Who Trolled Amber? - The NDAs | Master Ep 5

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Almost a month since the investigation where two women came forward with allegations that the author Neil Gaiman sexually assaulted them - allegations he strenuously denied - more women have come forward. Including another woman made to sign a non-disclosure agreement.Reporter: Paul Caruana Galizia and Rachel JohnsonProducer: Katie Gunning and Matt RussellAdditional reporting: Jess SwinburneOriginal music and sound design: Tom KinsellaSeries editor: Matt RussellEditor: Jasper CorbettTo find out more about Tortoise:Download the Tortoise app - for a listening experience curated by our journalistsSubscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts for early access and ad-free contentBecome a member and get access to all of Tortoise's premium audio offerings and more Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tortoise Before we begin, I should warn you, this is a hard listener times. The episode contains graphic descriptions of sex and allegations of sexual abuse. This episode is intended to be listened to after the first four episodes. All five are designed to be listened to in their entirety because this is a story of conflicting accounts. I just heard the news about Neil Gaiman and I'm really upset. On Wednesday 3rd of July 2024, just after 3pm in New York, a woman emails her lawyer.

I feel as though I did not do enough and he continued to be a predator. I do have a couple of questions for you. Can I offer my support to those who are accusing him? What does the NDA I signed prevent me from doing? Even though I was compensated financially, that entire episode in my life has had lasting traumatic effects on me to this day. It was the same day that we published our investigation into two women's allegations of sexual assault against Neil Gaiman, which he strenuously denied.

One of those two women spoke up despite having signed an NDA. A non-disclosure agreement. A contract that restricts what a signatory can say or who they can tell about something. And now, another woman wants to speak out, despite another NDA, a particularly robust one. It is the intention of the parties that all confidential information, including any confidential materials, shall remain confidential as expressly provided herein." In the fog of this story, these NDAs are about the only thing there in black and white.

"...except for the obligations arising from this agreement, claimants, and each of them, and their corporations and or related entities. Hereby, irrevocably, unconditionally, and completely release, discharge, and hold harmless gay men, his corporations and related entities. The emails, WhatsApps, photos, and videos we have heard about in this story,

they can shift and shimmer depending from where and when you see them. But the NDAs are contractual documents. They are designed to leave no room for ambiguity. Complete silence around Neil Gaiman. Gaiman's family members including but not limited to Amanda Palmer and all of Gayman's agents, managers, business managers and attorneys. Scarlett was the first woman to speak out against Neil Gayman. She alleged that he sexually assaulted her on her first day of work as his child's nanny

in New Zealand. It was February 2022. She was 22. He was 61. Scarlett also alleged that he subjected her to rough and degrading sex during their three week sexual relationship that followed. Neil Gaiman's account strenuously denied her allegations, claiming that their sexual relationship was entirely consensual.

Months after that relationship ended, along with Scarlett's job as his child's nanny, she asked him for help with rent money. He agreed, and then asked her to sign an NDA. The NDA was backdated to her first day at work to the day he allegedly assaulted her. Neil Gaiman's position was that NDAs are standard for the domestic staff of prominent individuals. But about a month before Scarlett entered his life, But about a month before Scarlett entered his life, another woman, the one in New York, was signing an NDA with Neil Gaiman. From any and all claims, demands, liabilities, suits, debts, obligations, controversies, costs, expenses, accounts, damages, losses or judgments, of every kind or character,

defences and causes of action arising in law or equity that claimants ever had, now have or hereafter may have. It's 16 pages long. It's dated the 20th of December 2021. And it demands a lot of her. The parties agree that they shall not directly or indirectly, verbally or otherwise, publish, disseminate, disclose, post any confidential information to any person, group, firm or entity whatsoever, including but not limited to family members, friends, associates, family slash friends, journalists, media organizations, newspapers, periodicals. Her name is Caroline Warner. I want him to know that that does not exist. And for about seven years she lived on Neil Gaiman's property with her three daughters and for a while her husband. They were in a small house that belonged to Neil Gaiman and that was adjacent to his own

home in Woodstock in upstate New York. But according to the NDA she cannot discuss any of what happened during those seven years to anyone in her life. She can only disclose its accompanying financial settlement of $275,000 to her lawyers or accountants if they first agreed to the same confidentiality. She can never talk about what happened between her and Neil Gaiman. The document also in black and white, Disputes and denies that Warner has sustained any losses, damages or injuries for which Gaiman is legally responsible. Neil Gaiman's position is that although he vehemently disputes Caroline Walner's allegations

of repeated sexual abuse, he settled with her to avoid protracted and expensive litigation. His position is that an NDA was necessary with Caroline because he believed the allegations would have been used to threaten adverse media publicity. Neil Gaiman's use of NDAs appears to conflict with his totemic public position that he is a free speech absolutist. His use of NDAs where women have made sexual abuse allegations appears to conflict with another one of his public positions as a supporter of women's rights and campaigner against sexual abuse.

When we asked about these apparent conflicts, we were told that Neil Gaiman rejects any allegation of hypocrisy and that there's no public interest in this story, whose publication would expose tortoise to significant legal risk. We do think there's a public interest. The original allegations were about non-consensual sex within a relationship. They raised questions about whether Neil Gaiman could have had or should have had reasonable belief in consent for sex with vulnerable women. His position

is that there was consent. But asking two women to sign NDAs suggests that he himself doesn't have much confidence in that position, that the public wouldn't believe it, so the allegations must be silenced. It's been close to a month since the publication of our investigation into the accounts of two women who alleged that during the course of their relationships with Neil Gaiman, he sexually assaulted them. Although the vast majority of sexual assault cases happen within relationships, most allegations go unreported because of the expectation that alleged victims would not be in a relationship with their alleged assaulter. While the law says that consent is for each and every sexual act, many people assume that a relationship provides ongoing consent.

The two women were Scarlett and a woman whose initial is Kay. Kay was 18 when she met Neil Gaiman at a book signing in Sarasota, Florida in 2003. She began a sexual relationship with him when she turned 20 and he was in his mid-40s, but alleges that she submitted to rough and painful sex that she neither wanted nor enjoyed. In one incident she alleges he penetrated her despite her asking him not to, as she was suffering from a painful infection. His account denied any unlawful behaviour with Kay. Since publication, a number of other women have got in touch.

One of them is Caroline Walner. I'm Rachel Johnson. And I'm Paul Caruana Galizia. You're listening to the Slow Newscast from Tortoise. This is Master, Episode 5, I know this is going to feel like a lot, but could we start from the beginning? Caroline Warner is now 63 years old. We speak over Zoom. Her story falls in the middle of Kays and Scarlett.

So we're basically living there 2014. We lived in that little place next to theirs. Caroline is a ceramicist, her husband, a builder, a musician. They met Neil Gaiman and his then wife, the feminist punk rock star Amanda Palmer, a few years earlier, as the celebrity couple rented a house near Caroline's studio. Both couples are looking for a property to buy when Neil Gaiman buys a place in Woodstock, New York. It had belonged to Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan's manager, famously featured on the sleeve of the album, bringing it all back home.

Neil Gaiman had been appointed by nearby Bard College as Professor in the arts and was due to start teaching in spring 2014. At this point Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman aren't around much, so they felt they needed someone to manage the property. You know I remember it very well, we were sitting at dinner and they wanted us to move in there and be the caretakers because they were never around that much and you know they would pay for us to do stuff. So in 2014 Caroline, her husband and their three daughters move in. I mean it was like changing the locks and cleaning and you had to clean the pool do this. There was gardening, there was shopping for his guests who were constant. It was full on when Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer were there. Picking people up

at the airport, picking people up at the train, hiring people all the time, finding plumbers, finding different people to work on the property and do this and that. Caroline says that part of the deal is that the couple do odd jobs for Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. In return they get to live in the house and Caroline can use an adjacent studio for her work and over time a five acre plot on the property for a reduced price. A handshake deal. It's hard work but Caroline holds onto the prospect of owning that plot to build a house for her own family. In February 2017, three years into the caretaking arrangement, Caroline and her husband separate. Their breakup, an end to a 17-year marriage, devastates Caroline. First emotionally and then financially.

But that's when Neil fires them and then Neil was basically, I choose you. Neil Gaiman's account is that he let Caroline's ex-husband go because he was an unreliable worker. Caroline stays on the estate with her three daughters while her now ex-husband, who provided the primary income, moves out. That's when Neil was really, really nice to me. He was really kind. Bringing me juices, sending me texts. But with the marriage ended, Caroline is now dependent on Neil Gaiman for her income and for the home in which she and her three daughters live. At this point, Caroline, 55 years old, is not in a good state. I lost 20 pounds, I couldn't sleep, couldn't work, couldn't do anything because of my

divorce and I was really underweight and kind of a mess. And the dynamic begins to shift. Neil Gaiman had been away in Australia. And then when he came back, he asked me to take a sauna with him. The sauna was on the Woodstock estate. And then the sauna was when it started. I remember him kissing me at the sauna that first time and I don't know, putting his hands on me, putting my hand on him. I mean, this is what's embarrassing. I did think maybe he liked me.

But then she realizes that wasn't what was going on because he told her. And I said um what would Amanda say about this and he said about what and I said about this romance that's what's embarrassing and he said Caroline there is no romance. romance. I mean that was like the second or third time he'd done that with me. Caroline feels that she has been locked into a bargain. And there was like little hints of we're going to need the house back. And I remember saying let's talk about it, let's figure it out out that's when he would just come to my studio and make me give him a blowjob. Caroline does not allege Neil Gaiman used physical force but that she felt it

was coercive in light of her housing and family situation. She calls it sexual abuse. The UN defines sexual abuse as the actual or threatened physical intrusion of a sexual nature whether by force or under unequal or coercive conditions. Caroline feels she doesn't have the upper hand in this bargain. And I was such a mess. I mean, I was such a mess. I mean, I just ended this 17-year marriage, you know. It just felt nice to have affection.

I mean, I was terrified then because I had no money, my jobs had been taken away. If I was a wreck, I was trying to like get better. And then this just happened and I couldn't get better. And he can say it was consensual, but why would I do that? You know, it was because I was scared of losing my place. You know, it's all I had right then.

Large parts of Caroline's story are unique to her, but there are echoes of both Kay's and Scarlett's story, notably that they both said he asked them to call him master during sex. Wedged in the middle of the two, a few years before Scarlett, almost a decade after Kay's, Caroline recalls how, I wanted me to call him Master and he wanted me to be a bad girl who wanted him and couldn't get enough. And at first I think when I thought maybe that it was genuine,

I think I did text him that it felt nice or something. But you know, the master stuff, he used to say that to me all the time. Call me your master. Tell me you want it. Tell me you want it. He would kind of like choke me sometimes. Caroline says this goes on for almost two years.

Sometimes she would say no. Sometimes she wouldn't go to him. She recalls one incident when she fell asleep reading a story. When I woke up Neil was in the bed and he like put my hand like on his cock. And Caroline says she had mentioned how it made her feel to Neil Gaiman. I did probably say a couple of times this this is making me feel really bad. And he was like, I don't want you to feel bad. I don't know. It was like, I was in such a place of fear of losing my house and losing in my, and I had these three girls that, you know, I know I feel really guilty that I didn't say more, but I was just in fear.

Caroline says Neil Gaiman told her it was Amanda Palmer who wanted back the house she was in, as well as the studio Caroline used for work. She says that whenever she resisted his sexual advances, he'd raise the housing situation. He would just text me and go, why don't you pop up to the cabin for a couple minutes. And the couple of times that, you know, I couldn't do it or whatever. He would say, you know, Amanda really wants the house back and she wants your studio. And then he would grab my hand and say, but you take care of me and I'll take care of you.

Caroline understood this to be a clear reference to the trade where she'd be allowed to stay in the house with her three daughters as long as she provided Neil Gaiman with sex on demand. Neil Gaiman describes, in the words of his account, the sex for rent arrangement as an outrageous and false claim. His position is that their relationship was entirely consensual and that she instigated sex with him. Amanda Palmer didn't respond to multiple requests for comment by email, whatsapp and twitter or ex. Then, just before Covid hits, Neil Gaiman leaves Woodstock. hits Neil Gaiman's behaviour on these calls match his descriptions of sexual calls he made to two other women we have spoken to, and who do not feature in this episode,

because they spoke only to provide what they say was corroborating material. In the summer of 2021, still in the pandemic, Caroline decides to stop answering Neil Gaiman's calls because she says she just couldn't take them anymore. Then they just basically said you know you have to get out you have by December. Neil Gaiman's position is that their messages and calls, what his account calls virtual sexual interaction, are evidence of a friendly consensual relationship. His account is that this interaction ended when in June 2021 he asked Caroline to leave the property by the end of the year. His position is that this was always a possibility,

as she had been living there with her family rent free for the preceding six years. This position doesn't acknowledge that Caroline worked for Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer all the while she lived on the property. It doesn't mention Neil Gaiman's attempts to initiate phone sex, which Caroline ignored, continued into August 2021 as his business manager pressed her to leave the property. At this point the pandemic was still raging, and this is upstate New York. It's an area which experienced the highest house price growth of any US metropolitan region as New York City residents moved in and bought up rural dwellings.

There's no affordable housing available and Caroline says she asks for more time, but it's only when she raises Neil Gaiman's alleged sexual abuse of her, that his lawyer offers her a settlement, as long as she signs a non-disclosure agreement. To begin with, she is offered $5,000. The five acres she and her family were promised in a handshake deal were gone. On the 9th of December 2021, Caroline emails one of Neil Gaiman's lawyers, saying she's tried to come up with an amount that I feel justifies signing a release, then essence takes away my agency to speak freely about what I went through. 300k is what I came up with 150 for

real estate issues and 150 for the sexual trade issue. Something that I'm trying to come to terms with. Therapy alone is costing a fortune. Caroline with money lent by a friend entered a residential therapy center. She was prescribed antidepressants and remains on them. In the end, Neil Gaiman settles with Caroline for $275,000 and an NDA later that month. The agreement prohibits her from talking about Neil Gaiman with family members, friends, associates. Caroline had spoken to two of her closest friends about Neil Gaiman's alleged abuse of her, months before she signed the NDA, in March 2021. After she signed it, she felt unable to talk to anyone about him, including to them.

We spoke to those two friends who told us they couldn't understand why she'd become more reticent or why she appeared to still be suffering from his alleged abuse. Caroline says the NDA perpetuated it. The NDA stops Caroline from filing, reporting or prosecuting any action or proceeding in any court, governmental agency or before any tribunal whatsoever, where so ever. But she says she wasn't told that New York's courts have voided NDAs that sought to frustrate investigations by government agencies. The NDA allows Caroline to make disclosures by a valid legal process, provided she first notifies Neil Gaiman 20 days in advance and gives him

an adequate opportunity to intervene and with full and complete cooperation should he choose to oppose such disclosure. But she says she wasn't told that NDAs are void when they attempt to limit the reporting of criminal allegations by a witness or alleged victim in the US. Neil Gaiman's position is that his NDA with Caroline makes no reference to law enforcement and that there is nothing to report anyhow. His position is that the NDA used language that was deemed appropriate to both parties' experienced lawyers. Andrew Brethler, who has acted for Russell Brand, Danny Masterson and Prince Andrew, represented Neil Gaiman in this case.

Caroline says she is looking for new legal representation. She wants to give her reasons for speaking out. Coming forward was pure instinct of a mother of three daughters the same age as Scarlett and Kay. I had no doubt I needed to support them, as I would want anybody to support my daughters. I thought seriously about whether or not to use my name. When I understood that fear and shame were the feelings that kept rising, I realized this is part of the problem.

It doesn't belong to me, to us since our investigation was published, nor the only person willing to use her full name. While Caroline's story falls between Kayes and Scarlett's, questions over Neil Gaiman's behaviour stretch right back to before Scarlett was even born. Neil Gaiman has been a friend of mine for 40 years. Julia Hobsbawm is an award-winning British writer and public speaker. She's written widely on business and management and was honoured with an OBE for her work. And she's the daughter of Eric Hobsbawm, the Marxist historian. Julia recalls a moment back in 1986.

I was at Penguin and I met him on the book party circuit. She was 22 years old and working as a book publicist in London. He was as he has been ever since, you know, literary, soft-spoken, charming, gentlemanly, talks about subversion, kind of is edgy, wears a leather jacket, and yet he's anything but subversive in his demeanor. He's soft and brotherly and comfortable and incredibly beguiling and fun and literary. And so we used to hang out at parties and it was all absolutely fine. At the time, Neil Gaiman was married to his first wife and had a young child. His writing career was just about to take off with the imminent publication of his

graphic novel, Violent Cases, the one that made his name. Neil Gaiman and Julia had been out and ended up back at Julia's studio flat in Chalk Farm, North London. I literally have no memory of how he came to be back there. What I'm totally certain about is that romance was not on the cards, not for me, and I did not believe it was on the cards for him. Well, I was standing up, I had this absolutely gorgeous flat, tiny one room, it had a sort of L-shape bar that led into the kitchen, and I was standing up by that wall into the sort of open plan bit. And one minute

it seemed like he was telling me about Mary and his child. And the next minute he just sort of jumped on me and he just went from nought to ninety. I mean, I remembered he made an aggressive, unwanted pass at me out of the blue that I've never experienced before or since. I had a sofa that was very low and very squishy. He pushed me down onto that sofa and I remember thinking that's enough, thanks very much, no. My body completely stiffened. She stops it and he leaves. Neil Gaiman's account is that he attempted a kiss. Upon realising he had misread the situation and that Julia was not receptive, he stopped the attempt. His position is, it

was no more than a young man misreading a situation, adding that its inclusion alongside criminal allegations raised in previous episodes in this podcast series would mischaracterise it. Standards were different in the 1980s, and Neil Gaiman's alleged behaviour might sound old fashioned rather than something that crossed a line into legal wrongdoing. So I found it helpful to look up the definition of sexual assault in English criminal law. It is one person intentionally and sexually touching another without their consent, and that there is no reasonable belief by the alleged perpetrator in the other person's consent. Sexual assault doesn't necessarily involve violence, but it can cause severe emotional

distress, which is why the police treat it as seriously as a violent attack, and which is why Julia remembers her story so many years later. I felt sufficiently uncomfortable and wronged and disappointed that I don't recall seeing him again for 20 years. I didn't want to see him. Something broke. I'm embarrassed now that I didn't put two and two together and that I enjoyed his fame and his friendship 20 years later, that I compartmentalised it. His account is that they remained on friendly terms after that night and this indicates that there's no ill feeling. They reconnect on Facebook, she messages him as she recalls,

and one night in December 2007 he invites her to a London hotel. He said to eat, have a drink or just hang out. And even though I was delighted to be reconnected with him, by now a star, I can tell you Rachel I absolutely made a decision I would not go in the evening and I remember saying to him, I'll have coffee with you and I did. They never speak of the incident again, but Julia always felt it was there sitting between them. She now thinks that had she called him out on it at the time in 1986, she could have stopped

what could be described as a pattern of behavior in its tracks. She says she is plagued by the incident to this day and worries that she enabled his alleged misconduct to continue. What I mind about is the fact that I perpetuated the myth that he built around himself and his whole writing is about myths and fantasy. He built a myth around himself of being looking like a gothic bad boy who was actually incredibly well spoken and kind and gentle and generous and blah blah blah.

I do wish that I had not enabled the celebrity part of him without having said to him at least once, hey, come on, what happened back then? I let it lie. And now I really regret that. It's a thought. A few months after this alleged assault, Neil Gaiman's violent cases graphic novel was published, marking the start of a glittering literary career. His first collaboration with the illustrator David McKean, with whom he would go on to create his Sandman universe, a trajectory that could have been very different, that might not have led from Julia to Kay to Caroline to Scarlett and still more women.

Since the release of our investigation, Neil Gaiman has not made a public statement either directly or through his representatives. A planned public appearance in Virginia on the 20th of July 2024 was cancelled. Bard College told us he is not scheduled to teach at the college this year as per his pre-existing schedule. The UN's refugee agency, where Neil Gaiman is a goodwill ambassador, has described

the allegations against him as very serious, adding we are assessing the detailed reporting but are not currently in a position to comment further. Perhaps it's not surprising that, for the moment, organisations that have had an affiliation with Neil Gaiman aren't rushing to judgement. The greyness we've talked about in our reporting has been a constant theme and it's difficult to cut through. Not for the law, we've got to be clear about that, and not in the minds of most of the women who've taken the decision to speak to us. But it was there in Julia Hobsborn's case for decades until hearing from the other women we've talked to gave her a new frame for her own experience and made her wish she dealt with it

differently. And as we've said, the same greyness still seems to weigh on the minds of juries and non-prosecutors who have to decide whether to put a case before a jury in the first place. Non-disclosure agreements, NDAs, darken that grey somewhere close to black. Our belief throughout this podcast has been that if any of us, if societies, are ever to stand a chance of resolving the question of how consent is given or not given and how it's received or ignored within a consensual relationship, we have to give space to hear both sides. That led us to take the decision, which we understand was unpopular amongst some listeners,

to include what we could of Neil Gaiman's account, as well as Scarlett's, Kay's, Caroline's and Julia's in this series. But if Scarlett particularly and Caroline later had remained bound by their NDAs, there wouldn't have been a series. The NDAs they signed were meant, in part at least, to use the power of the law to enforce Neil Gaiman's argument that he doesn't have a case to answer simply by denying Scarlett and Caroline the chance to say that he does. NDAs are heavy and blunt instruments.

Asking someone to sign one, knowing that it will close down a delicate and complex conversation, as Neil Gaiman did, is enough to suggest a lack of confidence that his arguments about consent, or simply his sexual behaviour towards vulnerable women would survive public scrutiny. And certainly agreeing to sign an NDA in the circumstances in which Scarlett and Caroline found themselves is no sign at all that they But they were abused. by me, Rachel Johnson, and Paul Caruana Galizia. This episode is produced by Matt Russell and Katie Gunning. 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 Corbett. TORTUS