to his account, they never even asked him for an interview. We've tried to get to the bottom of this, because it matters. How can the police be so sure Scarlett's complaint doesn't meet the evidential threshold without interviewing the suspect? For all they know, he might have given useful evidence. So, from Neil Gaiman's account, we're told that when he learned about the allegations against him, he hired a lawyer in New Zealand to offer the police both an interview and the transcript of his messages with Scarlett. But, according to his account, the police advised him the file would be closed. 

His position is that this reflects a lack of substance in Scarlett's complaint. We asked New Zealand police why they didn't take up Neil Gaiman's offer of assistance and when it was made. 

Rachel: Police have made a number of attempts to speak to key people as part of this investigation, and those efforts remain ongoing. At this stage, there is insufficient evidence to proceed with charges. Currently, police have reviewed the matter and will continue to consider further possible lines of inquiry. If further information comes to light, police are open to reassessing the matter and would encourage anyone with information that may assist to contact us. 

Paul: When we then asked New Zealand police to help us reconcile what they told us, with Neil Gaiman's position, that he wasn't asked, they added, 

Rachel: there are a number of factors to take into consideration with this case, including location of all parties. 

Paul: Meaning Neil Gaiman wasn't in New Zealand, and police forces don't have much power to compel a person to return to a country and cooperate. So was Neil Gaiman's offer of assistance specifically for an interview in person in New Zealand? The police said they couldn't comment. Neil Gaiman's account was that his future travel plans were made known to the police. 

Rachel: Back in the meeting, devastated that the police are telling her they won't actively pursue her complaint, Scarlett asks the officers one more question. 

Scarlett: I want to know if anyone else had come forward with what's going on. 

Police: I've taken on board what you said about other people, and I'm doing an open source search, and I've found nothing that supports that he's up to a mischief with other people as well.  

Scarlett: Okay. It was sort of all I wanted to know. Um... Yeah. That's everything. Yeah. Thank you. 

Paul: It might seem like a strange question to have to ask. What other potential crime would require the victim to track down other victims to be believed? We don't ask, but who else did he kill? And disbelieve an allegation of murder simply because the accused hasn't faced previous allegations of murder. In the event of a murder though, there's a body. In the case of sexual abuse, it's often only two people in the room, one person's account versus another. The reason police look for previous cases is that people have a sexual fingerprint. The same behaviors in and around sex. 

When it comes to abuse, assault and sexual violence, one of the ways that prosecutors may seek to prove the case in court is to show a pattern of behavior. Scarlett asks the police if other women have come forward. They tell her they couldn't find anything on the internet. 

They tell her that as things stand, they can't pursue her complaint any further. The news devastates her. But she saw it coming. The police had called her months earlier. They suggest her complaint might not go forward. That's why on the 3rd of October 2023, Scarlett turns to journalists. 

Scarlett: When I reached out to you, I think it was evident to me that there was nothing that was going to happen. I can fucking see why people don't do it. Because it almost makes it worse. 

Well, it does make it worse because it's so invalidating. Because it took a lot to galvanize that courage in myself to go to the police. And to believe myself enough to go to the police. 

Rachel: We start searching. Not because we have to do the police work ourselves. Journalists rightly don't have the powers of the state to investigate. But because Scarlett gives us another lead, she alleges to us that Neil Gaiman's treatment of her is part of a wider pattern of behavior. That she's one part of the story. It takes months. Months of interviewing people from California to New Zealand, from London to New York, even chasing leads around a sleepy market town in the south of England. We spoke to his friends. One says she's known Neil Gaiman for 12 years. She says that while she's alive to his faults, she doesn't believe him capable of the sexual misconduct alleged against him. That she'd go to the wall for him on this. 

That she'd be stunned if the allegations were true. This friend also said that, like her, Neil Gaiman has autism. On his social media, he's described autism as both his superpower and his kryptonite. His friend said that his autism may explain what she called some of his mistakes, that it contributes to what she called his naivety. And then we spoke to another woman who's known him for about a decade. 

A woman who enjoys rough sex and has enjoyed it with him as his on and off lover. She said her experiences with him have been incredible. This friend, in fact, said she has nothing but positive things to say about Neil Gaiman. 

That he has helped her through hard times and that she loves, respects and cares about him. You'll hear all sides as we try to find out if Scarlett is alone or if her question to the police about other women might yield a different answer. In the process, we learn a lot more about Neil Gaiman. We go right back to the beginning. All the way to, as his autobiographical novel puts it, the ocean at the end of the lane. I'm Rachel Johnson. 

Paul: And I'm Paul Caruana Galizia. You're listening to Master from Tortoise. Episode 3, The Pond. 

Rachel: One moment we're amongst tidy, detached homes and neat gardens of a housing estate on the edge of East Grinsted in Sussex. And the next we're on a winding, narrow country lane banked by hedges. We know Neil Gaiman lived in the house at the top of this lane, but we want to follow it to the bottom and locate the body of water that's at the heart of his best-selling novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. 

Neil Gaiman: The ocean that was a duck pond was the place that I went into the story with. It was the thing that was 

Rachel: In the book, The Pond morphs into a magical, time-shifting ocean. 

Neil Gaiman: A short story really about a sort of a seven-year-old me. The family wasn't quite my family, but the world was my world. 

Rachel: Neil's given lots of interviews where he says the inspiration for the story is here from his own childhood. 

Neil Gaiman: The magic of a book, the magic of a story is it's only this many pages, but you can fit the universe inside. There are people in there. There's a world in there. There's Sussex in 1968 in here. 

Rachel: It's an idyllic pastoral setting. The lane crosses over a stream and is bordered by clumps of wild garlic and bluebells. Right, we're almost at the end of the lane. It turns out there are several farms on this lane. 

Speaker: In the 70s at some point they built that whole estate that you can see, but when my parents bought it 44 years ago, that was all barley fields. There was no estate there at all. 

Rachel: We chance upon a woman who lives in a nearby farm. 

Speaker: Shall I show you the ocean at the end of the lane? That's what we're looking for. 

Paul: I know that. 

Rachel: We clearly aren't the first to make this literary pilgrimage and walk down the lane in search of a pond. 

Speaker: So the ocean at the end of the lane is down here. Have you got jeans on? Oh, you'll be alright. So just see, this is the ocean at the end of the lane. It was always a dark ocean surrounded by... 

Rachel: The inspiration for the fantastical world of the ocean of Neil Gaiman's imagination is actually a sleepy oblong pool of uninviting dark green water at the bottom of a steep overgrown slope. It looks quite ordinary as large-ish ponds go an unremarkable backdrop to Neil Gaiman's life in 1968. Though in truth life wasn't that ordinary for seven-year-old Neil Gaiman. 

Speaker: Have you heard this since this was broadcast? 

Neil Gaiman: I haven't. 

Speaker: This is you at the age of seven.

Neil Gaiman: It is an applied philosophy dealing with a study of knowledge. It helps you to handle quite a lot of problems. 

BBC: But what problems do you have as a little boy that this helps you with? 

Neil Gaiman: Only one big problem. 

BBC: What's that? 

Neil Gaiman: My friend Stephen. 

BBC: Oh, I see. 

Paul: At the age of seven, Neil Gaiman is interviewed about Scientology by the BBC. 

Tony Ortega: His father was probably the most famous Scientologist in England at the time. And they lived by the headquarters there. And they took in lodgers. 

Paul: David Gaiman moved the family to East Grinstead when Neil Gaiman was five. 

Tony Ortega: The early 60s Scientology was growing so fast. Young people were coming from all over the world. 

Paul: Tony Ortega is a journalist and former editor of The Village Voice, who now writes a blog called The Underground Bunker. He's been writing about and investigating Scientology for years. 

Tony Ortega: For young people from the United States, Australia, South Africa, they would all come to England to go to that place. St Hill was huge. 

Paul: For a time in the mid to late 60s, that place, St Hill, was the epicentre of the Church of Scientology. It's no longer the global HQ for the movement. 

Speaker: Further that side, there is a St Hill manor. 

Paul: But it's still there just to the south of the town. 

Speaker: The founder of the Dianetics and Scientology, Alan Hubbard, he owned it for many, many years. 

Paul: You enter through imposing metal gates before glimpsing a new built castle that operates as the church. A little bit further down is an 18th century manor house, set in 50 acres of landscaped grounds, straight out of the prime property pages of country life. When the Gaimans moved nearby, this place was also the founder of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard's family home. Neil Gaiman's father worked for him. 

Speaker: They usually come from all over the planet and they live in this green state. 

Paul: And all those international visitors needed places to stay, so the Gaimans took in lodgers. Back in the late 60s though, things were starting to turn sour. After a spate of lurid stories and negative media attention about the church, exposing the way it allegedly disconnected members from their families, founder L Ron Hubbard was declared a persona non grata by the British government. And foreign Scientologists were banned from entering the UK. 

Speaker: And then by 1966-67, it became an issue in Parliament. So that's when David Gaiman, who was, like I said, one of the top two or three Scientologists in all of England, puts his son out for this interview with the BBC to show what a talented young Scientologist kiddy is. 

Paul: It was then that David Gaiman, whose title was Worldwide Communications Head, deployed his young son Neil Gaiman as a PR tool. 

BBC: But I mean, how does this grade that you've got, problems release, help you to deal with Stephen? 

Neil Gaiman: Well, you know, I've dealt with every single problem except Stephen. It's one thing problems release can't help me do a handle. 

BBC: So you still fight with Stephen?

Neil Gaiman: It's more of a question he fights with me. 

Speaker: BBC interviews him. They then take a transcript of the interview, put together a pamphlet and mail it to every member of Parliament to say, look, Scientology's great. Look at this kid. He's amazing. 

Paul: After he finished school, Neil Gaiman worked as a counselor for the Church of Scientology for about three years. Scientology has a series of steps or courses. When Neil Gaiman gave that interview to the BBC in 1968, he had just achieved his first grade. That's the problems release grade he refers to. The one that wasn't helping him deal with his classmate Stephen. Tony Ortega says Neil Gaiman became a Scientology class 8 auditor by the early 1980s. And then went on. 

Speaker: My understanding that he was OT4 or 5 

Paul: and became something called an operating thetan, a Scientologist who's able to separate their soul from their body and see into past lives. But his father's standing in Scientology was moving in the opposite direction. A document leaked from the Church of Scientology dated 15 February 1983 says that David Gaiman is a suppressive person. 

The term is used to describe Scientology's enemies or people it excommunicated. The document claims that David Gaiman had launched mindless attacks on the British government to grow his status and popularity and that he bullied staffers into joining these attacks. While behaving in this way, the document claims that David Gaiman presented himself as mild-mannered and quite sociable. This, according to the document, was an additional offence of covert hostility. To support its claims of covert hostility, the document cites David Gaiman's history of sexual misconduct over many years. Here, the document provides no details of David Gaiman's alleged sexual misconduct. It only cites the formal charge in Scientology. 

Sexual or sexually perverted conduct, contrary to the well-being or good state of mind of a Scientologist in good standing, or under the charge of Scientology such as a student, a pre-cler, a ward or a patient. 

Rachel: This is not to suggest any link between David Gaiman's alleged misconduct and his son's alleged misconduct. It's not to say like father, like son, because it's not even clear whether these are trumped up charges as Tony Ortega explains. 

Tony Ortega: In Scientology, once you have fallen out of favor, they're going to say anything about you. So I wouldn't rely on that. I would say Scientology made these allegations about him as they kicked him out. But that doesn't mean it happened. I wouldn't trust Scientology with that. 

Rachel: We asked the Church of Scientology about the leaked document. It said our question was in poor taste, before adding that David Gaiman was a beloved and active member of the Church of Scientology in the UK for decades, who dedicated much of his time to helping others and his community. In any case, the Gaiman family connection with Scientology persisted. 

The business that David Gaiman had set up with Neil's mother continued to thrive. G and G vitamins sold supplements once prescribed as essential for observant Scientologists. And Neil Gaiman at 25 years old married one of the Gaiman family lodgers, a Scientology student a few years older than him, and went on to have his first three children with her. Much of Neil Gaiman's family remain members of the Church of Scientology. Mary McGrath, his first wife, is involved with a Scientology Church in the US. One sister works for a Scientology Church in LA. 

Rachel: Another sister, Lizzie Calcioli, and his mother, Sheila Gaiman, are still pictured in the brochure for G and G vitamins in East Grinsted. 

Rachel: Neil Gaiman remains a shareholder in the firm, according to its most recent company filings. The firm hosts Scientology courses and remains linked to the organization. But for Neil Gaiman, things had started to change by the mid-1980s. 

Tony Ortega: And then something happened and he walked away. 

Rachel: He has said since that he no longer considers himself a member of the Church of Scientology as such. His walking away from Scientology coincides with the start of his writing career, but we don't know if this was the reason. 

He didn't answer any of our questions about this period of his life. Neil Gaiman's upbringing was unconventional in a world that to many would seem like a fantasy. Publicly, his persona was shaped by a very different, equally fantastical world, the world of comic books. And it's his phenomenal success in this world that coincides with him walking away from Scientology. 

[Big Bang Theory]: Look at that, Neil Gaiman tweeted about my store. What do he say? Next time you're in Pasadena, check out the Comic Center, great vibe, old school, the owner really knows his stuff. Isn't that amazing? Well, it's no sandman. 

Paul: The Big Bang Theory, the hugely popular US sitcom that's centered around four socially awkward physicists who were, crucially, massive comic book fans. 

[Big Bang Theory]: If you're interested in alternate histories, Neil Gaiman wrote one called 1602. I'm sorry, we're in the middle of something here. It is pretty good actually. He takes the Marvel superheroes and he puts them into Elizabethan England. Let me guess, everyone thinks the X-Men are witches. 

Paul: Yeah. In one episode, Neil Gaiman makes a guest appearance as a customer in the comic book store. And there's no doubt playing yourself in a fictional TV show or making it into The Simpsons twice is a pretty sure sign you've made it. His reputation had been growing over many years. 

He's now rich and famous. In the late 80s, Neil Gaiman wrote the first Sandman comic or graphic novel. At the time, comics tended to feature superheroes. Sandman did not. It was a work of literature based on ideas and concepts, not superheroes. 

The Sandman universe is full of LGBTQ characters. It's since spawned a Netflix hit with a budget of millions of dollars per episode. Neil Gaiman is an industry. His other works, Coraline, Good Omens, American Gods, Stardust and The Ocean at the end of the lane have all been made or are being made into TV series or films. The books themselves sell millions of copies around the world. They are a source of enormous revenue for his publishers, including Bloomsbury, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster and DC Comics. But it was Sandman that broke the mold and in doing so attracted a whole new readership. 

Women. It was also among the first graphic novels to ever feature on the New York Times bestseller list. There is no suggestion that any of these organisations knew or ought to have known about the allegations against Neil Gaiman in this podcast. 

Rachel: By 2008, Neil Gaiman is living in the US and seeing the feminist rock star icon Amanda Palmer, lead singer of the Dresden Dolls. They marry in 2011. In interviews, they describe their marriages open with what they called slutty compassion. Neil Gaiman's liberal, progressive image is boosted by this partnership with famous feminist punk performer Amanda. 

Amanda Palmer: Sure, we're watching celebrities talk about this, but this is happening to all women everywhere. 

Rachel: Both of them are very vocal on sexual violence against women. 

Amanda Palmer: This is just this insidious, you know, cultural sickness that we're hopefully starting to air out. 

Rachel: Neil Gaiman also frequently speaks out and especially tweets in support of women who've suffered at the hands of men. 

Paul: Just looking back over his tweets, and on Twitter he's got three million followers. On the 21st of April 2010, he tweeted its sexual assault awareness month and linked to a web page where people could buy a painting of his wife, Amanda Palmer, to raise money for a sexual abuse charity. And on the 31st of October 2014, he references the hashtag that went viral in that year, and he tweets reading the been raped never reported hashtag. It's hard reading, makes me slightly ashamed to be human and much more ashamed to be male. 

Thames Valley Police: If you're still struggling with consent, just imagine instead of initiating sex, you're making them a cup of tea. 

Rachel: Then he retweets this video published by Thames Valley Police about consent and understanding consent. 

Thames Valley Police: Then you can make them a cup of tea or not, but be aware that they might not drink it. And if they don't drink it, and this is the important bit, don't make them drink it.

Rachel: And then in 2018, he tweets, there are so many women whose innocence is not presumed when it comes to matters of sexual assault and rape. 

Paul: We understand Neil Gaiman considers any allegation of hypocrisy in this respect to be misguided. His position is that he stands by his prior public statements about sexual violence against women, as well as on the issue of consent, that the statements are compatible with his personal conduct, and that the suggestion these statements are an attempt to conceal any unethical behavior is false. There is another cause that Neil Gaiman has said is close to his heart. He has described himself in a recent New York Times interview as a first amendment absolutist, the capstone of the American constitution that protects freedom of speech and the press. 

When it comes to this podcast, Neil Gaiman's position is that its publication would expose tortoise to significant legal risk, as he believes it is not based on reporting that's accurate, responsible and is not in the public interest. We have thought long and hard over eight months about the public interest in this story. It's one that touches on the intimate lives of various people, not least Neil Gaiman. 

It's one that, in his PR advisor's words, has implications for everyone involved. So the public interest has to, and in our view does, justify its publication, for many reasons. It was after we researched how New Zealand police handled Scarlett's complaint and how the police appear to have been limited by the law itself. After we examined her allegations of abuse against Neil Gaiman, some of them if proved, criminal. After we reported on what we were told of the concealment of his alleged behaviour, including Scarlett's back-dated NDA, Amanda Palmer's reference to 14 others, and the use of the family therapist. 

And after we understood the laws around consent during rough sex. It was after all this that we came to believe that there was a clear and convincing public interest here, and one supported by a second woman's allegations of similar behaviour by Neil Gaiman to that alleged by Scarlett. After weeks of speaking to people in the world of comics, I get a message from someone else who worked in the industry. I had contacted this person asking about sexual misconduct, but without mentioning Neil Gaiman. We agree to speak, and when we do, this person tells me, when I read your message, I thought, if this guy is working on a story about Neil Gaiman, then he's hit the jackpot. The jackpot, it turned out, was that this person once knew a girl who was once a fan of Neil Gaiman, and that almost two decades ago, she met him at a book signing. 

K: It's just a murky line, and it's also part of why it's hard for me to talk about and it's not something that like, during the Me Too movement I was like well I can't, I don't have a leg to stand on, I don't have like video proof, but it did happen.

Paul: Decades and continents separate Scarlett from this second woman. They've never met, or spoken. She was 18 years old when she met Neil Gaiman in the Noughties, and the way she talks about her time with him is familiar. Neil Gaiman's position is that the only similarity between her account and Scarlett's is that, in both cases, contemporaneous messages contradict their narratives. 

Rachel: This series is reported by me, Rachel Johnson, and by Paul Caruana Galizia. It is written by us and by Katie Gunning, who is also the producer. Sound design and original music is by Tom Kinsella. Additional reporting is by Jess Swinburne. Artwork is by John Hill. The series editor is Matt Russell. The editor is Jasper Corbett. 

Episode 4:
Paul: Before we begin, I just need to warn you. This is a hard lesson at times. The episode contains graphic descriptions of sex and allegations of sexual abuse. 

Paul: How are you? 

K: I'm good, how are you? 

Paul: I'm alright. 

Our journey into the world of comics has led us to a woman in Atlanta in the United States. She's recently moved house and came across an old digital camera. She thinks there's something important on it and so plugs it into her computer. And she finds dozens of images of her and Neil Gaiman. 

Some intimate, some sexual even. Photos she says he told her that she shouldn't have. She creates a new folder and calls it evidence and files away the images. Maybe one day I'll be able to tell that story, she thinks. Maybe one day I'll get a call, an email, one day, maybe. A week later, my email landed in her inbox. She says the two events, finding the camera, the email, set off an emotional storm and so she agrees to talk. But she's cautious. To verify my identity, she asks me to send her a photo of me holding up an email she sent me. 

K: I never wanted any of the stuff he did to me, including the more violent stuff. But I did consent to it, you know. 

Paul: She's now in her late 30s. Of the story she tells us dates back 20 years and hinges on the same allegations as Scarlett. Consent, rough sex, emotional manipulation, exploitation. All the he said, she said. Gray areas that made New Zealand police so wary of pursuing Scarlett's criminal complaint. 

K: It's such a murky line and it's also part of why it's hard for me to talk about it. It's not something that like during the Me Too move and I was like, I don't have a leg to stand on. I don't have like video proof of this, you know. But it did happen. 

Paul: She sends me many photos of her and Neil Gaiman. Emails between them and contemporaneous chats she had with friends about him. And she agrees to be recorded. She says she's repelled by the idea that her name will be forever linked with his. 

And so we aren't using it. She says we can use her first initial, K. Neil Gaiman's position is the two of them were in a two year romantic relationship, which ended many years ago. And they have exchanged hundreds of emails over the years. According to his position, this correspondence in no way demonstrates any repulsion and that he never engaged in any non-consensual sexual act with her. I'm Paul Caruana Galizia. 

Rachel: And I'm Rachel Johnson. And from Tortoise, this is episode four of Master, The Fan. 

K: I drove down with my two friends. I don't remember what the signings were, but this was in 2003. 

Rachel: Neil Gaiman's doing a book signing in Sarasota in Florida. K's in high school. She's a typical teenage fangirl, just 18, excited to meet her idol. He's around 43 years old. 

K: We hung back to the end so that we would have more time to talk to him. And we brought him a little bucket full of goofy presents and just goofed around and then took our picture. It wasn't a very long interaction. I'd say in maybe 5 minutes tops. 

Rachel: The three pals do the same thing again, this time at a book signing in North Carolina. They begin emailing him via his website. 

K: Sometimes I would almost just treat it like a diary almost like, dear Neil, today I did this in class. Had this thing happen to me and then would send it off in the ether and kind of forget about it. Unless he wrote back and then we might have a few back and forths. 

Rachel: Sometimes Neil Gaiman would reply, lighthearted, casual. But the next summer K and her girlfriends get an email. Neil Gaiman's coming to Florida to write. Would they like to come and have dinner? 

K: We were all very excited of course and drove down there and had dinner at a barbeque restaurant with him, I think. I remember I was excited and trying to not let there be too many awkward pauses. And that was all pretty benign. There may have been some like kisses on the cheeks when we said goodbye. 

Rachel: Six months later there's another invitation to dinner. This time two of them go along. 

K: We'd gone to an ice cream place after dinner and we made a big deal of like, pretending like it was his birthday because it was an American ice cream place. And these four kids had to sing a song if they thought it was your birthday. We were 18 or 20 at the time and thought it would be really funny if they had to sing that kind of thing. So we faked that it was his birthday and I remember that. 

Rachel: The friends go back to his house after the ice cream and the birthday jokes. 

K: Somehow it had been decided that we were going to spend the night there with the huge house, there's a ton of rooms, you can pick wherever you want to stay here. 

Rachel: Just after Neil Gaiman's gone to his room and K and her friend are still talking out on the porch, he comes back out as if he'd forgotten something maybe. 

K: And said, do you guys want to go to bed with me? 

Rachel: The age of consent in Florida is 18 so they're legal. The question so casually posed to these two young friends, do they want to go to bed with a married man in his 40s? They've only met a couple of times together. Well, this is how he sold it. 

K: Oh, you guys said it was my birthday. This would a great birthday present. If you guys both came to bed with me. No thanks. He said okay and went back to his room and we kind of never talked about it. We were just kind of like that was weird. 

Rachel: So he asked them if they wanted to have sex and accepted their refusal. After K turns 20 though, things shift. The attention from Neil Gaiman, the intensity ramp up. She's literally in his sights. 

K: We exchanged phone numbers and we would have chats on the phone. One time he sent me a webcam. 

Paul: And the webcam thing, how did he broach that? Did he just say this would be fun for us to talk? 

K: Yeah, you know, it'd be nice to be able to see you when we talk. And of course that was very flattering. And that probably went on for about six months or so. And then he came back and he came to Orlando this time with like the express purpose to see me and took me out to sushi and offered to buy me a drink and that's when we slept together for the first time. 

Rachel: He paid her attention, paid for drinks, they slept together. So K's sexual relationship with Neil Gaiman starts differently to how Scarlett says hers did. Both women were more or less the same age. 

They were both under his thumb, one as a fan and the other as a nanny to his child. But K's sexual relationship with him begins with a consensual act. Neil Gaiman's position is that there are no similarities between Scarlett's and K's accounts. But the way K describes that first consensual act seems very similar to Scarlett's allegations of sex with him, which we'll come to. 

K: He was saying things like, you know, you're so smart, you're so intelligent, I find myself falling in love with you. Like, I really think the world of you, I want to be with you. 

Paul: K's been working at Disney World. Now she's studying and found work as a zookeeper. 

K: I was a broke college kid and I started working at the LA Zoo out there. Elephants mainly. 

Paul: Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman was blogging about his marriage to fans and readers. This was his first then. 

K: I was really shy and I knew that I have a lot of, you know, self-esteem issues. I got the feeling that he was ashamed of me and he kept being like, I'm not ashamed of you. I'm like, well, but you don't tell anybody that we're dating. Like nobody knows you have a girlfriend. You're still technically married. I feel like you don't value me and he would be saying like, I'm like a ship turning, it takes me a long time. Like he bought me a book called like how to understand the English of which like, you know, to be fair, there was quite the age and culture gap. 

Paul: Remember, K is his daughter's age. She's starting her adult life as his secret girlfriend. He's nervy about being around her in public. He invites her to events, but then doesn't acknowledge she's there. Neil Gaiman's position rejects the notion that he was ashamed of his relationship with K. 

Him inviting her to prestigious events is cited as evidence of this position. Still K is young, broke and insecure. She has a disabled brother who she cares for and her parents are splitting up around the time her relationship with Neil Gaiman begins. In other words, she is vulnerable. 

K: At this point, like all of my worth is attached to like, I am dating a famous person. Like I am a zookeeper and then it's cool. I guess that's like a fun thing I can tell people, but like the really interesting thing about me is that I am dating this guy who has this exciting life. And by proxy, I am exciting. Like he could do whatever he wanted and I would do whatever it took to keep that relationship going. 

Paul: Whatever he wanted, whatever it took from the start. Neil Gaiman's view is that his relationship with K was sincere and built on mutual trust and affection. Because of this view, we understand that he is disturbed by K's allegations. I should warn you that what follows is according to K quite graphic. When did things with him become rough? 

K: Straight away, he was very unconcerned with my pleasure and he certainly didn't have anything like lube around and I didn't know enough. So the first time we had sex, I remember like lying there and there was music on and there was a song that I really loved. So it was a very romantic, loving song. And I was listening to it while this very painful act was happening to me and just here's kind of just just remember like thinking like I've listened to this song so many times and imagine like someone loving me like someone in this song loves whoever they're singing about. And instead this brutal, painful thing was happening to me. 

Paul: The song was It's Only Time by The Magnetic Fields. A beautiful melancholy track. It starts and ends with Why Would I Stop Loving You a Hundred Years From Now? To this soundtrack, an allegation of pain and no lubrication, of sexual behaviour that seems very similar to Scarlett's allegations. But that's almost 20 years earlier. She also doesn't tell Neil Gaiman that it's not okay to do this. Not at this stage anyway. Having heard Scarlett's allegations about Neil Gaiman's sexual behaviour, I wanted to know whether this rang any bells. 

K: There was never choking. 

Paul: So Scarlett, there was one episode where she said she almost passed out from the pain of him penetrating her anally without any lube. 

K: That happened to me too. It didn't happen the first time. He was trying to like coach me to just relax and the tenser I was the more it would hurt. So it was my fault if it hurt, not his. 

Paul: There are other details that shine with Scarlett's experience too. 

K: A belt. 

Paul: K says he used a belt on her, just as Scarlett said. And yes, they both say that Neil Gaiman made them call him master. These appear to be aspects of his sexual fingerprint that span almost 20 years. 

K: His hands, like she really liked spanking and like hitting that area. And he would say like, oh, I wouldn't do it, but you know, I know you like it. And I didn't very much didn't make him was like, I vocal like, that hurts like, maybe not so hard. And he'd be like, no, I can tell that you like it. 

Paul: K says she often felt pressure to accept it. She says she felt that she had to submit to whatever he wanted, that she owed him. And he tell her she liked it. We understand that Neil Gaiman's position is that it is difficult to talk about this because it touches on something that is highly sensitive. But his position is that K found penetrative sex with him difficult and uncomfortable because of his body. So he did not press the issue with her. 

K: He would complain often like whenever I come to see you, you know, you don't have sex with me enough. So it was always it was a contentious thing between us. And so I often felt if it was somewhere that she'd like, you know, spent money to take me or like, you know, I felt that I owed it. And he definitely took advantage of that. 

Rachel: On the 4th of April, 2007, Neil Gaiman flew K from Los Angeles to Heathrow for a fortnight's holiday together in the UK alone, the two of them. K tells us she was excited to be on this amazing trip with her famous boyfriend and not have to sneak around. 

From his messages to her, it seemed like he was too. Neil Gaiman met her on arrival and they then took a taxi to Gatwick Airport to fly to Inverness in Scotland. They visited Loch Ness and stayed at his house on the Isle of Skye for three days. They then flew to Cornwall and drove to Red Ruth in the far south west of England. They stayed in an old tinners cottage with a wood burning stove hidden up a bridal path. 

It was advertised as affording complete privacy. He spent the days in Cornwall mostly writing the graveyard book and then they'd occasionally go for walks or drives. She sent us photos from that trip. 

Beaches, pubs, cliffs, glens, scarves, the heavy grey skies of the Scottish and Cornish summer. She looks happy. When you see their faces together in the photos, he's unshaven, craggy, she's around 22. She looks so, so young. But she said there were fights. Lots of them. 

K: There are a lot of arguments. There is a lot of roughness that I felt compelled to take. 

Rachel: What the photos also don't show is K's intimate agony. She told us that on that trip, she had her period and then a bad urinary tract infection. 

K: I couldn't sit down. He would say, you know, I want to fool around, like, you know, and I would say, okay, we can fool around, but you can't put anything in my vagina. You just can't because I will die. And it didn't matter. He did it anyway. 

Paul: He did it anyway. Although you told him you were in pain. 

K: Very specifically said you cannot put anything in me. Please don't. It will hurt very badly and it will make things worse than they already are. Because I know for sure I remember for sure in Cornwall saying those words out loud. It wasn't just a discussion about like that hurts. Like because I can't remember if I said that hurts. Don't do it or like please stop. I can't remember those other instances. I know we discussed it. I know it was a big part of why he would get upset at me and I knew that it was like something that I had to do to keep him around. Like it was expected of me, but in Cornwall, I remember because of that UTI and it was so painful that like I couldn't do anything. Like I couldn't enjoy the fact that I was in or like I was just in like screaming agony and I know I said it out loud then.

Rachel: On the 16th of April 2007, Neil Gaiman drove K to Heathrow for her flight back to Los Angeles. She says they stopped several times along the way so she could pee because of her UTI. She says it felt more painful because of the penetrative sex he allegedly performed on her without her consent. As to this specific allegation, Neil Gaiman's clear position is that it is false and again he denies any unlawful behaviour with her. He didn't respond to any other specific points or questions about this trip. 

Paul: K has never made a complaint to the police against Neil Gaiman and so this allegation is very far from ever having been tested in court. An official crime survey for England found that 1.1 million adults experienced sexual assault in the year up to March 2022. 798,000 of them were women. During the same period, the police recorded only 75,000 sexual assault cases. 

That is, less than 15% of those experiences made it to the police. We asked Harriet Wistrich, a lawyer and the director of the Center for Women's Justice, to listen to our interview with K. She did not review any other material related to K's allegations. We wanted to ask Harriet why K didn't go to the police with such a serious allegation. 

Harriet Wistrich: There are very good reasons why she didn't report. One, she's very conflicted and she's still holding on to the idea that here's this really important love in her life. She's still very caught up and invested in the relationship. And, you know, she's not there. In her own head, she's not yet there. I mean, it's only as she reflects that she becomes more mature that she sees it for what it is. 

Rachel: Jennifer Robinson is an international lawyer and author of the book, Silenced Women. We've come to her as we have two women who now allege they were abused. And we want to know, without specific reference to Neil Gaiman, what accountability the law can provide. Jennifer Robinson's thesis is, in summary, that laws are made by men and so tend to protect men. 

Jennifer Robinson: If you look at the history of the way that rape has been regulated, rape within marriage was not a crime. Because the understanding was that once you were married, it was a contractual relationship. 

Once you were married, then that was it. So if a husband beat and raped his wife, he could only be prosecuted for beating her, not for raping her, because there was no such thing as rape within the context of marriage. 

Rachel: In the UK, there was no law against forced sexual activity within a marriage until as recently as 1992. A year earlier, a man known only as R had appealed against his conviction of rape by arguing that his victim was his wife, and so she'd provided ongoing consent through the contract of marriage. The court ruled, nowadays, it cannot seriously be maintained that by marriage, a wife submits herself irrevocably to sexual intercourse in all circumstances. Now, marital rape is considered as a sexual assault under the Sexual Offences Act of 2003, but myths around sexual assault still linger. There's still a belief that if you're in a relationship, however asymmetric, whatever happens is consensual if transactional. There's implied consent and a contract of some sort, that in fact you owe a man sex in return for dinner or holidays, for example. 

Jennifer Robinson: And it's just not true. Consent is for each and every act. And I think it's important that people remember that. But we see time and time again in front of juries, for example, that these old tropes of what was she wearing, had she had sex with this person before, had she had sex with other people before? What's her sexual history? These tropes, you hear of, oh, she's doing it to take revenge, or for fame, or for financial gain. What woman has benefited from speaking out publicly? 

Rachel: Women, Jennifer Robinson tells us, generally don't speak out because they're scorned, vengeful, or gold diggers. 

Jennifer Robinson: Women typically speak out because they want to warn other women and they want it to stop. 

Paul: K's relationship with Neil Gaiman ends during a trip to Orlando in Florida. K had a badly infected eye and didn't feel like going out. She wanted to have breakfast in, he didn't. They argued, and Neil Gaiman cancelled the rest of their hotel booking, changed his flight, and left for Minneapolis, where his then wife lived at the time. 

K: I followed him to the airport. I called my mom, sobbing that Neil was breaking up with me and I had to get to the airport to talk him out. I bought a $500 ticket on his flight, got onto the plane, got onto the plane, like, kneeled in the seat in front of him and I was like, please don't do this, please don't break up with me. And he was not having it. He was like, somebody get her off the plane, get her off the plane, like, they dragged me off the plane. I'm sobbing. It ended up refunding my ticket, I think more out of just like, please God, get this crying girl out of her face. And then I had to drive home to my dad's house, blind in one eye, and that was the end.

Paul: Neil Gaiman's account is that he denies he demanded K be removed from the plane. He didn't respond to any other detail points or specific questions about this trip. That scene on the plane, in which K ultimately walked off the aircraft, was in October 2008. In a chat dated the 24th of October, one of K's friends asks why she doesn't just break up with him. K replies, I don't know, adding, I'm now on Xanax because he says I need to control my temper. 

Xanax is a prescription tranquilizer used to treat depression, anxiety, and panic disorders. Despite her humiliation on that day, K stays in touch with Neil Gaiman. They exchange many emails up until 2022. But something in K had already begun changing. 

K: The shift in my thinking about my relationship with him began both as I got older and realized that 18 year olds and 20 year olds when you're in your 40s look like kids. Something about this now that I'm looking back on it is very wrong. 

And also as the conversation, the Me Too stuff, more of that stuff became more nuanced, that was when I was like, well, wait a minute, something like that happened to me. 

Paul: Neil Gaiman's position is that K's allegations against him are motivated by her regret over their sexual relationship. Yet his position is also that K's regret is evidentially deficient. Because her emails appeared to him as genial, positive, and at times going back to 2010 flirtatious and solicitous. In support of this position, Neil Gaiman's account cites an email K sent him on the 16th of September 2017. The email says, If I just happened to fly to the UK just very casually on a whim, you would tell me what hotel lobby to hang out in, right? 

My neglected loins are looking at cheap flight options even as I type this. When we asked K about this email, she provided us with the full thread. It shows that K's email was in response to one Neil Gaiman's sent her, one that started their email exchange and contained only a photo of the actor David Tennant in costume for a Good Omens production. K says Neil Gaiman knew she fancied David Tennant and that the reference to a hotel lobby in her email is to the lobby of whatever hotel that David Tennant was staying in. 

In fact, Neil Gaiman responds to K's email saying he'd give her the name of the actor's hotel if she sent him photos of her breasts and bottom. K declined. Neil Gaiman's position is that K would also email him asking for tickets to events and for career advice. In fact, K shared the following exchange herself. K emails Neil Gaiman to ask whether he can help her friends with tickets to a comic convention. 

He replies soon after offering to help and then, volunteering that his new GF is the most beautiful person I've ever been with, which proves I am crazy I guess. When K asks whether Amanda Palmer is okay with his new girlfriend, Neil Gaiman says yes, but unenthusiastic because girl is young, beautiful and could have been designed for me in bed. K asks Neil Gaiman for pictures of his new girlfriend. 

He sends K what he calls girl pics, photos of a woman she reminds us of K and Scarlett. We got in touch with her. She met Neil Gaiman at a screening. 

She was in her early 20s. They became lovers that night and remained so on and off for the decade that followed. This woman recognized some of the sexual acts that I had heard from K and Scarlett, but was clear that it was always consensual between her and Neil Gaiman. She said that she loves, respects and cares about Neil Gaiman, but her experiences with him have been nothing but incredible and positive. She described him as a man who has helped her through difficult times. She is no stranger to those having had a traumatic childhood. 

Rachel: We first emailed Neil Gaiman to ask for an interview more than two months before publication. We said we wanted to ask him about allegations of a pattern of mistreatment of different women over many years, about sexual consent and how it is policed, the dynamics between fans and celebrities and about status, influence and power in the context of uneven sexual relationships. His PR responded a week later asking for specific questions in advance. We provided thematic questions. We said we wanted to ask Neil Gaiman about his understanding of sexual consent and how it might have changed over time, for example, or how he maintains appropriate boundaries with young fans and whether any former sexual partners told him that they felt mistreated by him. 

We even asked him about using an NDA with any former sexual partners. Neil Gaiman's PR said it still wasn't enough detail and the PR added that what we were suggesting was deeply offensive and had extremely serious implications for everyone involved. We have represented everyone's side to this story as carefully and as seriously as we can throughout. We approached this story with our minds open. We wanted you, the listener, to do the same, to hear the allegations we have heard and see why we journalists saw it as important to investigate them. As this story deepened and the allegations darkened, it also changed complexion. 

I, well, we, realised this has never been about sex per se. It was about power. We heard allegations of rough sex that caused bodily harm. In UK law, there can be no consent to this. The threshold for harm is generally higher in the US and in New Zealand, the court considers the circumstances of each case. 

Paul: These laws and rules weren't written to police what people do in bed and they're not there because legislators are fusty and want to shame or embarrass people who are interested in unconventional sex. The idea is to stop the use of consent as a defence to causing another person harm. 

It's to stop abuse and people who are interested in BDSM know this. That's why they've told us people engaged in rough sex should agree on clear rules, language and boundaries to ensure no one is abused. In the context of an abusive relationship, experts see rough sex as a means of coercive control which the UK has criminalised. The perpetrator can access sex when and how they want it, cementing control over the victim. 

It sends the message, even with minor physical force, that the victim is the perpetrator's property. Remember, like Scarlett, K told us that sex with Neil Gaiman became rough straight away. Both women told us they experienced no pleasure, only pain from the sex and K said she never wanted or enjoyed it. 

K described being in agony, particularly during her April 2007 trip with Neil Gaiman around the UK. A trip during which she alleges he penetrated her vagina with his penis without her consent. An allegation he denies. The seriousness of that last allegation returns us to one of the issues we asked at the start of this podcast. At the end of the day, we don't have the power of official authorities to investigate allegations like these. Allegations of sexual offences and we can't and don't assume that official role. But their allegations weren't being seriously examined or heard anywhere else. And this failure to take allegations like these seriously is a matter of interest. It speaks to police failings, the limits of the law, and abuse of power and its concealment by various means. We set out to hear every side of the story. Threaded throughout this podcast, you have heard Neil Gaiman's position. 

It is a denial of any non-consensual sex with the woman we've spoken to. We have spoken to two women friends, one a lover, who had nothing but positive things to say about him. It's worth saying here that we have examined Scarlett and K's allegations over many months. We have interviewed and re-interviewed them, spoken to others, combed through emails and messages, reviewed photos and other documents. 

These two women have never met or spoken. They're separated by decades and continents, yet their allegations are consistent. And it's worth saying too that even coming to journalists poses risks to them of defamation, invasions of their privacy, and in stories like these, possibly harassment by a dedicated fanbase. As Jennifer Robinson explains about the general picture. 

Jennifer Robinson: People need to understand that the stories that reach the public domain are the tip of the iceberg because so few of these stories can be reported, it is so difficult for journalists to report these stories and it's so difficult for women to come forward because of all these legal risks. It's a real barrier and it means that so many of these stories are silenced, which in our view is it is in the public interest for us to be able to report these stories. We need to be able to talk about violence against women. One in three women faces sexual assault. It is the most prolific human rights abuse in the world and if we can't talk about it and report on it, then how are we ever going to grapple with it or resolve it? 

Paul: And we are failing to resolve it. An estimated 70% of sexual assaults are not even reported to the police in the US. In New Zealand the government estimates 90% of sexual violence is not reported to the police and it's a fraction of the small number of cases that are reported to the police that then go to court. Prosecutors will only take a complaint to court if they think there's a reasonable prospect of conviction. Often they don't because of evidential sufficiency grounds, because there were only two people in the room or because the complainant continued their relationship with their alleged abuser, something that causes doubt in jurors minds about the complainant's credibility. Of the sexual abuse complaints that do go all the way to court, conviction rates are lower than those for other crimes. And the public is onto this as a problem. 

The UK Victims Commissioner has said that rape has been effectively decriminalised. The wider picture makes Scarlett an exception in that she went to the police, but unexceptional in that the police told her they couldn't actively pursue her complaint. 

Rachel: Scarlett's now a university student reading literature and classics in New Zealand. She's getting her life back on track all the while she's still processing what she says derailed it two years ago. I think back to my first conversation with Scarlett in October 2023 after that breezy note landed in my Instagram messages. And I asked her what she wanted to happen next. 

Scarlett: It's so interesting because when you asked me that I don't really know I don't really know what I want. I've been on a really big sort of journey with trying to unweave it in my mind and my soul and you know he sort of lured me if you will into his into a sort of psychological labyrinth Rachel and so it was not straightforward at all. 

Rachel: K lives with her husband and their two cats which often appeared in the background of our Zoom calls. She's since graduated in fine arts and now works in film and TV. So much of Scarlett, K and Neil Gaiman's story is to do with the way the law works when the concrete evidence it seeks is elusive or contradictory. The interesting thing is this isn't a story about the clarity of the law. It's completely clear and it's been that way for decades in the countries where Neil Gaiman's relationship with Scarlett and K played out. There has to be consent for every sexual interaction we have and in the UK you can't consent to sex that causes you actual bodily harm. There's no such thing as a blanket agreement that comes with being in a relationship. If you think about the way laws like that come about it's often because social attitudes start change so first people start to think differently about sex and consent within marriage for example and then the law catches up with where they're at and usually I think the law cements the new way of thinking. Before long we probably wonder how we ever thought differently but when it comes to sex and consent within a consenting relationship has that happened? 

After all those decades on the statute books have the new laws helped cement the way we think? What I mean is even after all this time are enough of us clear about consent when some of the signals might be confusing are the police clear, are prosecutors, are juries and if there's any doubt about that is that what leaves the gap which someone who wants to commit sexual abuse can exploit? What I know for sure is that Scarlett and K are clear they consented to have a relationship with Neil Gaiman but they didn't consent to the kind of sex he wanted nor every time he wanted it. They're sure they were abused by him. We've heard over and over again that Neil Gaiman denies that. He's adamant not only that the relationships were consensual, so was the sex. But in the end the reason it's been so important to hear Scarlett and K's stories is that it's hard to think of another area of life where the law is black and white but the thinking around it is shrouded in gray. In that fog terrible things can happen. 

Paul: this series is reported by me Paul Paul Caruana Galizia and by Rachel Johnson. It is written by us and by Katie Gunning who is also the producer. Sound design and original music is by Tom Kinsella. Additional reporting is by Jess Swinburne. Artwork is by John Hill. The series editor is Matt Russell. The editor is Jasper Corbett.