“The Sandman” and “Good Omens” author Neil Gaiman released a lengthy statement Monday in which he once again denied sexual misconduct accusations that were originally made against him nearly two years ago.
This marks the first time Gaiman has spoken out about the accusations against him in almost a year, during which time Gaiman had stepped back from the public eye after being dropped from a series of TV and film projects based on his work, including Amazon’s upcoming final season of the “Good Omens” TV adaptation and the streamer’s new “Anansi Boys” TV series, press for last year’s final season of Netflix’s “The Sandman,” and development shutting down “The Graveyard Book” movie at Disney.
In his new statement, Gaiman says there was a “smear campaign” waged against him and that “actual evidence was dismissed or ignored” during this time.
In March 2025, “The Sandman” author publicly responded to allegations posed by his former babysitter, calling her a “fantasist” and producing WhatsApp messages that he says refute her sexual abuse claims.
Gaiman and his estranged wife, Amanda Palmer, were sued in federal court in February 2025 for alleged sexual assault and trafficking. The plaintiff, Scarlett Pavlovich, had previously raised the allegations in a Tortoise Media podcast and a New York magazine feature story in the summer of 2024.
In a court declaration, Gaiman stated that he and Pavlovich had bathed together and engaged in consensual sexual activity, but that they did not have intercourse. He denied the lurid rape and abuse allegations raised in the lawsuit.
“None of Pavlovich’s claims are true,” he wrote. “She is a fantasist who has fabricated a tale of abuse against me and Ms. Palmer.”
Gaiman also produced numerous messages between Pavlovich and himself that he says shows the encounters, which occurred in New Zealand, were consensual.
In addition to Pavlovich, several other women also made allegations in the Tortoise Media podcast and the New York magazine story. In response, Gaiman wrote on his personal blog in January 2025 that he had never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity, though he regretted having been “emotionally unavailable” and “careless with people’s hearts and feelings.”
Towards the end of Gaiman’s Monday statement, he revealed he is working on a new book: “It’s been a strange, turbulent and occasionally nightmarish year and a half, but I took my own advice (when things get tough, make good art) and once I was done with making television I went back to doing something else I love even more: writing. I thought it was going to be a fairly short project when I began it, but it’s looking like it’s going to be the biggest thing I’ve done since American Gods. It’s already much longer than The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and it’s barely finished wiping its boots and hanging up its coat. And I spend half of every month being a full-time Dad, and that remains the best bit of my life.”
See Gaiman’s new statement in full below.
“It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything anywhere, 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. 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.)
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.
I was a journalist once, and I have enormous respect for journalists, so I’ve been hugely heartened by the meticulous fact and evidence-based investigative writing of one particular journalist, whom some of you recently brought to my attention, who writes under the name of TechnoPathology.
I’ve had no contact with TechnoPathology. But I’d like to thank them personally for actually looking at the evidence and reporting what they found, which is not what anyone else had done. If you are curious about what they’ve uncovered so far, the link in this post takes you to really good investigative reporting.
It’s been a strange, turbulent and occasionally nightmarish year and a half, but I took my own advice (when things get tough, make good art) and once I was done with making television I went back to doing something else I love even more: writing. I thought it was going to be a fairly short project when I began it, but it’s looking like it’s going to be the biggest thing I’ve done since American Gods. It’s already much longer than The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and it’s barely finished wiping its boots and hanging up its coat. And I spend half of every month being a full-time Dad, and that remains the best bit of my life.
It’s a rough time for the world. I look at what’s happening on the home front and internationally, and I worry; and I am still convinced there are more good people out there than the other kind. Thank you again to so many of you for your belief in my innocence and your support for my work. It has meant the world to me.
Neil”
