In the latest issue of New York Magazine, features writer Lila Shapiro takes an in-depth look at sexual-assault allegations against Neil Gaiman, the acclaimed British fantasist and author whose work has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide and been widely adapted for film and television beginning with Coraline in 2009. In reporting the cover story “There Is No Safe Word,” Shapiro spoke with eight women who shared allegations of assault, coercion, or abuse by Gaiman including Scarlett Pavlovich, who worked as a nanny for Gaiman and his second wife, Amanda Palmer. Gaiman, through his representatives, says these were all consensual encounters. Here, Pavlovich tells her own full story, in disturbing detail, for the first time.
Allegations against Gaiman first came to light last summer in the podcast Master from Tortoise Media. Shapiro says that the contrast between Gaiman’s public persona and the allegations caught her attention, and that she sensed there was even more to the story to tell. She has followed Gaiman’s career and work since she was a teenager; she previously wrote an Encounter with Gaiman and Palmer at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in 2018. “Gaiman has for decades described himself as a feminist writer. He is someone who spoke specifically to women, who women felt seen by, and who women felt safe with. So I knew immediately there’s this dissonance between who he says he is and these stories,” says Shapiro. Gaiman had a reputation as not only one of the greatest modern comic-book writers but one of the first to attract a large female readership.
Many of the allegations against Gaiman involve domineering violence, a feature of BDSM, “a culture with a set of long-standing norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent to the overall dynamic as well as to each act before they engage in it,” as Shapiro writes. She says that seven of the eight women she spoke with told her they had no interest in BDSM, although at some point they played along. “The defining feature of BDSM is consent, and there’s actually more emphasis on consent than outside BDSM. If just one party consents, then it’s not BDSM but abuse,” says Shapiro.
In January 2023, Pavlovich filed a police report alleging sexual assault against Gaiman during the time she was working as a nanny, though the “matter has been closed” according to a spokesperson. His career has been marginally affected, though he has new series and seasons set to premiere on Amazon Prime and Netflix this year. An ugly divorce and custody battle with Palmer is in its fifth year. The piece also explores the breakdown of Gaiman and Palmer’s marriage during the same period that many of the alleged assaults took place, as well as what Palmer knew about the nature of his relationships outside their marriage.
Elsewhere in the issue, Kerry Howley writes a first-person account of the Los Angeles wildfires, Allison P. Davis looks at the start-up that thinks it can “eradicate loneliness,” and Lauren Smiley examines what drove a mother to relentlessly cyberbully her teenage daughter.
