The fan | Master Ep 4

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Speaker 39 Tortoise

Speaker 20 Before we begin, I just need to warn you. This is a hard listen at times.
The episode contains graphic descriptions of sex and allegations of sexual abuse.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 Some intimate, some sexual, even.

Speaker 20 Photos she says he told her that she shouldn't have.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 A week later, my email landed in her inbox.

Speaker 20 She says the two events, finding the camera, the email, set off an emotional storm and so she agrees to talk.

Speaker 20 But she's cautious.

Speaker 20 To verify my identity, she asks me to send her a photo of me holding up an email she sent me.

Speaker 40 I never wanted any of the stuff he did to me, including the more violent stuff.

Speaker 40 But I did consent to it, you know.

Speaker 20 She's now in her late 30s, but the story she tells us dates back 20 years and hinges on the same allegations as Scarlett. Consent, rough sex, emotional manipulation, exploitation.

Speaker 20 All the he said, she said, grey areas that made the New Zealand police so wary of pursuing Scarlett's criminal complaint.

Speaker 40 It's such a murky line and it's also part of why it's hard for me to talk about and it's not something that I bet like during the Me Too movement I was like, I don't have a leg to stand on, I don't have like video proof of this, you know,

Speaker 40 that it didn't happen.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 She says she's repelled by the idea that her name will be forever linked with his, and so we aren't using it.

Speaker 20 She says we can use her first initial, K.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 I'm Paul Caruana-Galizia.

Speaker 39 And I'm Rachel Johnson. And from Tortoise, this is episode 4 of Master, the fan.

Speaker 40 I drove down with my two friends. I don't remember what the signings were, but this was in 2003.

Speaker 39 Neil Gaiman's doing a book signing in Sarasota in Florida. Kay's in high school.
She's a typical teenage fangirl, just 18, excited to meet her idol. He's around 43 years old.

Speaker 40 We hung back to the end so that we would have more time to talk to him.

Speaker 40 And we brought him like a little bucket full of like goofy presents and like, you know, just goofed around and then took our picture. And

Speaker 40 it wasn't a very long interaction. I'd say in 85

Speaker 40 minutes tops.

Speaker 39 The three pals do the same thing again, this time at a book signing in North Carolina. They begin emailing him via his website.

Speaker 40 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 into the ether and kind of forget about it unless he wrote back, and then we might have a few back and forths.

Speaker 39 Sometimes Neil Gaiman would reply, light-hearted, casual. But the next summer, Kay and her girlfriends get an email.
Neil Gaiman's coming to Florida to write. Would they like to come and have dinner?

Speaker 40 We were all very excited, of course, and drove down there and had dinner at a barbecue restaurant with him, I think. I remember.
I was excited and trying to not let there be too many awkward pauses.

Speaker 40 And that was all pretty benign. There may have been some like kisses on the cheeks when we said goodbye.

Speaker 39 Six months later, there's another invitation to dinner. This time, two of them go along.

Speaker 40 Like, we had 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.

Speaker 40 And we were

Speaker 40 20 at the time and thought it would be really funny if they had to sing, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

Speaker 40 So we, you know, fake that it was his birthday. And I remember.

Speaker 39 The friends go back to his house after the ice cream and the birthday jokes.

Speaker 40 Like, somehow it had been decided that we were going to spend the night. There was like a huge house, a ton of rooms.
Like, you can pick wherever you want. It's late, just stay here.

Speaker 39 just after neil gaiman's gone to his room and kay and her friend are still talking out on the porch he comes back out as if he'd forgotten something maybe

Speaker 40 and said do you guys want to go to bed with me

Speaker 39 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?

Speaker 39 They've only met a couple of of times together? Well, this is how he sold it.

Speaker 40 Oh, you guys said it was my birthday. This would be my birthday present.
You guys both came to bed with me. No, thanks.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 39 So he asked them if they wanted to have sex and accepted their refusal. After Kay turns 20 though, things shift.
The attention from Neil Gaiman, the intensity, ramp up. She's literally in his sights.

Speaker 40 We exchanged phone numbers and we would have chats on the phone. And one time he sent me a webcam.
And the webcam thing, how did he approach that? Did he just say, this would be fun for us to talk?

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 40 And then he came back and he came to Orlambito 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

Speaker 39 he paid her attention paid for drinks they slept together so Kay's sexual relationship with Neil Gaiman starts differently to how Scarlett says hers did

Speaker 39 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 kay's sexual relationship with him begins with a consensual act.

Speaker 39 Neil Gaiman's position is that there are no similarities between Scarlett's and Kay's accounts, but the way Kay describes that first consensual act seems very similar to Scarlett's allegations of sex with him, which we'll come to.

Speaker 40 He was saying the 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.

Speaker 20 Kay's been working at Disney World. Now she's studying and found work as a zookeeper.

Speaker 40 I was a broke college kid and I started working at the LA Zoo out there.

Speaker 20 Elephants mainly.

Speaker 20 Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman was blogging about his marriage to fans and readers.

Speaker 20 This was his first then.

Speaker 40 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'd keep banning like, I'm not ashamed of you.

Speaker 40 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

Speaker 40 I feel like you don't value me and 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 which like you know to be fair there was quite the page and culture gap remember Kay is his daughter's age she's starting her adult life as his secret girlfriend.

Speaker 20 He's nervy about being around her in public. He invites her to events but then doesn't acknowledge she's there.

Speaker 20 Neil Gaiman's position rejects the notion that he was ashamed of his relationship with Kay.

Speaker 20 Him inviting her to prestigious events is cited as evidence of this position.

Speaker 20 Still, Kay 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.

Speaker 20 In other words, she is vulnerable.

Speaker 40 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 that's cool, I guess. That's like a fun thing I can tell people.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 40 Like he could do whatever he wanted, and I would do whatever it took to keep that relationship going.

Speaker 20 Whatever he wanted, whatever it took, from the start.

Speaker 20 Neil Gaiman's view is that his relationship with Kay was sincere and built on mutual trust and affection. Because of this view, we understand that he is disturbed by Kay's allegations.

Speaker 20 I should warn you that what follows is, according to Kay, quite graphic.

Speaker 40 When did things with him become rough?

Speaker 39 Straight away,

Speaker 40 he was very unconcerned with my pleasure, and he certainly didn't have anything like lube around, and I didn't know enough. So

Speaker 40 the first time we had sex, I remember like lying there.

Speaker 40 And there was music on, and there was a song that I really loved that was a very romantic loving song. And I was listening to it while this very painful act was happening to me.

Speaker 40 And just tears kind of just

Speaker 40 remember thinking, I've listened to this song so many times and imagined like someone loving me, like someone in this song loves whoever they're singing about. And instead, this brutal,

Speaker 40 painful thing was happening to me.

Speaker 20 The song was It's Only Time. by the magnetic fields.

Speaker 20 A beautiful, melancholy track. It starts and ends with, Why would I stop loving you a hundred years from now?

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 She also doesn't tell Neil Gaiman that it's not okay to do this.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 40 There was never choking.

Speaker 40 So Scarlett, um,

Speaker 40 there was one episode where she said she almost passed out from the pain of him penetrating her anally without any loop.

Speaker 40 That happened to me too. It was 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.

Speaker 40 So it was, you know, my fault if it hurt, not his.

Speaker 20 There are other details that chime with Scarlett's experience too.

Speaker 40 A belt.

Speaker 20 Kay says he used a belt on her, just as Scarlett said. And yes, they both say that Neil Gaiman made them call him master.

Speaker 20 These appear to be aspects of his sexual fingerprint that span almost 20 years.

Speaker 40 His hand, like he 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.

Speaker 40 Like, I 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.

Speaker 20 Kay says she often felt pressured to accept it. She says she felt that she had to submit to whatever he wanted, that she owed him, and he'd tell her she liked it.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 But his position is that Kay found penetrative sex with him difficult and uncomfortable because of his body, so he did not press the issue with her.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 40 And so I often felt if it was somewhere that he'd like, you know, spent money to take me or like, you know,

Speaker 40 I felt that I owed it. And he definitely took advantage of that.

Speaker 39 On the 4th of April, 2007, Neil Gaiman flew Kay from Los Angeles to Heathrow for a fortnight's holiday together in the UK, alone, the two of them.

Speaker 39 Kay 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.

Speaker 39 Neil Gaiman met her on arrival and they then took a taxi to Gatwick Airport to fly to Inverness in Scotland. They visited Lochness and stayed at his house on the Isle of Skye for three days.

Speaker 39 They then flew to Cornwall and drove to Red Ruth in the far south west of England. They stayed in an old tinner's cottage with a wood-burning stove hidden up a bridal path.

Speaker 39 It was advertised as affording complete privacy.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 She's around 22. She looks so, so young.
But she said there were fights. Lots of them.

Speaker 40 There are a lot of arguments. There was a lot of roughness.
that I felt compelled to take.

Speaker 39 What the photos also don't show is Kay's intimate agony. She told us that on that trip she had her period and then a bad urinary tract infection.

Speaker 40 I couldn't sit down. He would say, you know, I want to fool around like, you know, and I would say, okay, okay, we can fool around, but you can't put anything in my vagina.

Speaker 40 You just can't because I will die. And it didn't matter.
You did it anyway. You did it anyway, although you told him you were in pain.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 40 Because I know for sure, I remember for sure in Cornwall saying those words out loud.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 40 And I knew that it was like something that I had to do to keep him around.

Speaker 40 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 Lauren.

Speaker 40 Like I was just in like screaming agony and I know I said it out loud then.

Speaker 39 On the 16th of April, 2007, Neil Gaiman drove Kay 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.

Speaker 39 She says it felt more painful because of the penetrative sex he allegedly performed on her without her consent.

Speaker 39 As to this specific allegation, Neil Gaiman's clear position is that it is false. And again, he denies any unlawful behaviour with her.

Speaker 39 He didn't respond to any other specific points or questions about this trip.

Speaker 20 Kay 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.

Speaker 20 An official crime survey for England found that 1.1 million adults experienced sexual assault in the year up to March 2022.

Speaker 20 798,000 of them were women. During the same period, the police recorded only 75,000 sexual assault cases.
That is, less than 15%

Speaker 20 of those experiences made it to the police.

Speaker 20 We asked Harriet Wistrich, a lawyer and the director of the Center for Women's Justice, to listen to our interview with Kay.

Speaker 20 She did not review any other material related to Kay's allegations.

Speaker 20 We wanted to ask Harriet why Kay didn't go to the police with such a serious allegation.

Speaker 41 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 he is this really important, you know, love in her life.

Speaker 41 She's still very kind of... caught up and invested in the relationship and you know she's she's not there in her own head she's not yet there.

Speaker 41 I mean, it's only as she reflects, as she becomes more mature, that she

Speaker 41 sees it for what it is.

Speaker 39 Jennifer Robinson is an international lawyer and author of the book Silenced Women.

Speaker 39 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

Speaker 42 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 then that was it so if 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.

Speaker 39 In the UK, there was no law against forced sexual activity within a marriage until as recently as 1992.

Speaker 39 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 of marriage.

Speaker 39 The court ruled, Nowadays, it cannot seriously be maintained that by marriage, a wife submits herself irrevocably to sexual intercourse in all circumstances.

Speaker 39 Now, marital rape is considered as a sexual assault under the Sexual Offences Act of 2003, but myths around sexual assault still linger.

Speaker 39 There's still a belief that if you're in a relationship, however asymmetric, whatever happens is consensual, if transactional.

Speaker 39 There's implied consent and a contract of some sort, then in fact you owe a man sex in return for dinner or holidays, for example.

Speaker 42 And it's just not true. Consent is for each and every act.

Speaker 42 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,

Speaker 42 Had she sex with this person before? Had she had sex with other people before?

Speaker 42 What's her sexual history?

Speaker 42 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?

Speaker 39 Women, Jennifer Robinson tells us, generally don't speak out because they're scorned, vengeful or gold diggers.

Speaker 42 Women typically speak out because they want to warn other women and they want it to stop.

Speaker 20 Kay's relationship with Neil Gaiman ends during a trip to Orlando in Florida. Kay had a badly infected eye and didn't feel like going out.
She wanted to have breakfast in, he didn't.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 40 I followed him to the airport.

Speaker 40 I called my mom sobbing that he was breaking up with me and I had to get to the airport to like talk him out of it, bought a $500 ticket on his flight, got onto the plane, like got onto the plane, like sneeled in the seat in front of him and was like, please don't do this, please don't break up with me.

Speaker 40 And he was not having it. He was like, somebody get her off the plane, get her off the plane.

Speaker 40 They dragged me off the plane. I'm sobbing.
They ended up refunding my ticket, I think more out of just like, please, God, get this crying girl out of our face.

Speaker 40 And then I had to drive home to my dad's house, blind in one eye, because I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 40 And that was the end.

Speaker 20 Neil Gaiman's account is that he denies he demanded Kay be removed from the plane. He didn't respond to any other detailed points or specific questions about this trip.

Speaker 20 That scene on the plane, in which Kay ultimately walked off the aircraft, was in October 2008.

Speaker 20 In a chat dated the 24th of October, one of Kay's friends asks why she doesn't just break up with him. Kay replies, I don't know, adding, I'm now on Xanax because he says I need to control my temper.

Speaker 20 Xanax is a prescription tranquilizer used to treat depression, anxiety and panic disorders.

Speaker 20 Despite her humiliation on that day, Kay stays in touch with Neil Gaiman. They exchange many emails up until 2022.

Speaker 20 But something in Kay had already begun changing.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 40 Something about this, now that I'm looking back on it, is very wrong. And also as the conversation, the meet-to-style, stuff,

Speaker 40 more of that stuff

Speaker 40 became more nuanced,

Speaker 40 that was when I was like, well, wait a minute, something like that happened to me.

Speaker 20 Neil Gaiman's position is that Kay's allegations against him are motivated by her regret over their sexual relationship.

Speaker 20 Yet his position is also that Kay's regret is evidentially deficient, because her emails appeared to him as genial, positive, and that times going back to 2010 flirtatious and solicitous.

Speaker 20 In support of this position, Neil Gaiman's account cites an email Kay sent him on the 16th of September 2017.

Speaker 20 The email says,

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 When we asked Kay about this email, she provided us with the full thread.

Speaker 20 It shows that Kay's email was in response to one Neil Gaiman 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.

Speaker 20 Kay 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.

Speaker 20 In fact, Neil Gaiman responds to Kay's email saying he'd give her the name of the actor's hotel if she sent him photos of her breasts and bottom. Kay declined.

Speaker 20 Neil Gaiman's position is that Kay would also email him asking for tickets to events and for career advice. In fact, Kay shared the following exchange herself.

Speaker 20 Kay emails Neil Gaiman to ask whether he can help her friends with tickets to a comic convention.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 When Kay asks whether Amanda Palmer is okay with his new girlfriend, Neil Gaiman says yes, but

Speaker 20 unenthusiastic because girl is young, beautiful, and could have been designed for for me in bed.

Speaker 20 Kay asks Neil Gaiman for pictures of his new girlfriend. He sends Kay what he calls girl pics, photos of a woman she reminds us of Kay and Scarlet.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 This woman recognised some of the sexual acts that I had heard from Kay and Scarlett, but was clear that it was always consensual between her and Neil Gaiman.

Speaker 20 She said that she loves, respects, and cares about Neil Gaiman, that her experiences with him have been nothing but incredible and positive.

Speaker 20 She described him as a man who has helped her through difficult times. She is no stranger to those having had a traumatic childhood.

Speaker 1 Hey friends, it's Nikayla from the podcast Side Hustle Pro.

Speaker 4 I'm always looking for ways to keep my kids entertained without screens, and the Yoto Mini has been a total lifesaver.

Speaker 6 My kids are obsessed.

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Speaker 32 Momentous Creopure Creatine is backed by leading performance experts like Dr.

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Speaker 39 We first emailed Neil Gaiman to ask for an interview more than two months before publication.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 His PR responded a week later, asking for specific questions in advance. We provided thematic questions.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 We even asked him about using an NDA with any former sexual partners.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 We have represented everyone's side to this story as carefully and as seriously as we can throughout.

Speaker 39 We approached this story with our minds open. We wanted you, the listener, to do the same, to hear the the allegations we have heard and see why we journalists saw it as important to investigate them.

Speaker 39 As this story deepened and the allegations darkened, it also changed complexion.

Speaker 20 I,

Speaker 39 well we, realised this has never been about sex per se.

Speaker 39 It was about power.

Speaker 39 We heard allegations of rough sex that caused bodily harm. In UK law, there can be no consent to this.

Speaker 39 The threshold for harm is generally higher in the US, and in New Zealand, the court considers the circumstances of each case.

Speaker 20 These laws and rules weren't written to police what people do in bed.

Speaker 20 And they're not there because legislators are fussy and want to shame or embarrass people who are interested in unconventional sex.

Speaker 20 The idea is to stop the use of consent as a defence to causing another person harm. It's to stop abuse.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 In the context of an abusive relationship, experts see rough sex as a means of coercive control. which the UK has criminalised.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 Remember, like Scarlett, Kay told us that sex with Neil Gaiman became rough straight away. Both women told us they experienced no pleasure, only pain, from their sex.

Speaker 20 and Kay said she never wanted or enjoyed it.

Speaker 20 Kay described being in agony, particularly during her April 2007 trip with Neil Gaiman around the UK.

Speaker 20 A trip during which she alleges he penetrated her vagina with his penis without her consent.

Speaker 20 An allegation he denies.

Speaker 20 The seriousness of that last allegation returns us to one of the issues we asked at the start of this podcast.

Speaker 20 At the end of the day, we don't have the power of official authorities to investigate allegations like these.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 And this failure to take allegations like these seriously is a matter of public interest.

Speaker 20 It speaks to police failings, the limits of the law, an abuse of power and its concealment by various means.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 We have spoken to two women friends, one a lover, who had nothing but positive things to say about him.

Speaker 20 It's worth saying here that we have examined Scarlett and Kay's allegations over many months.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 They're separated by decades and continents, yet their allegations are consistent.

Speaker 20 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 by a dedicated fan base.

Speaker 20 As Jennifer Robinson explains about the general picture.

Speaker 42 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.

Speaker 42 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.

Speaker 42 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.

Speaker 42 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.

Speaker 42 And if we can't talk about it and report on it,

Speaker 42 then how are we ever going to grapple with it or resolve it?

Speaker 20 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%

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 Prosecutors will only take a complaint to court if they think there's a reasonable prospect of conviction. Often, they don't.

Speaker 20 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 casts doubt in jurors' minds about the complainant's credibility.

Speaker 20 Of the sexual abuse complaints that do go all the way to court, conviction rates are lower than those for other crimes.

Speaker 20 And the public is onto this as a problem.

Speaker 20 The UK Victims Commissioner has said that rape has been effectively decriminalised.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 43 So interesting because when you asked me that, I don't really know,

Speaker 43 I don't really know what I want.

Speaker 43 I've been on a really big sort of journey with trying to unweave unweave it in my mind and my soul.

Speaker 43 And, you know, he sort of lured me, if you will, into his, into a sort of psychological labyrinth, Rachel. And

Speaker 43 so it was not straightforward at all.

Speaker 39 Kay 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.

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Speaker 39 So much of Scarlett, Kay, and Neil Gaiman's story is to do with the way the law works when the concrete evidence it seeks is elusive or contradictory.

Speaker 39 The interesting thing is, this isn't a story about the clarity of the law.

Speaker 39 It's completely clear and it's been that way for decades in the countries where Neil Gaiman's relationship with Scarlett and Kay played out.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 There's no such thing as a blanket agreement that comes with being in a relationship.

Speaker 39 If you think about the way way laws like that come about, it's often because social attitudes start to change.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 And usually I think the law cements the new way of thinking.

Speaker 39 Before long, we probably wonder how we ever thought differently.

Speaker 39 But when it comes to sex and consent within a consenting relationship, has that happened?

Speaker 39 After all those decades on the statute books, have the new laws helped cement the way we think?

Speaker 39 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?

Speaker 39 And if there's any doubt about that, is that what leaves the gap which someone who wants to commit sexual abuse can exploit?

Speaker 39 What I know for sure is that Scarlett and Kay 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.

Speaker 39 They're sure they were abused by him.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 But in the end, the reason it's been so important to hear Scarlett and Kay'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 grey.

Speaker 39 In that fog, terrible things can happen.

Speaker 20 This series is reported by me, Paul Caruana Galicia, and by Rachel Johnson. It is written by us and by Katie Cunning, who is also the producer.
Sound design and original music is by Tom Kinsella.

Speaker 20 Additional reporting is by Jess Swinburne. Artwork is by John Hill.
The series editor is Matt Russell. The editor is Jasper Corbett.

Speaker 20 Tortoise

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