Further sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman saw JK Rowling today offer a chilling and insightful comparison for the Sandman writer.
Shortly after New York MagazineThe detailed cover story on multiple new and old claims against Gaiman by several women was dropped, the Harry Potter the designer took to social media to provide her own opinion context. No stranger to controversy, criticism and accusations of transphobia due to her strident views on gender identity and the transition of minors, Rowling attributed early reactions to the allegations against the once-acclaimed Gaiman to incarcerated rapist Harvey Weinstein and to the #MeToo explosion against the very accused. Producer of Pulp Fiction.
“The literary public that had an awful lot to say about Harvey Weinstein before his conviction has been strangely silent in its response to the multiple accusations made against Neil Gaiman by young women who had never met, and yet – as in the case by Weinstein – they speak remarkably similar stories,” Rowling wrote on X this morning in the second of two missives about Gaiman.
Similar to Weinstein, Gaiman has not only been incriminated for attacks on women, but also for using NDAs and bribes to silence alleged victims. Additionally, like Weinstein, as well as Bill Cosby, Danny Masterson and others who have been put on trial in recent years for rape and assault, reports from unassociated women about Gaiman appear to reveal a duplicative modus operandi.
Building on information and materials originally presented last summer in Tortoise Media’s six-part podcast “Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman,” New York MagazineLila Shapiro’s often explicit “There Is No Safe Word” spoke to eight women in total, three who had never been made public. The alleged attacks, some of which allegedly took place in close proximity to Gaiman’s son, against women in their late teens to early 20s, took place at Gaiman’s much older home in the Empire State , in the north of the state. Other incidents occurred in New Zealand when he, then-wife and Dresden Doll member Amanda Palmer and their child were under Covid lockdown.
Calling the previous accusations consensual and denying any assault, Gaiman, supported by the CAA, did not respond to the new claims, which are complicated in the eyes of some by NDAs and apparently ongoing communications with the author by several of the women.
Netflix and Amazon Prime Video both have projects with the award-winning Gaiman, such as a second season of Sandman and the 90-minute finale episode of Good omens. While Gaiman retired from showrunning Good omens Last September, as the first round of allegations against him emerged, neither streamer responded to Deadline’s requests on Monday to comment on the new allegations against the writer/producer. If any of them respond to us, this post will be updated.
Currently under medical supervision while awaiting a new criminal trial on the East Coast for multiple sex crimes, Weinstein was quickly shunned and condemned by the industry after a trial in late 2017. New York Times denouncing the decades of abuse and rape he inflicted on young women in Hollywood and elsewhere. Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison after a Manhattan jury found the former studio chief guilty in 2020 of raping actress Jessica Mann and sexually assaulting production assistant Miriam Haley. A panel of New York appeals court judges threw out the conviction in April last year, ruling 4-3 that prosecutors erred in allowing testimony from other Weinstein accusers including allegations were not adjudicated.
Convicted of sex crimes in Los Angeles in 2022 and sentenced to 16 years in prison, Weinstein, who remains imprisoned, faces a number of civil trials on both coasts. Weinstein, who suffers from leukemia and is suing the state of New York for $5 million over so-called “deplorable conditions” at Rikers Island jail (he’s a prison buddy), Weinstein has yet to seen new East Coast trial date set.
The unspecified timeline is partly because the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has indicated more indictments are coming against Weinstein. No charges have been brought against Gaiman by authorities in the United States, New Zealand or American Gods the UK native scribe for now.
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