The fifth Tortoise Media podcast features a young woman who had already come forward in another venue with more allegations of being sexually assaulted by Neil Gaiman, but the Tortoise Media investigation and podcast go into considerably more detail, and, for the first time, feature Gaiman’s voice directly discussing the alleged victim’s accusations in a telephone call.
A fifth woman has accused Neil Gaiman of sexually assaulting her. Claire – not her real name – says that while the author was on a book tour in the United States in July 2013 he took her to a room with a bed at the back of a bus, closed the door, then got on top of her and started kissing her and groping her under her dress and over her breasts.
Accounts by other women who have come forward with complaints about Gaiman’s behaviour have raised questions about consent within highly asymmetric relationships.
Gaiman’s account is that he invited Claire onto his tour bus because their previous interactions and correspondence suggested to him that she wanted intimate contact. His account is that he attempted to initiate a kiss with her, while they were lying on a bed at the back of the bus, but he stopped when it became quickly apparent that she didn’t want one.
Nearly ten years later Gaiman and Claire had two phone calls, in response to a letter she sent him detailing her ongoing trauma from the incident. Tortoise has heard recordings of these calls. Neil Gaiman admits that he “fucked up”, calls his behaviour “shitty,” and offers to pay Claire $60,000 to cover the cost of her therapy, and promises to make a “hefty donation” to a rape crisis centre where she once worked.
I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that Gaiman does not appear to have kept his promise to make that “hefty donation” to the rape crisis center. And Tortoise Media journalist Paul Caruana Galiz notes:
Gaiman claims she made the first move on him because “I’d have never made the first move on anybody. I’d be terrified of that.” Even by his own account he made the first move on Scarlett (jumping into a bath with her in Feb 22) and on Julia Hobsbawm (sudden, unwanted kiss in 1986)... Makes her the third woman he sent money to in the space of eight months.
