Three More Women Come Forward With Assault Allegations Against Neil Gaiman

Two women recently came forward with assault allegations against author Neil Gaiman and now another two women are speaking out. In a new podcast from Tortoise Media, two new accusations were leveled at Gaiman, their claims spanning over five decades.

Gaiman, known for his work writing Sandman as well as one of the writers of Good Omens, is a very online individual which gives fans a sense of knowing him. As we’ve seen time and again, those sorts of large-scale parasocial relationships can be a huge obstacle to alleged victims coming forward and in being believed by the public. When the first wave of accusations dropped, it didn’t make nearly the impact many would have hoped. In online circles, it was talked about briefly (and Gaiman denied the allegations) before many seemingly moved on. Now, two other women have come forward with horrific accounts about the author.

Both Caroline Wallner (a single mother renting one of Gaiman’s properties from him) and book publicist Julia Hobsbawm have now come out with claims against Gaiman spanning from 1986 to 2014. The previous women alleged that their encounters with Gaiman happened in 2003 and 2022, thus marking a terrifying decades-long trend of Gaiman allegedly using his status and power against women.

Caroline Wallner claims Gaiman sexually assaulted and harassed her while she lived on his Woodstock property

According to the podcast, Gaiman allegedly “pressured a mother-of-three to have sex with him in return for letting her live with her daughters at his property in upstate New York.” He also allegedly “made her sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for a $275,000 payment to help her cope with post-traumatic stress and depression following their sexual relationship.” At the time, Gaiman was married to singer Amanda Palmer.

Wallner claims that Gaiman would use the house she was staying in with her children as leverage, saying “There were little hints of, ‘we’re going to need the house.’ And I remember saying, let’s talk about it. Let’s figure it out. That’s when he would just come to my studio and make me give him a blowjob.” She went on to say that he can claim she agreed to the acts but that they were done out of fear of losing her home. “And he can say it was consensual. But why would I do that? It was because I was scared of losing my place.”

She went on to claim that after Gaiman left the property, he would send her sexually explicit pictures without her consent. Wallner claims that after she stopped answering his sexual video calls, she was asked to leave the home. Gaiman insists that asking her to leave the property was always a possibility.

Julia Hobsbawm wishes she called Gaiman out back in the ’80s

The other woman (Julia Hobsbawm) spoke about a time in the 1980s when Gaiman allegedly jumped her “out of the blue” in an “aggressive, unwanted” way. Tortoise corroborated their stories through messages, emails, and other documentation. These new allegations bring the total up to four women who have spoken out against Gaiman in this way.

Hobsbawm said that she wishes she would have called him out back then. Gaiman claims that he stopped when he realized the kiss was not reciprocated. He said it was just a young man (he was 25 years old at the time) misreading a situation and that it had no place being included against criminal allegations.

The four-part podcast series details all the claims of these four women. Gaiman has yet to release a statement publicly or through his representatives on the situation.

Claire’s horrifying allegations

Another victim has come forward on a podcast called Am I Broken: Survivor Stories. Using the pseudonym Claire, the individual claims that Gaiman groomed and sexually manipulated her. In the title of the episode, there is the quote “I Ignored It and I Believed Him Because He’s the Storyteller [Neil Gaiman]” and it really sets the scene for Claire’s story and another example of the terrifying allegations being released against Gaiman.

“It’s almost like I’d been conditioned to listen to him over listening to my own instincts, because I’ve been listening to him tell me stories since I was 11,” Claire said on the podcast. “Like I’d grown up — his audiobooks, and… and then that same voice that told me those beautiful stories when I was a kid was telling me… the story that I was safe, and that we were friends, and that he wasn’t a threat.  And then — in the end he told me what happened was my fault.  Even though my body was telling me this entirely different story — like, the opposite story! — I ignored it and I believed him, because he’s the storyteller.”