Neil Gaiman denied sexual assault allegations on his own blog Tuesday after a New York Magazine cover story accused the author of misconduct with four additional women.
“I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever,” Gaiman wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen.”
In the post titled “Breaking the Silence,” Gaiman said he went back to reread messages exchanged with the women, accusing the author of sexual misconduct and lack of consent, and said he stands behind them.
“These messages read now as they did when I received them – of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again,” the author wrote. “At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides.”
“The Sandman” author did note that looking through them years later brought him to the realization that he was “emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been.”
“I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people’s,” he added.
Nine women have now accused Gaiman of inappropriate sexual behavior, giving gruesome details of the encounters to publications. The author’s ex-wife Amanda Palmer allegedly told a former nanny, who also came out against Gaiman, that 14 women have come to her personally with similar stories.
Scarlett Pavlovich, a former nanny for the author, claimed he approached her naked while she was bathing in his house, then repeatedly tried to have sex with her despite Pavlovich’s protests. She then recounted to New York Magazine that the two had sex on several occasions but said that consent given around the encounters was murky.
The nanny went on to detail several disturbing encounters with her employer, including having sex while his young child was in the room and forcing her to give oral sex so violently that she vomited, whereupon he forced her to eat it.
More to come…
The post Neil Gaiman Refutes Sexual Assault Allegations: ‘I Have Never Engaged in Non-Consensual Sexual Activity’ appeared first on TheWrap.
