St Andrews Uni student sues Neil Gaiman and his wife for $7m over human trafficking claims

Scarlett Pavlovich, a literature and drama student at the University of St Andrews, is suing the famous fantasy author Neil Gaiman and his wife Amanda Palmer. She’s seeking $7 million (£5.6 million) in damages. She claims Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer violated human trafficking laws while she worked as their nanny. She also says Neil Gaiman raped her several times while she worked for him.

Scarlett filed three different civil lawsuits on Monday 3rd February in Massachusetts, New York and Wisconsin. This is because Neil Gaiman lives in Wisconsin, and Scarlett’s lawyers don’t know whether Amanda Palmer lives in New York or Massachusetts at the moment.

Neil Gaiman has denied sexually assaulting all eight women who have now publicly accused him of this. He wrote on his blog: “I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been.”

A representative for Amanda Palmer said she was “profoundly disturbed” by the sexual assault allegations, but she wasn’t going to publicly comment on them as she was in the middle of divorce and custody proceedings with Neil Gaiman.

The lawsuit says Scarlett was homeless and low on money when she was a 22-year-old student in 2022, so she started running errands for Amanda Palmer. She was estranged from Neil Gaiman at this point, and they lived in different houses. Palmer suggested Scarlett should become a live-in babysitter for her son with Neil Gaiman while he was at Gaiman’s house on Waiheke, an island in New Zealand.

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The document says Palmer knew Gaiman had already been accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women, and warned him about harassing Scarlett. It reads: “Gaiman said words to the effect of ‘Amanda told me I couldn’t have you’. Gaiman also said that as soon as Amanda said he could not have Scarlett, he knew he had to have Scarlett. Palmer had specifically informed Gaiman that Gaiman would seriously harm Scarlett if he abused her. Palmer told Gaiman this because Palmer knew about Gaiman’s history of sexual misconduct.”

Scarlett claims that within a few hours of meeting Gaiman, he raped her in a bathtub in his garden. She says he sexually assaulted her many times while she worked for him. In one incident, he allegedly raped her while she was cleaning his kitchen. Another time, he apparently assaulted her under a blanket in the same hotel room where his son was playing games on an iPad.

The lawsuit claims Gaiman didn’t stop this behaviour until Scarlett told Palmer she was suicidal. Scarlett says she contacted the police in New Zealand. However, the investigation didn’t get very far as Palmer refused to speak to the police. She stopped working for Neil Gaiman and became homeless again.

Scarlett also claims that Gaiman and Palmer withheld payment from her for a while. Eventually, Gaiman apparently paid her for being a nanny, and gave her enough money to cover rent for a few months.

The University of St Andrews
(Image by Jjhake via Creative Commons)

Scarlett has asked the vice-chancellor of the University of St Andrews to take away the honorary doctorate Neil Gaiman has from the uni. The vice-chancellor hasn’t reached a decision about this yet. The university said they are “providing support and counselling” for her.

Since Scarlett and other women accused Neil Gaiman of sexual assault, a theatre production of Coraline was scrapped. Netflix cancelled the third season of The Sandman. Amazon Prime shortened the final season of Good Omens. Disney paused their plans to make a film version of The Graveyard Book.

The Tab has contacted Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer’s representatives for comment.

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Featured image of Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer by Nils Jorgensen/Shutterstock.