← Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman
Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman
The fan | Ep 4
00:42:26
The second woman to allege Neil Gaiman sexually assaulted her first met him as an 18-year-old. They began a consensual sexual relationship two years later. He strenuously denies any unlawful behaviour and maintains all their sex was consensual.
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- [00:05]
Rachel Johnson
Tortoise.
- [00:10]
Paul Caruana Galizia
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. How are you?
- [00:26]
Kay
I'm good, how are you?
- [00:27]
Paul Caruana Galizia
I'm alright. 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. 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. Some intimate, some sexual evening, even photos. She says he told her that she shouldn't have. 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 a week later, my email landed in her inbox. She says the two events, finding the camera, the email set off an emotional storm and so she agrees to talk, but she's cautious to verify my identity. She asks me to send her a photo of me holding up an email she sent me.
- [01:41]
Kay
I never wanted any of the stuff he did to me, including the more violent stuff, but I did consent to it, you know.
- [01:48]
Paul Caruana Galizia
She's now in her late 30s, but the story she tells us dates back 20 years and hinges on the same allegations as Scarlet consent, rough sex, emotional manipulation, exploitation, all the he said, she said grey areas that made the New Zealand police so wary of pursuing Scarlett's criminal complaint.
- [02:12]
Kay
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 like. During the MeToo movement, I was like, I don't have a leg to stand on. I don't have like video proof of this, you know, but it didn't happen.
- [02:26]
Paul Caruana Galizia
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. She says she she's repelled by the idea that her name will be forever linked with his and so we aren't using it. She says we can use her first initial K. 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. 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. I'm Paul Caruana Galizia.
- [03:18]
Rachel Johnson
And I'm Rachel Johnson and from Tortoise. This is episode four of Master the Fan.
- [03:36]
Kay
I drove down with my two friends. I don't remember what the signings were, but this was in fall 2003.
- [03:42]
Rachel Johnson
Neil Gaiman's doing a book signing in Sarasota in Florida. Kay's in high school. She's a typical teenage fan girl, just 18, excited to meet her idol. He's around 43 years old.
- [03:57]
Kay
We hung back to the end so that we would have more time to talk to him and like 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 it wasn't a very long interaction. I'd say maybe five, five minutes tops.
- [04:14]
Rachel Johnson
The three pals do the same thing again. This time at a book signing in North Carolina. They begin emailing him via his website.
- [04:23]
Kay
Sometimes I would almost just treat it like a, like a diary. Almost like, Dear Neil, today I did this in class, had this thing happen to me and then would sud it off into the ether and kind of forget about it. Unless you wrote back and then we might have a few back and forths.
- [04:38]
Rachel Johnson
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?
- [04:52]
Kay
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. And that was all pretty benign. There may have been some like, kisses on the cheeks when we said goodbye.
- [05:10]
Rachel Johnson
Six months later there's another invitation to dinner. This time two of them go along.
- [05:16]
Kay
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. And we were 18 or 20 at the time and thought it would be really funny if they had to sing, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. So we, you know, think that it was his birthday.
- [05:35]
Rachel Johnson
And I remember the friends go back to his house after the ice cream and the birthday jokes.
- [05:40]
Kay
Somehow it had been decided that we were going to spend the night. There was like a huge house, there were a ton of rooms, like can pick wherever he wanted to leave.
- [05:47]
Rachel Johnson
Just stay here 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, and said, do you.
- [06:00]
Kay
Guys want to go to bed with me?
- [06:05]
Rachel Johnson
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? They've only met a couple of times together. Well, this is how he sold it.
- [06:22]
Kay
Oh, you guys said it was my birthday. This would be a great birthday present. You guys both came to bed with me, no, thanks. And 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.
- [06:36]
Rachel Johnson
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.
- [06:51]
Kay
We exchanged phone numbers and we would have chats on the phone. And one time he sent me a webcam.
- [06:57]
Paul Caruana Galizia
And the webcam thing, how did he broach that? Did he just say, this would be fun for us to talk?
- [07:04]
Kay
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. And then he came back and he came to Orlando, this time with, like, these express purposes 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.
- [07:27]
Rachel Johnson
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. 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 Kaye's sexual relationship with him begins with a consensual act. Neil Gaiman's position is that there are no similarities between Scarlet's and Kay's accounts. But the way Kay describes that first consensual act seems very similar to Scarlet's allegations of sex with him, which we'll come to.
- [08:08]
Kay
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.
- [08:16]
Paul Caruana Galizia
K's been working at Disney World. Now she's studying and found work as a zookeeper.
- [08:22]
Kay
I was a broke college kid and I started working at the LA Zoo out there.
- [08:26]
Paul Caruana Galizia
Elephants, mainly. Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman was blogging about his marriage to fans and readers. This was his first then I was.
- [08:37]
Kay
Really shy and I knew that I have a lot of self esteem issues. I got the feeling that he was ashamed of me. And he keep being like, I'm not ashamed of you. I'm like, well, but you don't tell anybody that we're dating. Nobody knows you have a girlfriend. You're still technically married. I feel like you don't value me. And he would be saying, I'm a ship turning. It takes me a long time. He bought me a book called how to Understand the English, which, like, you know, to be fair, there was quite the age and culture gap.
- [09:06]
Paul Caruana Galizia
Remember, K is his daughter's age. She's starting her adult life as his secret girlfriend. He's nervy about being around her in public. He invites her to events, but then doesn't acknowledge she's there. Neil Gaiman's position rejects the notion that he was ashamed of his relationship with kids. Him inviting her to prestigious events is cited as evidence of this position. Still, K 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. In other words, she is vulnerable.
- [10:04]
Kay
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 it's cool. I guess that's like a fun thing. I can tell other people, 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. Like, he could do whatever he wanted and I would do whatever it took to keep that relationship going.
- [10:28]
Paul Caruana Galizia
Whatever he wanted, whatever it took from the start. Neil Gaiman's view is that his relationship with K was sincere and built on mutual trust and affection. Because of this view, we understand that he is disturbed by K's allegations. I should warn you that what follows is, according to K, quite graphic. When did things with him become rough?
- [10:58]
Kay
Straight away. He was very unconcerned with my pleasure and he certainly didn't have anything like lube around and I didn't know enough. So I remember the first time we had sex. I remember like lying there and there was music on and there was a song that I really loved that. It's a very romantic, loving song and I was listening to it while this very painful act was happening to me and just tears kind of just, just remember, like thinking like, I've listened to this song so many times and imagine like someone loving me. Like someone in the song loves whoever they're singing about. And instead, this brutal, painful thing was happening to me.
- [11:39]
Paul Caruana Galizia
The song was It's Only Time by the Magnetic Fields, a beautiful, melancholy track. It starts and ends with why would I stop loving you a hundred years from now? To this soundtrack, an allegation of pain and no lubrication of sexual behavior. That seems very similar to Scarlett's allegation, but that's almost 20 years earlier. She also doesn't tell Neil Gaiman that it's not okay to do this. Not at this stage, anyway. Having heard Scarlett's allegations about Neil Gaiman's sexual behavior, I wanted to know whether this rang any bells.
- [12:24]
Kay
There was never choking.
- [12:28]
Paul Caruana Galizia
So Scarlett. There was one episode where she said she almost passed out from the pain of him penetrating her anally without any lube.
- [12:42]
Kay
That happened to me, too. It 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. So it was, you know, my fault if it hurt, not his.
- [12:55]
Paul Caruana Galizia
There are other details that chime with Scarlett's experience, too.
- [13:00]
Kay
A belt.
- [13:01]
Paul Caruana Galizia
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. These appear to be aspects of his sexual fingerprint that span almost 20 years.
- [13:17]
Kay
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 like, almost like I vocal like that hurts, like, maybe not so hard. And he'd be like, no, I can tell that you like it.
- [13:40]
Paul Caruana Galizia
K 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. 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. But his position is that K found penetrative sex with him difficult and uncomfortable because of his body, so he did not press the issue with her.
- [14:16]
Kay
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. And so I often felt if it was somewhere that he'd, like, you know, spent money to take me or, like, you know, I felt that I owed it. And he definitely took advantage of that.
- [14:38]
Rachel Johnson
On 4 April 2007, Neil Gaiman flew Kaye from Los Angeles to Heathrow for a fortnight's holiday together in the uk alone, the two of them. 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. Neil Gaiman met her on arrival and they then took a taxi to Gatwick airport to fly to Inverness in Scotland. They visited Loch Ness and stayed at his house on the Isle of Skye for three days. They then flew to Cornwall and drove to Redruth in the far south west of England. They stayed in an old tinners cottage with a wood burning stove hidden up a bridle path. It was advertised as affording complete privacy. 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. 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. She's around 22. She looks so, so young. But she said there were fights, lots of.
- [16:08]
Kay
There were a lot of arguments, there was a lot of roughness that I felt compelled to take.
- [16:15]
Rachel Johnson
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.
- [16:28]
Kay
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. You just can't because I will die. And it didn't matter. You did it anyway.
- [16:43]
Paul Caruana Galizia
He did it anyway. Although you told him you were in.
- [16:45]
Kay
Pain and 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 because I know for sure. I remember for sure in Cornwall saying those words out loud. 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, please stop. I can't remember in those other instances. I know we discussed it. I know it was a big part of why he would get upset at me. And I knew that it was like something that I had to do to keep him around, 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 Cornwall. Like, I was just in, like, screaming agony and I know I said it out loud then.
- [17:41]
Rachel Johnson
On 16 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. She says it felt more painful because of the penetrative sex he allegedly performed on her without her consent. As to this specific allegation, Neil Gaiman's clear position is that it is false. And again, he denies any unlawful behaviour with her.
- [18:14]
Kay
He.
- [18:14]
Rachel Johnson
He didn't respond to any other specific points or questions about this trip.
- [18:20]
Paul Caruana Galizia
Kaye 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. An official crime survey for England found that 1.1 million adults experienced sexual assault in the year up to March 2022. 798,000 of them were women. During this same period, the police recorded only 75,000 sexual assault cases. That is, less than 15% of those experiences made it to the police. We asked Harriet Wistrich, a lawyer and the director of the center for Women's justice, to listen to our interview with Kay. She did not review any other material related to Kay's allegations. We wanted to ask Harriet why Kay didn't go to the police with such a serious allegation.
- [19:27]
Rachel Johnson
There are very good reasons why she didn't report. One, she's very conflicted and she's still holding on onto the idea that he is this really important, you know, love in her life. 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. I mean, it's only as she reflects, as she becomes more mature, that she sees. Sees it for what it is. Jennifer Robinson is an international lawyer and author of the book Silenced Women. 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.
- [20:32]
Jennifer Robinson
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.
- [20:56]
Rachel Johnson
In the uk, there was no law against forced sexual activity within a marriage until as recently as 1992. 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 marriage, the court ruled. Nowadays, it cannot seriously be maintained that by marriage a wife submits herself irrevocably to sexual intercourse in all circumstances. Now, marital rape is considered as a sexual assault under the Sexual Offences act of 2003, but myths around sexual assault still linger. There's still a belief that if you're in a relationship, however asymmetric, whatever happens is consensual, if transactional, 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.
- [22:04]
Jennifer Robinson
And it's just not true. Consent is for each and every act, 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 was had she had sex with this person before? Had she had sex with other people before? What's her sexual history? These, these tropes you hear of, oh, she's doing it to take revenge or for fame or for financial gain. What woman has, has benefited from speaking out publicly?
- [22:36]
Rachel Johnson
Women, Jennifer Robinson tells us, generally don't speak out because they're scorned, vengeful or gold diggers.
- [22:44]
Jennifer Robinson
Women typically speak out because they want to warn other women and they want it to stop.
- [22:52]
Paul Caruana Galizia
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. 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.
- [23:16]
Kay
I followed him to the airport, 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 to on his flight, got onto the plane, like, got onto the plane, like, kneeled in the seat in front of him and was like, please don't do this, Please don't break up with me. And he was not having it. He was like, somebody get her off the plane, get her off the plane. Like, they dragged me off the plane. I'M sobbing. It ended up refunding my ticket. I think more out of just like, please God, get this crying girl out of our face. And then I had to drive him home to my dad's house, blind in one eye because I didn't know. And that was the end.
- [24:00]
Paul Caruana Galizia
Neil Gaiman's account is that he denies he demanded K be removed from the plane. He didn't respond to any other detailed points or specific questions about this trip. That scene on the plane in which K ultimately walked off the aircraft was in October 2008. In a chat dated 24 October, one of K's friends asks why she doesn't just break up with him. K replies, I don't know, adding, I'm now on Xanax because he says I need to control my temper. Xanax is a prescription tranquilizer used to treat depression, anxiety and panic disorders. Despite her humiliation on that day, K stays in touch with Neil Gaiman. They exchange many emails up until 2022, but something in K had already begun changing.
- [25:00]
Kay
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. Something about this, now that I'm looking back on, it is very long and also as the conversation, the me too stuff, more of that stuff became more became more nuanced. That was when I was like, well, wait a minute, something like that happened to me.
- [25:29]
Paul Caruana Galizia
Neil Gaiman's position is that Kay's allegations against him are motivated by her regret over their sexual relationship. Yet his position is also that Kay's regret is evidentially deficient because her emails appeared to him as genial, positive and at times going back to 2010, flirtatious and solicitous. In support of this position, Neil Gaiman's account cites an email Kay sent him on 16 September 2017. The email says, 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. When we asked Kay about this email, she provided us with the full thread. 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. 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. In fact, Neil Gaiman responds to Kaye's email saying he'd give her the name of the actors hotel if she sent him photos of her breasts and bottom. Kaye declined. Neil Gaiman's position is that Kay would also email him asking for tickets to events and for career advice. In fact, K shared the following exchange herself. K emails Neil Gaiman to ask whether he can help her friends with tickets to a comic convention. 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. When K asks whether Amanda Palmer is okay with his new girlfriend, Neil Gaiman says yes, but unenthusiastic because girl is young, beautiful and could have been designed for me in bed. K asks Neil Gaiman for pictures of his new girlfriend. He sends K what he calls girl pics, photos of a woman. She reminds us of Kay and Scarlett. 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. This woman recognized 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. She said that she loves, respect and cares about Neil Gaiman, that her experiences with him have been nothing but incredible and positive. She described him as a man who has helped her through difficult times. She is no stranger to those having had a traumatic childhood.
- [29:08]
Rachel Johnson
We first emailed Neil Gaiman to ask for an interview more than two months before publication. 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. His PR responded a week later, asking for specific questions in advance. We provided thematic questions. 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. We even asked him about using an NDA with any former sexual partners. 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. We have represented everyone's side to this story as carefully and as seriously as we can throughout. We approached this story with our minds open. We wanted you, the listener, to do the same, to hear the allegations we have heard and see why we journalists saw it as important to investigate them. As this story deepened and the allegations darkened, it also changed complexion. I. Well, we realised this has never been about sex per se. It was about power. We heard allegations of rough sex that caused bodily harm. In UK law, there can be no consent to this. The threshold for harm is generally higher in the us and in New Zealand the court considers the circumstances of each case.
- [31:16]
Paul Caruana Galizia
These laws and rules weren't written to police what people do in bed. And they're not there because legislators are fusty and want to shame or embarrass people who are interested in unconventional sex. The idea is to stop the use of consent as a defence to causing another person harm. It's to stop abuse. 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 in the context of an abusive relationship. Experts see rough sex as a means of coercive control which the UK has criminalised. 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. 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 the sex and Kay said she never wanted or enjoyed it. Kay described being in agony, particularly during her April 2007 trip with Neil Gaiman around the UK. A trip during which she alleges he penetrated her vagina with his penis without her consent, an allegation he denies. The seriousness of. That last allegation returns us to one of the issues we asked at the start of this. At the end of the day, we don't have the power of official authorities to investigate allegations like these 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. And this failure to take allegations like these seriously is a matter of public interest. It speaks to police failings, the limits of the law, an abuse of power and its concealment by various means. 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 women we've spoken to. We have spoken to two women friends, one a lover who had nothing but positive things to say about him. It's worth saying here that we have examined Scarlett and Kay's allegations over many months. 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. They're separated by decades and continents, yet their allegations are consistent. 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 a dedicated fan base. As Jennifer Robinson explains about the general.
- [34:40]
Jennifer Robinson
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. 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. 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. 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. And if we can't talk about it and report on it, then how are we ever going to grapple with it or resolve it?
- [35:22]
Paul Caruana Galizia
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% 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. Prosecutors will only take a complaint to court if they think there's a reasonable prospect of conviction. Often they don't 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. Of the sexual abuse complaints that do go all the way to court, conviction rates are lower than those for other crimes and the public is onto this as a problem. The UK Victims Commissioner has said that rape has been effectively decriminalised. 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.
- [36:50]
Rachel Johnson
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 Sundays derailed it two years ago. 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.
- [37:17]
Paul Caruana Galizia
So interesting, because when you asked me.
- [37:19]
Kay
That, I don't really know. I don't really know what I want. I've been on a really big sort of journey with trying to unweave, unwave it in my mind and my soul. And, you know, he sort of lured me, if you will, into his, into a sort of psychological labyrinth. Rachel and so it was not straightforward at all.
- [37:46]
Rachel Johnson
Kay lives with her husband and their two cats, which often appeared in the background of our zoom calls. She since graduated in fine arts and now works in film and tv. So much of Scarlet, 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. The interesting thing is this isn't a story about the clarity of the law. 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, 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. There's no such thing as a blanket agreement that comes with being in a relationship. If you think about the way laws like that come about, it's often because social attitudes start to change. 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. And usually, I think the law cements the new way of thinking. Before long, we probably wonder how we ever thought differently. But when it comes to sex and consent within a consenting relationship, has that happened after all those decades on the statute books? Have the new laws helped cement the way we think? 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? And if there's any doubt about that, is that what leaves the gap which someone who wants to commit sexual abuse can exploit? 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 he wanted, nor every time he wanted it. They're sure they were abused by him. 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. 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. In that fog, terrible things can happen.
- [41:05]
Paul Caruana Galizia
This series is reported by me, Paul Karuana, 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. Additional reporting is by Jess Swinburne. Artwork is by John Hill. The series editor is Matt Russell. The editor is Jasper.
- [42:21]
Rachel Johnson
Tortoise.