Excuse Me, But What the F*CK, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer???

⚠️ Warning: This episode gets dark. Real dark. Listen at your own risk.

More than 15 women have now come forward saying that iconic fantasy writer Neil Gaiman (Coraline, The Sandman, Good Omens, American Gods) either blurred the line of consent, or directly and violently assaulted them.

On Monday, New York Magazine and its website Vulture published detailed firsthand accusations from eight women. The explicit details have shocked the literary and music worlds alike, but there's now another question...did his ex-wife, popular indie musician and activist Amanda Palmer know? Was she complicit in some instances of abuse? 

Let's break it all down. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Sunny spaces, smiling faces, happy places. But every sunny space
holds a shadow. Behind every smile, our sharp teeth, and
every happy place has something sinister lurking just below the surface.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to We Saw the Devil, the podcast diving deep
into the chilling realms of true crime. Join your host
Robin as she unravels mysteries that have left investigators baffled
and armchair sleuth's obsessed. Be forewarned, Dear listener, We Saw
the Devil is not for the faint of heart. Our
unflinching exploration will take you to the darkest corners of

(00:41):
the psyche and through the unimaginable depths of human darkness
to unearth stark secrets. To the harsh light of day.
Nothing will be left untouched.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Are you ready?

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Are you sure?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
We Saw the Devil?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Hello?

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Everyone you are listening to We Saw the Devil. This
is Robin and I am here with an episode that
I'm not exactly thrilled to do. Never thought I would
have to do this one. I'm sure a lot of you,
if you live on social media at all, you have
seen the news regarding Neil Gaman and that explosive and
horrific Vulture article that came out, and I have some thoughts,

(01:20):
but I want to talk about it because it's so
important and it's just so shocking, and it's hit both
the literary community as well as the music community, and
the details of this article are frankly harrowing, disgusting, horrific,
and the allegations paint him out to be an absolute monster.

(01:42):
So I would like to go over the Vulture article
and kind of the history of allegations towards Neil Gayman
and discuss that. But before we get into that again,
you're listening to We Saw the Devil I'm Robin last week.
If you haven't, my friend Jeff x Martin came on.
We talked to about just random things and how big
of a shit show twenty five is turning out to be.

(02:05):
I have completed the fourteen day trial as of today
and would very much like to cancel the subscription. However, Comma,
I don't think that that's going to be an option. Unfortunately,
I'm still working on the new website, y'all, So if
you want to follow the show right now, the best
place is either on Facebook or Instagram. We Saw the
Double podcast as always. If you want to get to
know me a little bit better, you can follow me

(02:25):
on Instagram at Robin Underscore WSTV. But let's just rip
the band aid off and go ahead and get into it,
because this is just awful. So to say that Neil
Gaiman and his wife Amanda Palmer are icons would be
an understatement. Gaman is the literary powerhouse behind American gods Sandman,

(02:45):
and his work has inspired generations. He has this dark,
intricate storytelling style. And then for Amanda, Amanda Palmer, you
may know her as the front woman of the Dresden Dolls.
She's a fiercely independent musician. She's been celebrated for a
long time now for her unapologetically raw, boundary pushing music poems,

(03:10):
diary like posts that she makes on social media, not
to mention her business acumen in terms of what she
did on Patreon and Kickstarter, and together they've been kind
of this cultural power couple, admired for their creative freedom,
talents and countercultural ethos. But as I said in the beginning,
recent allegations, whether you've seen them in the news, read

(03:32):
the whispers on social media, it's truly sent shock waves
through both industries, and I don't think that I personally
realized the depth of it until I got on X
the other day and I was looking, you know, Neil
Gaman was trending, and it was shortly after the Vulture
article dropped. And god, people who probably never read a
book in their entire life read that article and were like,

(03:53):
holy shit, he needs to die. And I mean just NonStop.
And that was two days ago now, and it is
still actually trending on X because so many people are
talking about how disgusting this is, and additional specifics are
still emerging. The accusations range from sexual assault, coercion, and
manipulation to complete in total when the very least ethical lapses,

(04:18):
and honestly, at this point, potentially child endangerment or even
child abuse. So Vulture, the cultural magazine, dropped a hell
of an article and it's titled there is No Safe Word.
How the best selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the
darkest parts of himself for decades. I'm shook. Everyone I

(04:39):
know is shook. Book talk is shook, instace shook, Ex's shook.
The indie music industry is shook. You get the drift,
and merely everyone I know indulges in the art by
either Palmer or gaymen. So again for this episode, we're
going to break down the allegations as well as why
it's impacting so many people. For me, I first heard

(05:03):
of Amanda Palmer when I was living in Maine in
the early two thousands. The Dresden Dolls at that time
were like this little steampunk looking duo out of Boston.
They played punk cabaret music. Amanda Palmer was on piano
and Brian Viglioni was on drums, and I fell in
love the first time I came across them, actually stumbled

(05:23):
across watching them live in Boston. Listen to the song
Girl Anachronism if you get a chance, just to see
Amanda like this was her glory these were her glory days.
But Girl Anachronism is one of my favorite songs of
all time. And I mean she just goes to town
on the piano, he's playing drums and the lyrics are awesome.

(05:44):
And in the mid two thousands they started to take
off on a more national scale, but instead of becoming
rockstar elitists, they leaned on their fan base so on
tour if they wanted an extra musician or to have
a jam session. They would trade beer for time and
talent or you know, exchange things like that barter. They
would also crash in the living rooms of fans. They

(06:05):
would put out asks on social media to locate a
free floor or bed or couch in whatever city they
were playing in, so instead of getting expensive hotels, they
would quite literally go sleep at a fan's house. They'd
eat dinner, hang out, talk, play music, tell stories. And
Amanda did that when she went on solo tours as well.
Then after the Dress and Dolls more so came, you know,

(06:28):
kind of to an end. She went solo, she started
a Patreon and she quickly became one of the highest
earners on the platform, with more than fourteen hundred patrons
in just one single day. The very first day in
twenty thirteen, she did a Ted talk, which is one
of the most watched talks ever in the conference's history.
It's been viewed over twenty two million times. And I

(06:51):
know a lot of people who have no idea, you know,
who the Dress and Dolls would be or anything like that,
but they've seen that Ted talk because it is such
a poignant and well spoken and well done Ted talk.
It is truly one of the most inspiring presentations I've
ever seen, and in it she basically asks us to
rethink how we approach generosity, collaboration, and vulnerability in both

(07:15):
art and life. By embracing the art of asking, which
was again the name of the Ted Talk The Art
of Asking, as well as her eventual book, we unlock
opportunities for deeper human connections and collective creativity. Between her
Patreon again frequent diary like social media posts, and very

(07:35):
loud political activism, Amanda Palmer grew a massive, massive fan base.
Then there's Neil Gaiman. Neil Gayman's a British writer and
gained a claim for books like Coraline, American Gods Neverwhere,
as well as the iconic graphic novel series Sandman. Gaman's storytelling,

(07:56):
Blend's mythology, folklore and modern life, and has earned many, many,
many awards, including the Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker. His
work has been adapted into films, TV series and radio plays.
And I mean last I counted nine of his works
have been adapted into media like television, movies, something like that.

(08:19):
And I loved him when I was a kid, teenage
angst wasn't just a phase for me. I mean, it
was basically my identity. You trapped in the monotony of
life in the religious South. I was drowning in the
suffocation of a Christian private high school. I was constantly
trying to find a proverbial home, you know, a place
where I belonged. And I read a lot. I read

(08:41):
a lot, and I discovered Neil Gaiman and his books
are just so fantastic. First was neverwhere he basically painted
a world beneath London where the forgotten became gods. It
was a slap in the face to conformity, a revelation
that the unseen and the marginalized where the ones with
the true power. And for a teenager totally on the

(09:03):
fringes and living in a society where they just don't belong,
it wasn't just a story. It was like almost validation.
Then The Sandman, the first volume of it, preludes and nocturnes,
that was like a gateway drug to something deeper and darker.
I devoured every single panel. I read American Gods as

(09:24):
a senior in high school. It reflected that even the
most broken systems religion capitalism, families, any of those could
be dismantled and then reimagined. Gamon didn't just write about
myths and gods. He wrote Rebellion and I absolutely loved it.
And obviously I wasn't aware at that time of just

(09:45):
how symbolic his work was. That took years into adulthood
and you know, a good deal of reflection as well.
But Gamon's writing for me wasn't just escapism. It was
a mirror. It gave me permission to be weird, to
embrace the darker theor that I was into, and to
see beauty in the grotesque, which is still to this

(10:05):
day reflected in most of my interests. In his books,
brokenness wasn't a flaw, it was just a feature. And
as a self loathing gay kid living in the ultra
conservative religious South, it was a bomb. So to say
that Neil Gaiman was instrumental in my own formative years
would be an accurate statement. And that's what I'm seeing
on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and for articles and

(10:29):
stuff in the comment section is people literally going through
their life history and being like, I was the weird
kid and this man probably saved my life. I mean,
I wasn't suicidal as a kid, but I mean he
damn sure made my life better and allowed me an escape.
And for the rest of you who may not have
read his work, have you seen Good Omens on Amazon?

(10:51):
Sandman on Netflix? And now there's a whole other laundry
Coraline like if you have a child or did you
see Coraline? That's Neil Gaiman. And Amanda Palmer met Neil
Gayman in two thousand and eight when she asked him
to write stories for a series of her photographs and
a book that she was putting out. They ended up

(11:12):
being engaged in twenty ten, married in twenty fifteen, and
had a son named Anthony shortly thereafter. They were considered
a complete and total powerhouse couple of both art communities. Again,
you have Neil Gaiman, arguably one of the greatest fantasy
writers of our time, and then Amanda Palmer, insanely talented
and outspoken indie musician. In twenty nineteen, the Amazon series

(11:34):
Good Omens came out, and again it's based on a
book written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gamon, and honestly,
it's one of my favorite books of all time. And
I loved the show. I was a static. It dropped
to record acclaim and insane numbers, and it stars David Tennant,
Michael Sheen, and my love John Hamm. It's about a

(11:55):
zero fail, an angel from Heaven and Crowley, a demon,
who have basically grown fond of living life on Earth.
They love it, and they have to team up together
to prevent the apocalypse by finding the Antichrist. The Antichrist
is a human baby who is accidentally swapped at birth
with a regular child, and basically Heaven and Hell are

(12:17):
trying to trigger Armygeddon and which would destroy everything. It's
just so funny and cute, you know the show The
Good Place, and how adorable and adorable, clean and funny
it was. But they had some you know, enough adult
humor that kind of the same thing from good Omens. Like,
It's not grotesque or gory or serious or anything like that,

(12:40):
but it's just a really good show and watching it
brought a smile to my face. Season two came out
in twenty twenty three, and then we've pretty much had
radio silence since then. But I'll give you an update
on that in a a little bit later. On August fifth,
two thousand and two, the first episode for the Netflix
series Sandman dropped, and that truly thrust Neil Gayman and
his work back into the spotlight, reaching even more fans

(13:03):
and readers. And then a few months ago, back in
August of twenty twenty four, Tortoise Media dropped a podcast
called Master the Allegations Against Neil Gayman. It's a six
episode podcast series that delves into serious allegations and accusations
of sexual assault and abuse by Neil Gayman. It features

(13:25):
testimonies from multiple women, including a former nanny as well
as a fan, who both alleged that Neil Gayman engaged
in non consensual sexual contact and activities during what began
originally as consensual relationships. One notable account is from Scarlett Pavlovitch,
a former nanny for Neil and his ex wife, Amanda Palmer.

(13:46):
Pavlovich alleges that Gayman sexually assaulted her within hours of
their first meeting in February of twenty twenty two at
his New Zealand home. Scarlet would go on to become
the primary feature in the Vulture article that dropped to
days ago. I highly suggest reading the accompanying blog article
by tortoise titled Exclusive. Two more women accused Neil Gayman

(14:08):
of sexual assault and abuse, and beyond Scarlett Pavlovitch's allegations,
Caroline Walmer also came forward. She her husband, and their
three daughters were tenants of Neil Gayman on his Woodstock
property in New York. His Woodstock, New York property. They
lived on that property from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty one,
and Caroline alleges that Gayman demanded sexual favors in exchange

(14:33):
for allowing her to continue living on his property after
she and her husband divorced in twenty seventeen. Gaiman told
her husband more or less that after they were working
on the divorce and broke up, Gayman apparently told her husband, Hey,
I have no additional work for you on this and
it forced him to leave the property to seek employment,
while Caroline and her daughter stayed with Gayman, providing her

(14:57):
odd jobs for income. And this is a direct quote
from this article. Walner said quote. There were little hints
of we're going to need the house, and I remember saying,
let's talk about it, let's figure it out. That's when
he would just come to my studio and make me
give him a blowjob, and he can say it was consensual,
But why would I do that? It was because I

(15:18):
was scared of losing my place, and then she defined
it as sexual abuse. Walner said that whenever she resisted
his sexual advances, Gaman would tell her Palmer wanted the
house back where she lived with her three daughters, as
well as the studio that she worked in for ceramics.
Walner recalled one occasion when she said Gamon told her quote,

(15:38):
but you take care of me, and I'll take care
of you, understanding it to be a reference to what
she called the sexual trade. The Vulture article that came
out further explores Walner's story as it also interviews her.
In the Vulture article, it says, quote, sometimes she would babysit.
Sometimes she would babysit. Once Carolyn Walner and the boy,

(16:01):
then aged four, fell asleep reading stories in Gamon in
Palmer's bed. Caroline woke up. When Gamon 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 penis. She says she jumped out of
the bed. He didn't have any boundaries, Caroline said, I

(16:21):
remember thinking that there was something really wrong with him.
When COVID hit. Gamon moved and Caroline was relieved. Gaman
then tried to sext her and asked her for nudes,
but she ignored him. Shortly thereafter, his business partner manager
delivered the news that she had to vacate the home
and was being evicted. And again directly from the Vulture article,

(16:44):
Walner said she was treated for depression and post traumatic
stress during this period with the financial support of a friend.
After finishing her stay at a therapy center, Walner emailed
Gaman's representatives on December ninth, twenty twenty one, saying that
she had tried to come up with an amount that
I feel justified signing a release that, in essence takes
away my agency to speak freely about what I went through.

(17:05):
Three hundred thousand dollars is what I came up with,
one hundred and fifty thousand for the real estate issues,
and one hundred and fifty thousand for the sexual trade issue,
something that I'm trying to come to terms with. Therapy
alone is costing a fortune. Gayman settled with Walner for
two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in a non
disclosure agreement less than two weeks later. The NDA quote

(17:28):
disputes and denies that Walner has sustained any losses, damages,
or injuries for which Gayman is legally responsible. Gayman's position
is that he settled with her to avoid expensive and
protracted litigation. And that wasn't y'all, that wasn't even his
first NDA. A third woman, twenty two year old book
editor Julia Hobsbaum, met Gayman in nineteen eighty six. She

(17:53):
described an experience where he came to her home, although
she can't even remember how he ended up there, as
she had absolutely zero a romantic interest in him whatsoever.
She claims that he made a quote aggressive, unwanted pass,
jumped on her out of the blue, forced his tongue
into her mouth, and pushed her onto the sofa before
she was able to wriggle free now. The Tortoise Media

(18:16):
podcast also examines the broader implications of these allegations on
Gamon's career in the literary community, and I mean in
response to those original accusations. Last year, several of Neil
Gaman's projects had been halted or canceled like Disney paused
the film adaptation of the Graveyard book, and production of
the third season of Good Omens was put on hold.

(18:39):
Gamon ultimately ended up leaving Good Omens as entirely, but
a couple months ago it was just put out that
Good Omens Season three was basically canceled as a whole.
It was going to be a full season, you know,
the eight or nine episodes, and there's only going to
be one ninety minute episode. And if you've read the book,
you know just how pointless that is considering where season

(19:01):
two left off, Like, it's bullshit. Imagine you know, doing
Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit right and getting
through half of it and just leaving it off. I mean,
that's basically what's happening because of this. But he still
maintained a huge sense of popularity, and I see people
publicly recommending him and saying how amazing he is all
the time. Now, Neil Gaiman himself has denied engaging in

(19:24):
any non consensual activities and has asserted that all of
these encounters were consensual. And that brings us to the
Vulture article Tortoise Media. You know, it's a small podcast
little website they you know, put out the story, but
it didn't gain very much traction on the national level.

(19:45):
It kind of did a little bit but then fizzled out.
You know, they're not saying Associated Press, Reuters anything like that.
So that brings us to the Vulture article. Now, I
don't believe in trigger or content warnings whatsoever. I just
personally don't, but this article is so detailed and explicit

(20:05):
with the first hand accounts of rape and abuse by
gayman that I feel required to say something if you
have any kind of trauma there whatsoever. The contents of
that article may be distressing or triggering for some of you,
and I am going to discuss what is in this article.
So I just want everyone to be quite aware off
the bat that we are going to talk about some

(20:27):
of the worst instances of this, and I'm not going
to go into every detail from this article. It's very, very,
very lengthy. I mean, it's really crazy to see people
like on x and various social media platforms that just
clearly aren't into this at all, and all the posts
are saying, God, do not read that Vulture article first

(20:49):
thing in the morning, you know, or God would to
read I'm sick. I'm sick. Then you have thousands of
people calling for him to be hanged and killed, and
it is absolutely wild. So this article is not for
the faint of heart, for sure, for a lot of people,
especially if you have trauma there. So again, the Vulture
article tackles the entire situation as a whole, but it

(21:12):
is largely a feature on Scarlet Pavlovitch, the original accuser
from the Tortoise Media podcast, and it really delves into
it and giving a little additional context context here for her.
In twenty nineteen, she traveled the world Morocco, England, Scotland
or Tilda Swinton actually gave her a scholarship to attend

(21:33):
her school. She basically was just kind of a bohemian spirit.
She ended up returning to her native Auckland, New Zealand
in twenty nineteen and took a job at a perfumery.
Now Amanda Palmer is from the US but was living
in New Zealand at the time, and one day Amanda
Palmer walked into that perfumery and Scarlet just fan girled out,

(21:56):
you know, like there's one of her idols. She had
a huge crush on her, so worth noting Scarlett is gay.
So she approached Palmer outside, went outside on the sidewalk,
they talked. Amanda actually shared you know, phone numbers, and
Amanda texted her a couple days later and said, it's
Amanda de Palmer, your new friend. And again, Scarlett had

(22:18):
a huge crush on Amanda, and so she was pretty
giddy when over the next year and a half she
and Amanda seemingly became close friends. They had dinners and lunches.
Palmer brought her to her home, brought her to Patreon
community parties shows, She offered to take her and bring
her with her two international trips, and then she started

(22:38):
asking Scarlett to run errands for her and even babysit
her five year old son. And it's worth noting that
Palmer never paid Pavlovitch for any of this labor whatsoever,
and because Scarlett had a crush on her and hi
it's a you know, fairly large celebrity, she happily did
it for her. On February one, twenty twenty two, Palmer

(23:00):
asked her to babysit for the weekend. It would be
both at her house as well as her ex husband's house.
Who happened to be Neil Gaman now Paplovitch, quickly agreed
and was happy about being paid for her time. She
was like, yes, count me in, I would love to
get paid. Love the kid, absolutely happy to help. So
on February fourth, at four pm, she made her way

(23:22):
over to Neil Gaman's property and met him for the
first time. She'd never read anything by him, wasn't familiar
with his work. Neil Gayman and Amanda Palmer did get
divorced in twenty seventeen, and they've kind of been going
through a contentious divorce, settlement, custody battle, all of that
for the last few years. But they have been trying

(23:42):
to actively, you know, work things out, at least that's
what they've been telling the public. So she met Neil Gaiman,
went to his house. They made some small talk, had
pizza for dinner at eight pm, and then Ash, the
five year old child, went to bed. Gamon told her
that she should take a bath in his outdoor claw
foot tub in the garden, and it's beautiful. It's a

(24:03):
claw foot tub literally out in the middle of the garden,
surrounded by flowers. It's very ethereal looking. Scarlett was uncomfortable
and declined at first, but decided to eventually go with
it and acquiesce to his request. So she stripped down,
got naked, got into the bathtub, only to hear footsteps
just a couple minutes later, and down the path walks

(24:24):
a naked Neil Gaiman, and he got into the bathtub
with her. And this is a direct quote from the article.
Gayman asked her to sit on his lap. Pavlovitch stammered
out a few sentences. She's gay, she'd never had sex,
she had been sexually abused by forty five year old
man when she was fifteen. Gaymen continued to press. The

(24:47):
next part is really amorphous, Pavlovitch tells me. But I
can tell you that he put his fingers straight into
my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass,
and I said no, no. Then he tried to rub
his penis between my breasts and I said no as well.
Then he asked if he could come on my face,
and I said no, but he did anyway. He said,
call me master and I'll come. He said, be a

(25:10):
good girl, you're a good little girl. Afterwards, Pavlovitch crouched
down in the water and tried to clean herself off.
Gamon looked at her and smiled. Quote Amanda told me
I couldn't have you. Pavlovitch recalls him saying, as soon
as he'd heard this, he quote knew he had to
have her. God, I wish it was the good old

(25:32):
days where we could both fuck you. In twenty twelve,
Catherine Kendall was twenty two years old when she met
Gamon at a book signing in Asheville, North Carolina. They
struck up a flirtatious friendship and texted frequently and spoke
on the phone. She told him directly that she did
not want to and would not have sex with him.
Ten months later, he invited Kendall and two other girls

(25:53):
to a reading and asked them to wait for him
on his bus. After the reading, he returned and immediately
pulled Kendall into the back of the bus and laid
on top of her. This next part is directly from
the article. Quote he kept saying, kiss me like you
mean it. Kendall remembers she tried to get into it,
but she was panicked. Eventually Gamon rolled off of her.

(26:14):
Quote I'm a very wealthy man. She remembers him saying,
I'm used to getting what I want. Years later, Gamon
gave Kendall sixty thousand dollars to pay for therapy in
an attempt, as he put it in a recorded phone
call quote, to make up for some of the damage.
In two thousand and three, he struck up a consensual

(26:35):
sexual relationship with eighteen year old Kindra Stout. It was
consensual until they made it to the bedroom, and he
set the expectations of what he wanted from her total
submission to call him master and to allow herself to
be beaten by his belt. She recalled how he didn't
believe in lubrication or foreplay and it was incredibly painful.

(26:57):
When she told him that pain was too much, he
told her it was because she wasn't submissive enough. Stout
continued their sexual relationship, and four years later, in two
thousand and seven, the pair took a trip together. Stout
had a severe uti that was incredibly painful and made
it clear to Neil Gayman that sexual penetration was completely
off the table. She says that despite her multiple nose

(27:20):
including screaming no, that Gayman raped her, this past October,
she found the police report alleging this, and as I
said earlier, Scarlett Pavlovitch's story is more or less the
focus of the art of the Vulture article. After the
baptub incident, she remained close with Amanda Palmer, but did
not immediately tell her what had happened. And some people

(27:42):
liked to victim blame or find reasons as to why
women returned to certain situations, and there are a variety
of reasons for this, and Scarlett's case, the perfumery she
was working at had just shut down and her lease
was coming to an end. Her option was homelessness because
she had no other options. Again directly from the Vulture article,

(28:04):
Scarlett didn't consider reaching out to her own family. Her
parents had divorced when she was three, and Pavlovitch had
grown up splitting time between their households. Violence, Pavlovitch tells me,
was normalized in the household. One close family member would
beat her with a belt. Another would strangle her when
she got upset and slap her across the face until
her cheeks were raw. She began to regularly cut her

(28:27):
arms and wrists with a knife when she was eleven.
She became balemic, then anorexic. By thirteen, Pavlovitch had grown
so thin that she ended up in a psychiatric unit
at Auckland Children's Hospitals and spent weeks on a feeding tube.
When she was fifteen, she left home and never went back.
After all of this, Amanda Palmer was an actual creature

(28:49):
sent from a celestial realm. It was like Hellelujah, she says.
Now it's mentioned in the article, but Amanda Palmer has
spoken openly and frequently on topics like consent, feminism, abuse,
and trauma in her writings not only writings, talks music,
and she often emphasizes the importance of communication, empathy, and

(29:12):
again consent. She's written about being raped and assaulted multiple times, abused,
having abortions, and for many women she was a beacon
of strength and empowerment, and Scarlett felt the same way.
I'm going to read another section of the article here,
because again all of this is just context. One evening,

(29:33):
Palmer dropped Pavlovich and the child off with Gamen and
retreated back to her own place. Pavlovitch was in the
kitchen tidying up when he approached her from behind and
pulled her to the sofa, it all happened again so quickly.
Pavlovitch says, Gaiman pushed down her pants and began to
beat her with his belt. He then attempted to initiate
anal sex without lubrication. I screamed no, Pavlovitch says, had

(29:58):
Gamon and Pavlovitch been engaged in BDSM, this could conceivably
have been a part of a rape scene. A scenario
is sometimes described as consensual non consent, but that would
have required careful negotiations in advance, which she says they
had not done. After she said no, Gamon backed off
briefly and went into the kitchen. When he returned, he

(30:19):
brought butter to use as a lubricant. She continued to
scream until Gamon 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 quote, I had to lick
my own shit. The knights with Gamon blurred together. There

(30:43):
was the time she passed out from pain while Gamon
was having anal sex with her. He made her perform
oral sex while his penis 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 penis into Pavelovich's mouth was such force
that she vomited on him. Then he told her to

(31:04):
eat the vomit off of his lap and lick it
up from the couch. A week or so into Pavlovitch's
time with the family, their son began to address her
as slave and ordered Pavlovitch to call him master. Gamon
seemed to find it amusing. Sometimes he'd say to his
child in an affable tone. Now, now, Scarlet's not a slave, No,

(31:24):
you mustn't. One day, Pavlovitch came into the living room
when Gamon and the boy were on the couch watching
the children's show Odd Squad. She joined them. Sitting down
next to the child, Gamon put his arm around them.
Both reached into Pavlovich's shirt and fombled her breasts. She
says he didn't make any effort to hide what he
was doing from the boy. On February nineteenth, twenty twenty two,

(31:48):
Gamen and his son spent the night at a hotel
in Auckland, which they sometimes did for fun. Gaimon asked
Pavlovitch if she could come by and watch the child
for an hour so he could get a massage. It
was a small room, one double bed, a television in
a bathroom. When he returned, Gamon and the boy ate
dinner take out from a nearby delicatessen. Afterward, Gamon wanted

(32:09):
to watch a movie, but the child wanted to play
with the iPad. The boy sat against the wall by
the picture window, overlooking the city, facing the bed. Pavlovitch
perched on the edge of the mattress. Gamon got into
bed and pulled her so she was on her back.
He lifted the covers up over them. She tried to
signal to him with her eyes that he should stop.

(32:29):
She melts, What the fuck are you doing? She didn't
want the child to overhear what she was saying. Gaymon
ignored her. He rolled her onto her side, took off
his pants, pulled off her skirt, and began to have
sex with her from behind, while continuing to speak to
his son. You should really get off the iPad, she
recalls him saying. Pavlovitch, in a state of shock, buried

(32:51):
her head in the pillow. After about five minutes, Gamon
got up and walked to the bathroom half naked. He
urinated on his hand and then returned to Pavlovitch, frozen
on the bed, and told her to lick it off.
Shortly thereafter, Neil Gayman left New Zealand, and Scarlett decided
to confide in Amanda Palmer what had been happening between
Neil and herself. She asked for reassurance that her work

(33:13):
as the family's nanny wouldn't be in jeopardy, and Amanda
agreed to this, although she left out some of the
most explicit details. Amanda's reaction stunned her. She allegedly said, quote,
fourteen women have come to me about this. I've had
to do this before, and I can do this again.
I will take care of you again. Keep in mind

(33:35):
y'all that neither Neil Gaman or Amanda Palmer had paid
Scarlet Pavlovitch a single penny for a single hour that
she has worked for them up until this point. Again allegedly,
and what transpired next is I mean, in my opinion,
fairly obvious. Neil apparently was immediately looking into getting psychiatric

(33:57):
treatment for his behaviors, therapy, but Meanwhile, he was still
texting and checking in on Pavlovitch. He wanted to get
her to make a statement to his therapist that he
never did anything without her consent, and the therapist called
her and she went along with a script that she
was supposed to say, and she goes on in the
article to talk about how she hated herself for this.

(34:20):
She became suicidal and decided to kill herself. She was
on medications. She would drive and look at bridges to
imagine which one that she wanted to jump off of
to end her suffering. Amanda Palmer had set her up
with a temporary apartment because again the perfumery had closed.
Her lease was up, and so Amanda Palmer had assisted
her and helped her get a temporary apartment and then

(34:42):
also convinced her to get into impatient treatment. And when
Pavlovitch came out, she asked Amanda for more working hours
as than nanny, and Palmer declined. Amanda told her that
she needed to take care of her own mental health
and wasn't ready to be in the care of a child,
and Pavlovitch was like, I'm more myself now than I
have been in a very long time, but Amanda still
said no and then kind of slowly started falling off

(35:05):
the map. Pavlovitch was also still texting Neil Gaiman at
the time. She told him that Amanda wasn't financially helping
her and that she was fading away in their friendship,
and Neil promised to help her tangibly. And then Pavlovitch
received an NDA backdated to the first night of her employment,
the day that Neil Gaman allegedly raped her in the bathtub,

(35:29):
and she signed it. A month later, she received a
bank transfer from Gayman seventeen hundred dollars for the babysitting work,
and then two months after that she received the first
of nine payments, totaling all in all about ninety two
hundred dollars. And I want to highlight something that absolutely

(35:49):
discussed me to my core. And first, let's just be
very clear that Neil Gaman was into BDSM, which is fine.
We all have our kinks that he was also sleeping
with his fans, and it's apparently pretty open knowledge at
this point by a lot of people. I have a
lot of author friends and people who have been in
his circles, are nearby him and they said it was

(36:10):
not even secret. Now, he and Amanda Palmer did have
an open marriage for most of their marriage. You know,
they both traveled. Amanda was on tour all the time.
Neil Gaiman was out and about on you know, shot
shoots for shows and movies and things like that, and writing.
And he also didn't really care for New Zealand apparently,

(36:31):
And you know, they had busy schedules and relationship styles
again very bohemian type of spirits. They were totally fine
with open marriage for most of the relationship. And again,
Palmer has been known and lauded for her close and
incredibly intimate and open relationships with her fans. So the
thing about it is that you know, they did have

(36:52):
an open relationship, so it wasn't cheating. So I know
a lot of people I've seen after having read the
article or getting through the article like a MyH God,
he cheated on her constantly. No, technically, they had an
open marriage and relationship for most of the time while
they were at least married together. But again, his lecherous
rapey behavior was not really a secret. I mean, going

(37:15):
back to even the eighties. So I'm going to read
again directly from the article. In January of twenty twenty three,
Pavlovitch filed the police report accusing Gamen 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 Amanda Palmer's cooperation would be essential for

(37:35):
the case to move forward. Pavlovitch assured them Palmer would participate.
I said to them, she's a public feminist, and she
knows what happens. 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.

(37:58):
Whatever feelings Palmer might have had about the situation went
into a song she performed on tour in twenty twenty four,
one that she wrote shortly after Pavlovitch's confession. It's called Jakinawa,
named after a park near their homes on Wahiki. The
song lyrics are as follows, m another suicidal mass landing

(38:20):
on my doorstep. Thinks 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. Give those lyrics a
moment to sink in. Scarlett knew that Amanda knew that

(38:41):
she wasn't lying, as she told her as much. She
was like, God, fourteen people came to me, I'll take
care of you. She filed the police report, fully expecting Amanda,
who again, I can't stress this enough. How just outwardly
progressive woman, feminist, female empowerment, anti rape assault Amanda Palmer
has been over the last decade. She expected Amanda Palmer

(39:03):
to be open, support her and be honest with the police,
and Amanda Palmer refused to help her. Not only that,
but she wrote a fucking song about it and then
played it on tour. And those lyrics one more time
for those of you in the back, another suicidal mass
landing on my doorstep, thinks a ton A few more

(39:24):
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. I mean, holy shit,
how vile can you get? And as I mentioned, earlier.
In earlier in this episode, I fell in love with
Amanda Palmer's band, Dresdendols, you know, after she did the

(39:46):
Ted Talk and went solo. I just got the ick
from her social media postings. She appeared to basically be
performative peak, white feminist, you know, all performative words with
actual little follow through, and just something felt so incredibly
disingenuous and fake about it all when she was just
out on her own and I haven't listened to her stuff,
for god in more than ten years now. But the

(40:08):
thing about it, though is, if you've read the Vulture article,
one major thought in question that it leaves is how
much did Amanda Palmer know? Well, clearly she fucking knew.
And if we're going to subscribe to me too and
believe all women, we have to trust these now more
than fifteen at least that we know of recently who

(40:29):
have come forward, some filing police reports. I have friends
again who are authors, very very well couple well known
friends who have been in his circles and said that
it was just common knowledge and they watched him be
gropy and lecherous and based on Scarlett's interviews and words,
Palmer herself knew, and yet she still sent this fragile

(40:51):
woman to Neil Gaimand's house, knowing that he does this.
And another story that supports this is also from the
Vulture article, again a direct quote. In twenty twelve, Palmer
met a twenty year old fan who was asked to
be referred to as Rachel at a Dresdendal's concert after
one of Palmer's next shows. The women had sex the

(41:14):
morning after. Palmer snapped a few semi naked pictures of
Rachel and asked if she could send one to Gaman.
She and Palmer slept together a few more times, but
then Palmer seemed to lose interest in sex with her.
Some six months after they met, Palmer introduced Rachel to
Gayman online, telling Rachel, he'll love you. The two struck
up a correspondence that quickly turned sexual, and Gayman invited

(41:37):
her to his house in Wisconsin. As she packed up
for the trip, she asked Palmer over email if she
had any advice for pleasing gayman in bed. Palmer joked
in response, quote, I think the fun is finding out
on your own with Gaman. Rachel says there was never
a blatant rupture of consent, but that he was always
pressuring her to do things that hurt and scared her.

(41:59):
Looking back, she feels Amanda Palmer gave her to him
like a toy. Now, this article also heavily delves into
Neil Gahman's life and backstory of being raised in the
Church of Scientology, and it's possible and honestly likely that
he may have been the victim of abuse himself. Palmer
has told close friends that she would ask her husband

(42:20):
about his life in the church and experiences in the church,
and he would curl up in a fetal position and cry,
and then so much so that he'd dedicated one book
to her and for Amanda, who always asks questions. So
more recently, Palmer has moved back to the United States
and in with her parents in Massachusetts. She's been going

(42:41):
through a nasty divorce and custody battle with Gaman for
God going on five years now, and his representatives are
now publicly blaming her for this story coming to light,
and as of today, comments are pretty limited on her
social media account, and Neil Gamon hasn't made or said
a single word about it. Absolutely fucking horrific And again

(43:04):
I just kind of went over some of the major
details of it. There's a lot more in here. And
do you think that anything is going to happen to him?
I mean, it really is, like I know, a lot
of these cases are he said, she said, blah blah blah,
But like, my god, y'all, there is like the yellow
brick fucking road of evidence and payoffs and NDAs and

(43:26):
money exchanged and things like that going way back. I
personally know people who have seen him molessed, fans and
you know, women and whatnot. Like, this is not an
isolated incident. This is like Harvey Weinstein, who, by the way,
jk Rowling compared basically Neil gayme intwo. I know, not
many people like jk Rowling, and she's kind of made

(43:48):
a little bit of a full of herself in the
recent years. But when J k Rowling comes out and says,
you're like Harvey Weinstein. No, So it's going to be
really interesting to see how this plays out. Amanda Palmer,
especially her Patreon. I mean, she has so much income
coming in through Patreon, and I went to her Facebook today.
I actually have continued following her on Facebook over the years,

(44:08):
just so I can roll my eyes at most of
the posts. Occasionally she'll write something poignantly beautiful in heartfelt
and it's like, wow, you're talented, why are you like this?
But almost all of the comments are limited. Any thing
of value she hides behind one hundred dollars a month paywall,
and it's just lots and lots and lots of fans

(44:29):
and supporters being like, Amanda, did you know? Did you
know this was going on? Did you know this is
going on? Now? Both Amanda Palmer and Annual Game and
taught at Barred College for a while, and with his behavior,
we know the creepy professor stereotype right, put in a
multi million dollar literary icon and lecherous old fuck into

(44:52):
a college situation. How many girls in college did he
pray upon? How many other people in o over the
years at book signings and film festivals or premieres? Has
he done this too? How much did Amanda Palmer know
about it? And the most important piece here is their

(45:13):
poor fucking child, Neil Gamon having sex in front of
him as he's four five six years old, encouraging him.
If he didn't encourage him, the son was calling this
poor girl scarlet slave and then Neil Gamon would laugh
and joke about it. If Amanda Palmer did know about

(45:33):
all of this and was just sweeping shit under the
rug or keeping it, she doesn't deserve custody of the
child either, Like holy shit, I mean, both of them
are absolute freaking trash. And then another thing which is
probably going to gain traction in the upcoming days is
guess who Neil Gamon one of his best friends and
longest friends is Tory freaking Amos. I don't know if

(45:55):
you guys have heard the song Tir in your Hand,
one of my favorites, but it's literally about Neil Gaman, like, well,
a lot of it you'd inspired by Neil Gaman. How
much did she know? And again it's like people view
Tori Amos as I mean, you know, the red haired siren,
you know, symbol of female strength from the early nineties,

(46:16):
and I she was my first musical love was Tory Amos,
and I cannot words, cannot describe how much I loved
her and her art, her poetry, her lyrics are poetry.
And then here we are that her longest friend is
clearly a lecherous rapist who does this not even quietly

(46:37):
or privately, like he does it out in the open
and then just pays people off. It's just an awful situation,
and so I just have a feeling so much more
is gonna come to light now that this Vulture article
is out. In cases like these, what will usually happen
is more women will end up coming forward. And it
sounds like this man has almost thirty years of history
with actions like this, so it's going to be really

(47:00):
interesting to see where it goes. But it makes me
feel sad, not especially and primarily and again most importantly
for the women who endured all of this abuse. But
so many people today on social media are like grieving
the loss of art, and that brings me to my
final question, the question of how to separate art from

(47:20):
the artist. You know, what would you do if your
favorite artist was accused of being a maniacal serial rapist.
One of my favorite films of all time is Roman
Polanski's The Pianist with Adrianna Brody, and I think we
all know that Roman Polanski what Roman Polanski was accused of.
He was accused of and convicted for the sexual assault

(47:42):
of a thirteen year old girl named Samantha Gaily and
back In nineteen seventy seven, Polanski was arrested and charged
with several offenses, and those included rape by use of drugs,
statutory rape, and child molestation. He pled guilty to the
charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with minor, but before sentencing,
he fled the United States to avoid further legal repercussions,

(48:06):
and he's lived in France and other countries since then.
He's been literally a fugitive from the US justice since
system since the late nineteen seventies, and he's continued to
make movies. He's just stayed out of the US.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
You know.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
The Pianist came out God, I believe, like what like
early two thousands, and it's literally my top four. It's
literally about a Jewish pianist who survives the Holocaust, and
it is one of the most upsetting and beautiful movies
I've ever seen. Should I refuse to watch The Pianist
or any of his other works that I love, or
is consuming this media supporting a child rapist? In the

(48:44):
case of artists like Neil Gaiman, someonell choose to boycott
his entire body of work entirely. Others might continue to
appreciate and engage with it. I mean same for Amanda Palmer.
Do I feel comfortable listening to Amanda Palmer speak to
or seeing about feminism, solidarity, solidarity and empowerment while she
possibly knew her husband was a violent serial rapist and

(49:07):
then she willingly and wilfully put young girls in compromising
positions with him? Anyway? Fuck no, I will never listen
to her again, and that's probably hypocritical of me. Do
I personally want to buy another one of Neil Gaiman's books? No, no,
I'm never going to do that. Am I going to
watch Bad Omen season three? I? Want to? But then

(49:28):
there's the question of will gam And get royalties from
people watching it because he's the co author? Is that
supporting him is consuming art by a piece of shit
supporting them and we should stop and not do it,
or should we just do it anyway and support and
separate the two. So I want to know what you

(49:50):
guys think about all of it? What do you think
of the horrific allegations? Have you read the full Vulture
article yet? Did you listen to the Tortoise Media podcast?
And does stuff like this impact how you experience art
as a whole or how you choose to consume it.
But I just wanted to get this episode out there
because it's quite literally like, holy shit, you know, can

(50:11):
we have any nice things at this point? You know?
It seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong. It
seems like the men who scream I'm an ally, I'm
an ally, I'm a feminist too, the ones who scream
that the loudest are to have some pretty dark skeletons
hiding in their closet. And that's what's so amazing is
that Neil Gaiman is a self proclaimed feminist and he's

(50:36):
been honored for that, and there are even multiple books,
a couple of books written about his work through the
feminist lens and how he's using a feminist lens. The
worlds that he created for people, adults and children alike
are so fantastical and dark and beautiful, and then it
comes out that he is an absolute disgusting creditor. I

(51:01):
will definitely be doing updates on this as it goes. Frankly,
just in my opinion, now that I can give my opinion,
I think both of them should fucking burn. I think
that they should both get jail time. If Amanda Palmer
knew about this shit and did nothing and still allowed
her child to be there and put this other woman,
you know, like willingly. I mean, I guess that's not
a crime in itself, but the child needs a good
safe home because clearly neither one of his parents were

(51:23):
providing it. And I hope Neil Gamon goes to prison
for life because this is just absolutely vile. But that's
it for today's episode, y'all. I just really quickly wanted
to get it out there because it has just been
insane reading this. And you know when you get on
a rabbit hole and you just have like four tabs
lined up and just start scrolling and going through, just
going down the hole. That's basically what it's been like

(51:45):
for me for the last twenty four hours. I'm just
so crazy. I mean, imagine, like, to a lot of you,
I'm sure who liked Taylor Swift, imagine if it was
Taylor Swift a news article on Reuter's drop that she
committed heinous crimes like this, you know what I mean, Like,
that's to a lot of people in the literary world,
that's what just happened, and it's crazy. But again, that's
it for today's episode coming up on the docket. I

(52:08):
think it's time to talk about the Lori Valow case again,
and I have been talking to iris, whom I know
a lot of you love. One day I may finish Christian.
That day is not today. There's just so much I
promise myself I would only do one final episode on
Christian because lord y'all, I know y'all are tired of it.
I'm tired of it too. I don't want to do it,

(52:28):
and it's really hard to even force myself to do it,
but I do know that I need to get that
final episode out. I just think that I been off
more than I could chew with having it be one episode,
but I'm going to force it so, as I mentioned
in the last episode, to be completely honest with y'all again,
i lost my job two days before Christmas or two
days after Christmas. So I'm really going to start buckling
down the podcast and again and getting it and get

(52:50):
it on a different schedule, get it completely up to date.
I am going to start and get control of the Patreon.
To all of you who didn't get things or have
been part of the Patreon and waiting like bless you,
I'm so thankful for you and is greatly appreciated, and
thank you for your support. If any of you listeners
were once part of the Patreon and you did not

(53:11):
get something and left, and even if you have no
interest in coming back, I don't care. Please reach out
to me on Instagram a DM or Facebook DM something
like that. Get in touch with me and let me
make it right. Like I really am going to one
hundred percent try to get everything set back up and
put back in the right direction. So the podcast is
going to be my full focus yet again, because for

(53:34):
a very long time it wasn't. God, what was I
going to say? Oh yeah, random random show suggestion that
I wanted to throw out there as well. Have any
of you watched American Primeval yet it's on Netflix. It's
about the Wild West around the Idaho and oh my god,
it is so good. Betty Gilpin is in it, and god,

(53:56):
she's incredible, and so basically she's this woman and she's
trying to make it to find her husband and she
needs a guide. And then also simultaneously, in the same area,
there are multiple different Native American tribes that are warring
with the white settlers. And then there's the Mormons being
led by Brigham Young og Mormon and their fuckery, and
it is just insanely twisted and graphic and brutal. And

(54:21):
it's made by, directed, and written by the same guy
who did The Revenant with Leonardo DiCaprio. But oh my god,
I binge this in two days, So let me know
if any of you guys have watched it. I mean,
violent Mormons seems to be a and apparent occasional theme
on this podcast, I guess. But if you guys have
seen American Prime Eval, let me know what you think,
because it's probably at least so far. I mean, I

(54:42):
know we're only fourteen days into twenty twenty five, but
it's the best thing I've seen so far this year.
But that's it, y'all, until the next Crime