Nearly two years after he was accused of sexual assault and rape, and after almost a year of silence, author Neil Gaiman responded on Monday, denying the allegations.
In a statement, the Jewish British writer said a “smear campaign” had been waged against him and that substantial evidence had been dismissed or ignored during that period. The statement came after he stepped back from the public eye, as a number of television and film projects based on his work were canceled or put on hold.
“But I didn’t want to let any more time go by without thanking everyone for all your kind messages of support over the last year and a half,” he wrote on social media. “I’ve learned firsthand how effective a smear campaign can be, so to be clear: The allegations against me are completely and simply untrue. There are emails, text messages and video evidence that flatly contradict them. These allegations, especially the really salacious ones, have been spread and amplified by people who seemed a lot more interested in outrage and getting clicks on headlines rather than whether things had actually happened or not (They didn’t).”
He added: "one thing that’s kept me going through all this madness is the conviction that the truth would, eventually, come out. I expected that when the allegations were first made there would be journalism, and that the journalism would take the (mountains of) evidence into account, and was astonished to see how much of the reporting was simply an echo chamber, and how the actual evidence was dismissed or ignored," he pointed readers to an article by TechnoPathology, which he said covered all the facts like "no one else had done.”
Gaiman said the past year and a half had been turbulent and at times nightmarish, but that he focused on creative work, returning to writing after finishing television projects. He added that he spends half of each month as a full-time father, which he described as the best part of his life, and said that despite global concerns, he still believes there are more good people than bad.
The allegations against Gaiman began to surface in 2024 in a six-part podcast in which five women alleged that he had sexually assaulted them. A detailed investigative article later appeared in New York magazine, describing the accounts of eight women, four of whom had participated in the podcast.
In February 2025, a federal lawsuit was filed against Gaiman and his wife, musician Amanda Palmer, alleging sexual assault and human trafficking. The plaintiff, Scarlett Pavlovich, had previously raised the allegations in the podcast and the magazine article. In a statement submitted to the court, Gaiman said that he and Pavlovich had bathed together and engaged in consensual sexual activity but, he said, did not have sexual intercourse. He denied the serious allegations of rape and abuse made against him in the lawsuit but has largely refrained from speaking publicly since then.