More women come forward to accuse The Sandman author Neil Gaiman of sexual assault

Following a bombshell report and podcast series in July by British media outfit Tortoise Media, which interviewed two women who alleged that they were sexually assaulted by English writer Neil Gaiman, two more women have come forward to accuse him of sexual abuse.

In a news report and the latest episode of the podcast Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman, published on Aug 1 by Tortoise Media, potter Caroline Wallner and writer and public speaker Julia Hobsbawm detailed their experiences with Gaiman, 63.

Ms Wallner, a single mother of three daughters, said she was pressured into sexual encounters with The Sandman (1989 to 1996) author in exchange for letting her and her children stay  at his property in New York.

Ms Hobsbawm said Gaiman made an “aggressive, unwanted” pass at her in the 1980s and kissed her forcefully without her consent.

According to Tortoise Media, Gaiman denies all claims of non-consensual sexual misconduct.

Ms Wallner lived in a house on Gaiman’s property in Woodstock, New York, between 2014 and 2021 with her three daughters. Up until the end of her marriage in 2017, her ex-husband also lived with her.

She worked as a ceramic artist in a studio in a barn on the property. Along with her ex-husband, she also worked for Gaiman and his then wife, singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer, doing chores such as property maintenance, gardening and grocery shopping.

Gaiman has an eight-year-old son with Palmer, and three adult children from a previous marriage. They announced their divorce in 2022.

After Ms Wallner’s marriage ended in 2017, Gaiman told her ex-husband that there was no more work for him on the property, which had provided the family’s main income.

Ms Wallner, then 55, and her daughters became dependent on Gaiman for work and housing. This was when he began pressuring her into having sex, she alleges.

While Ms Wallner says there was no use of physical force, Gaiman coerced her into sexual experiences by highlighting her housing situation. In one instance, she fell asleep in her bed and woke up to see Gaiman putting her hand on his genitals.

Whenever she resisted his advances, Gaiman would tell her that Palmer wanted the house Ms Wallner resided in and the studio.

He once told her: “You take care of me and I’ll take care of you.” Ms Wallner understood that as a reference to what she called the “sexual trade” between them.

Tortoise Media reported that Gaiman denies any wrongdoing in his relationship with Ms Wallner. He claims that it was consensual and that their sexual encounters were initiated by her.

After he left the Woodstock property during the Covid-19 pandemic, he sent sexually explicit photos and videos of himself to Ms Wallner and requested that she do the same. When she stopped responding to such calls in June 2021, Gaiman’s business manager told her to vacate the property by December that year.

Ms Wallner was offered US$5,000 (S$6,600) as compensation for leaving the property and was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. 

Eventually, Gaiman settled with her for a payment of US$275,000 and a non-disclosure agreement. The agreement “disputes and denies that (Ms) Wallner has sustained any losses, damages, or injuries for which Gaiman is legally responsible”.

It also prohibits her from talking about Gaiman with “family members, friends, associates” and from filing, reporting, or prosecuting any action or proceeding in “any court, governmental agency, or before any tribunal whatsoever or wheresoever”. 

Ms Hobsbawm, now 60, alleged that Gaiman jumped on her “out of the blue”, forced his tongue into her mouth and pushed her down on the sofa in her studio flat in Chalk Farm, London, in 1986. At the time, she was a 22-year-old book publicist while Gaiman was 25.

She managed to wriggle free from him after the unwanted advance and cut off contact with him afterwards. She does not remember why he came to her flat, but told Tortoise Media that she is certain “romance was not on the cards”.

Tortoise Media reported: “Gaiman’s account is that when he realised (Ms) Hobsbawm wasn’t receptive to his attempt to kiss her, he stopped. His position is that it was no more than a young man misreading a situation, adding that its inclusion alongside criminal allegations – from Tortoise Media’s earlier reporting – would mischaracterise it.”

In July 2024, Tortoise Media released

a four-part audio series that detailed two women’s accounts of sexual abuse

at the hands of Gaiman.

One was a woman known as Scarlett, a 23-year-old who says she worked as a nanny to Gaiman’s son. She alleged that Gaiman sexually assaulted her within hours of their first meeting in February 2022 in a bath at his New Zealand residence, where she worked. They then had a brief relationship, during which he engaged in “rough and degrading” sexual acts with her.

Another was a woman who wanted to be known only as K. She was a fan who met Gaiman at a book signing in Sarasota, Florida, in the US, in 2003 when she was 18.

After she turned 20, she developed a romantic relationship with Gaiman, who was in his 40s then. She alleged that he engaged her in rough and painful sex that “she neither wanted nor enjoyed”, and claimed that he once penetrated her despite her refusal.

Gaiman is a beloved author in popular culture and was one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2023. The Sandman has been adapted into a successful Netflix TV series (2022 to present) of the same name. His novel Good Omens (1990), written with the late English writer Terry Pratchett, has also been adapted into a TV series (2019 to present) of the same name, which is available on Prime Video.