Vulture expose on Neil Gaiman reveals he's straight

Highlights/lowlights:

Gaiman had been having sexual encounters with younger fans for a long time. Kendra Stout was 18 when, in 2003, she drove four and a half hours to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to see Gaiman read from Endless Nights, a follow-up to The Sandman. She met him in the signing line. Gaiman sent her long emails and bought her a web camera so they could chat on video. Around three years after they met, he flew to Orlando to take her on a date. He invited her back to his hotel room, put on a playlist of love songs, and held her down with one hand. Gaiman didn't believe in foreplay or lubrication, Stout tells me, which could make s*x particularly painful. When she said it hurt too much, he'd tell her the problem was she wasn't submissive enough. "He talked at length about the dominant and submissive relationship he wanted out of me," she tells me. Stout had no prior interest in BDSM. She says Gaiman never asked what she liked in bed, and there was no discussion of "safe words" or "aftercare" or "limits." He'd ask her to call him "master" and beat her with his belt. "These were not sexy little taps," she says. When she told him she didn't like it, she says he replied, "It's the only way I can get off."

After Gaiman got into the bathtub with Pavlovich, she retreated to Palmer's house, which was vacant at the time. She sat in the shower for an hour, crying, then got into Palmer's bed and began to search the internet for clues that might explain what had happened to her. She Googled "Me Too" and "Neil Gaiman." Nothing. The only negative stories she found were about how he'd broken COVID lockdown rules in 2020 and had been forced to apologize to the people of the Isle of Skye for endangering their lives.

At the end of the weekend, Palmer texted Pavlovich to say how pleased she was to see Pavlovich and her child get along. "The universe is a karmic mystery," Palmer wrote. "We nourish each other in the most random and unpredictable ways." Palmer asked if she could babysit again. She needed so much help. Would Pavlovich consider staying with them for the foreseeable future?

She then tweeted a pic of her pouting in reaction to her r*pe:

Author goes to bat for palmer, niels wife:

Sexual abuse is one of the most confusing forms of violence that a person can experience. The majority of people who have endured it do not immediately recognize it as such; some never do. "You're not thinking in a linear or logical fashion," Pavlovich says, "but the mind is trying to process it in the ways that it can." Whatever had happened in the bath, she'd been through worse and survived, she thought. And Gaiman and Palmer were offering her the possibility of a shared future. Palmer's vision of herself as the central figure of a utopian community could, according to some of her friends, make her careless with the young, impressionable women she invited into her and her husband's lives. "Her idealism could blind her to reality," one friend says. (Palmer declined to be interviewed, but I spoke with people close to her.) Palmer told Pavlovich they might travel to London together, and to Scotland, where Gaiman was shooting the second season of Good Omens. Pavlovich had wanted to leave New Zealand — her "epicenter of trauma" — for as long as she could remember. These conversations filled her head with fantasies "of finally being on solid ground in the world."

After Palmer's offer, Pavlovich texted Gaiman: "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." The following weekend, she packed up her sublet and boarded the ferry to Waiheke.

They go into Gaiman's scientology:

David used Neil as an exhibit in his case to the public. In 1968, he arranged for Neil to give an interview to the BBC. When the reporter asked the child if Scientology made him "a better boy," Neil replied, "Not exactly that, but when you make a release, you feel absolutely great." (A release, in Scientology lingo, is what happens when you complete one of the lower levels of coursework.) What was happening away from the cameras is difficult to know, in part because Gaiman has avoided talking about it, changing the subject whenever an interviewer, or a friend, brings it up. But it seems unlikely that he would have been spared the disciplinary measures inflicted on adults and children as a standard practice at that time. According to someone who knew the Gaimans, David and Sheila did apply Scientology's methods at home. When Neil was around the age of the child in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the person said, David took him up to the bathtub, ran a cold bath, and "drowned him to the point where Neil was screaming for air."

As a teenager, Neil worked for the Church of Scientology for three years as an auditor, a minister of the church who conducts a process some have likened to hypnosis. One former member of the church who worked with Gaiman's parents and was audited by Gaiman recalls him as precocious and ambitious. It was unusual for a teenager to have completed such a high level of training, he tells me. But the Gaimans were like "royalty," he says. In 1981, David was promoted to lead the Guardian's Office, making him one of the most powerful people in the church. But the same year, he fell from grace. A new generation of Scientologists, led by David Miscavige, who eventually succeeded Hubbard as the church's leader, had Hubbard's ear, and David was "caught in that grinder," as his former colleague puts it. A document declaring David a "Suppressive person" was released a few years later. It accused him of a range of offenses, including sexual misconduct. David, the document claims, put on a "front" of being "mild mannered and quite sociable," adding that his actions "belie this." His greatest offense, it seemed, was hubris. "Gaiman required others to look up to him instead of to Source," it reads, referring to Hubbard.

In the '80s, David was sent off to a sort of rehabilitation camp. It was around this time that Gaiman set out to make a living as a writer. Charming and strategic, he used the contacts he developed as a journ*list to break into the business of genre writing, endearing himself to the giants of that world at the time: Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, Alan Moore. "When I was young, I had unbelievable chutzpah," Gaiman says in the documentary Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously. "The kind of monstrous self-certainty that you only get normally in people who then go on to conquer half the civilized world."

Unfortunately for @911roofer, it seems Alan Moore didnt roipe Gaiman

Again, more Palmer apologia:

Gaiman and Palmer met in 2008, when she was 32 and he was 47. Both were at a turning point in their lives and careers. Gaiman was in the midst of finalizing a divorce from his first wife, with whom he had three children, and on the verge of breaking into Hollywood (nine of his works have been turned into movies or TV shows); Palmer was in a fight with her record label that would culminate in a split. Palmer had a collection of photos of herself posing as a murdered corpse and wanted Gaiman to write captions to go along with the pictures. Gaiman liked the idea, and the two met to work on the project, a book tied to her first solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. As Palmer described in The Art of Asking, they were not attracted to each other at first. "I thought he looked like a baggy-eyed, grumpy old man, and he thought I looked like a chubby little boy."

Gaiman was the first to propose a romantic relationship. In an interview, he later said, "I got together with her because I couldn't ever imagine being bored." Palmer could. Ever since she'd gotten her start as a street busker, painting her face white and standing on a crate in Harvard Square dressed as a silent eight-foot-tall bride, she prided herself on a low-rent, bohemian lifestyle, couch-surfing when she toured, playing random shows in the living rooms of her fans. She had no savings and didn't own a car, real estate, or kitchen appliances. Gaiman owned multiple houses. He was too rich, too famous, too British, too awkward, too old. And they didn't have great sexual chemistry. But he appeared to be kind and stable, a family man, and they shared a dark, fantastical aesthetic. She also felt a little sorry for him. He seemed lonely, in spite of his fame, and Palmer found herself hoping that she could help him. "He'd believed for a long time, deep down, that people didn't actually fall in love," she wrote in her book. "'But that's impossible,'" she told him. He'd written stories and scenes of people in love. "'That's the whole point, darling,' he said. 'Writers make things up.'"

But then turns out she was giving women to him:

In 2012, Palmer met a 20-year-old fan, who has asked to be referred to as Rachel, at a Dresden Dolls concert. After one of Palmer's next shows, the women had s*x. The morning after, Palmer snapped a few semi-naked pictures of Rachel and asked if she could send one to Gaiman. She and Palmer slept together a few more times, but then Palmer seemed to lose interest in s*x with her. Some six months after they met, Palmer introduced Rachel to Gaiman online, telling Rachel, "He'll love you." The two struck up a correspondence that quickly turned sexual, and Gaiman invited her to his house in Wisconsin. As she packed for the trip, she asked Palmer over email if she had any advice for pleasing Gaiman in bed. Palmer joked in response, "i think the fun is finding out on your own." With Gaiman, Rachel says there was never a "blatant rupture of consent" but that he was always pressing her to do things that hurt and scared her. Looking back, she feels Palmer gave her to him "like a toy."

Probably the grossest thing he ever did:

Sometimes she would babysit. Once, Caroline and the boy, then 4, fell asleep reading stories in Gaiman and Palmer's bed. Caroline woke up when Gaiman returned home. He got into bed with his son in the middle, then reached across the child to grab Caroline's hand and put it on his peepee. She says she jumped out of the bed. "He didn't have boundaries," Caroline says. "I remember thinking that there was something really wrong with him."

In April 2021, Gaiman informed Caroline that the land he'd promised her was no longer available. That summer, she stopped responding to his attempts to engage in phone s*x and Gaiman increased the pressure on her to leave his property. One night in December 2021, Gaiman's business manager, Terry Bird, called Caroline and offered her $5,000 to move immediately if she'd sign a 16-page NDA agreeing to never discuss anything about her experience with Gaiman or Palmer or to take legal action against Gaiman. Caroline recalls saying to Bird, "What am I going to do with $5,000? I need therapy. This is maybe $300,000." Looking back, she says she didn't know how she came up with that number, but Gaiman agreed to it, and she signed. (Gaiman's representatives say Caroline initiated the sexual encounters and deny that he engaged in any sexual activity with her in the presence of his son.)

She licked her own shit!!:

One evening, Palmer dropped Pavlovich and the child off with Gaiman and retreated back to her own place. Pavlovich was in the kitchen, tidying up, when he approached her from behind and pulled her to the sofa. "It all happened again so quickly," Pavlovich says. Gaiman pushed down her pants and began to beat her with his belt. He then attempted to initiate anal s*x without lubrication. "I screamed 'no,'" Pavlovich says. Had Gaiman and Pavlovich been engaging in BDSM, this could conceivably have been part of a r*pe scene, a scenario sometimes described as consensual nonconsent. But that would have required careful negotiation in advance, which she says they had not done. After she said "no," Gaiman backed off briefly and went into the kitchen. When he returned, he brought butter to use as lubricant. She continued to scream until Gaiman was finished. When it was over, he called her "slave" and ordered her to "clean him up." She protested that it wasn't hygienic. "He said, 'Are you defying your master?'" she recalls. "I had to lick my own shit."

Afterward, she got into the shower and tried to wash her mouth out with a bar of lavender soap. It had a grainy texture and tasted of metal, acid, and herbs. She noticed blood swirling down the drain. He hadn't used a condom, and she worried she might have gotten an infection. She had a migraine, and her whole body ached. But she didn't consider leaving. She'd hated herself her whole life, she tells me, "and when someone comes along and hates you as much as yourself, it is kind of a relief, without it always being consent." She says she understands how Scientologists might have felt when they were sent to the Hole, a detention center where they were forced to lick the floor as punishment. She'd heard of how some would stay in the room even after they were allowed to leave. "People keep licking the floor in that horrible room," she says.

The nights with Gaiman blurred together. There was the time she passed out from pain while Gaiman was having anal s*x with her. He made her perform oral s*x while his peepee had urine on it. He ordered her to suck him off while he watched screeners for the first season of The Sandman. In one instance, he thrust his peepee into Pavlovich's mouth with such force that she vomited on him. Then he told her to eat the vomit off his lap and lick it up from the couch.

He made his son call the babysitter a slave!!:

A week or so into Pavlovich's time with the family, their son began to address her as "slave" and ordered Pavlovich to call him "master." Gaiman seemed to find it amusing. Sometimes he'd say to his child, in an affable tone, "Now, now, Scarlett's not a slave. No, you mustn't." One day, Pavlovich came into the living room when Gaiman and the boy were on the couch watching the children's show Odd Squad. She joined them, sitting down next to the child. Gaiman put his arm around them both, reached into Pavlovich's shirt, and fondled her breasts. She says he didn't make any effort to hide what he was doing from the boy. Another time, during the day, he requested oral s*x in the middle of the kitchen while the boy was awake and somewhere in the house. "He would never shut a door," she says.

It seems Palmer knew of his behavior and then started cozying up to avoid legal trouble:

In the days and weeks after Pavlovich's revelation, Palmer was solicitous, checking in frequently over text and sending warm notes: "From the minute you entwined your fate with mine on ponsonby road i've been glad i met you. That is tenfold so now." She helped Pavlovich find a temporary apartment and invited her over for meals. In late March, Palmer sent a message to a friend of Pavlovich's, a 41-year-old ceramicist named Misma Anaru, in whom Pavlovich had confided about Gaiman. "I'm glad she had you to take care of her," she wrote. "It's been a rough month for everyone." Anaru's partner, Kris Taylor, was a doctor of psychology who had lectured at the University of Auckland on coercion, consent, and r*pe. Although Pavlovich had never used the words r*pe or sexual assault to describe what had happened to her, both Anaru and Taylor believed Gaiman had r*ped her repeatedly. Anaru felt Palmer bore a share of the blame. Replying to Palmer, she wrote that "the majority of my rage is directed at Neil." But she couldn't understand why, with all Palmer knew about Gaiman, she had sent Scarlett into that situation. "Did you not see this coming a mile away?" She added, "And yes I know you asked him not to do that to her, but honestly, the fact you even felt that was something you should ask is fricked up in ways that defy comprehension."

The babysitter, palmer and gaiman have this weird deranged love triangle:

"I can't offer you exactly what you want from me," Palmer wrote, "but i can still be here. remember this."

"Babe I am more alone than I've ever been in my life," Pavlovich replied. She wished she'd never agreed to be their nanny: "If I hadn't gotten on that first ferry I wouldn't be where I am now."

That night, Pavlovich texted Gaiman. "Amanda keeps saying she will help but it seems more philosophical rather than actually like she will help." Two minutes later, she added, "I've been thinking of you so much." Gaiman replied that he'd be happy to help in a tangible way. Pavlovich then received an NDA dated to the first night of her employment, when he had suggested she take a bath. She signed it. A month later, she received a bank transfer from Gaiman: $1,700 for her babysitting work. Two months after that, she received the first of nine payments totaling about $9,200.

Over the course of the year, Pavlovich's perspective changed. "As he faded away, I began to let other voices in," she says. Friends connected her with women who were experienced in dealing with sexual assault and abuse, including Zelda Perkins, a former assistant of Harvey Weinstein's and an advocate for ending the "misuse of NDAs to buy women's silence." (Caroline and Pavlovich broke their NDAs when they spoke out about Gaiman.) These women encouraged her to go to the police.

In January 2023, Pavlovich filed a police report accusing Gaiman of sexual assault. At the station, she gave a formal interview about the case. After she told the officers her story, one of them told her that Palmer's cooperation would be essential for the case to move forward. Pavlovich assured them Palmer would participate. "I said to them, 'She's a public feminist, and she knows what happened. She'll want to protect me. I'm sure she'll speak.'"

When the police contacted Palmer later that year, she declined to talk with them. Gaiman never spoke with the police either, though he did provide a written statement.

Whatever feelings Palmer might have had about the situation went into a song she performed on tour in 2024, one she wrote shortly after Pavlovich's confession. It was called "Whakanewha," named after a park near their homes on Waiheke. "Another suicidal mass landing on my doorstep — thanks a ton / A few more corpses in the sack / You'll get away with it; it's just the same old script / This world is shaped to have your back / You said, 'I'm sorry,' then you ran / And went and did it all again."

LMAO she got a girl r*ped and wrote a song about how her husband keeps getting away with it — because of her helping cover it up!