The Sandman famed creator Neil Gaiman lastly responds, ‘I’m removed from an ideal particular person, however…’
Finest-selling creator Neil Gaiman has denied allegations of sexual misconduct, saying he has “by no means engaged in non-consensual sexual exercise with anybody. Ever”.
Allegations made by eight girls towards the 64-year-old, which embrace claims he sexually assaulted a girl in a shower, had been printed in New York Journal on Monday, with 5 girls’s claims having first been reported on a Tortoise Media podcast referred to as Grasp final 12 months. In a weblog publish on Tuesday, the British-born The Sandman creator mentioned he had learn the allegations with “horror and dismay”.
He wrote: “I’ve stayed quiet till now, each out of respect for the individuals who had been sharing their tales and out of a need not to attract much more consideration to a whole lot of misinformation.
“I’ve at all times tried to be a non-public particular person, and felt more and more that social media was the mistaken place to speak about necessary private issues. I’ve now reached the purpose the place I really feel that I ought to say one thing.
“As I learn by this newest assortment of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of issues that occurred sitting beside issues that emphatically didn’t occur.
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Gaiman lastly responds to sexual misconduct allegations
“I’m removed from an ideal particular person, however I’ve by no means engaged in non-consensual sexual exercise with anybody. Ever.” Gaiman mentioned he had learn again textual content messages from the time of the alleged incidents and felt they had been “of two folks having fun with totally consensual sexual relationships”.
He mentioned that whereas studying by them, he realised he “might have and will have achieved so a lot better”, including he was “not as considerate as I might or ought to have been”.
He continued: “I used to be clearly careless with folks’s hearts and emotions, and that’s one thing that I actually, deeply remorse. It was egocentric of me. I used to be caught up in my very own story and I ignored different folks’s. “I’ve spent some months now taking a protracted, arduous take a look at who I’ve been and the way I’ve made folks really feel.
“Like most of us, I’m studying, and I’m attempting to do the work wanted, and I do know that that’s not an in a single day course of.” The creator mentioned he understood that “not everybody will consider me” and added he can be “doing my perfect to deserve their belief, in addition to the belief of my readers”. He claimed a number of the allegations “merely by no means occurred” whereas others had been “distorted” to “bear no relationship to actuality”, however mentioned he would “take duty for any missteps I made”.
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Gaiman’s movie and TV tasks impacted by sexual assault claims
Within the New York Journal report, one of many girls claimed she had been babysitting Gaiman’s five-year-old little one, when she alleged the creator provided her a shower in his backyard earlier than then becoming a member of her bare, and asking her to take a seat on his lap. She claimed he then sexually assaulted her. The article claims all the accusers had been prepared to interact with Gaiman’s requests to some extent by calling him “grasp”, however the girls allege that consent and particular BDSM actions, which they are saying occurred, had not been mentioned and agreed on earlier than they occurred.
Gaiman’s representatives had beforehand advised Tortoise Media that “sexual degradation, bondage, domination, sadism and masochism might not be to everybody’s style, however between consenting adults, BDSM is lawful”.
A police report accusing Gaiman of sexual assault was made in January 2023, however the investigation was finally dropped.
Gaiman is thought for books equivalent to Coraline, American Gods and The Sandman, all of which have been tailored for the cinema or tv. Because the allegations first surfaced, a number of movie and TV variations of Gaiman’s tales have reportedly been affected, together with season three of Good Omens – which he collectively wrote with Terry Pratchett – and a movie of The Graveyard E book.
