{"id":266083,"date":"2026-02-03T21:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266083\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:06:10","slug":"neil-gaiman-denies-sexual-assault-claims-as-he-plans-writing-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266083\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Gaiman denies sexual assault claims as he plans writing comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sandman author has maintained that his encounters with Pavlovich were consensual, admitting in a January 2025 statement<\/a> he had not always been considerate of the women he was involved with.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people\u2019s hearts and feelings, and that\u2019s something that I really, deeply regret.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several successful screen adaptations of his bestselling works have been developed, including Coraline and American Gods, with multiple other projects being reduced or halted after the scandal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a strange, turbulent and occasionally nightmarish year and a half, but I took my own advice (when things get tough, make good art),\u201d he said, announcing he had begun working on a new book.<\/p>\n

Pavlovich was introduced to Gaiman by his estranged wife and former Dresden Dolls member Amanda Palmer when she was a drama student.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old alleged she was repeatedly assaulted by Gaiman over the course of several months, bringing a lawsuit against him that was dismissed by a Wisconsin court judge in October last year.<\/p>\n

Judge James D Peterson cited a lack of jurisdiction as Gaiman is British and the alleged offending occurred in New Zealand but left the door open for further legal action in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder these circumstances, it is clear that New Zealand is the more appropriate forum for resolving this dispute, so the court will dismiss the case without prejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sandman author has maintained that his encounters with Pavlovich were consensual, admitting in a January 2025 statement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74,6030,26676,534,806,17704,13851,2562,22773,15159,28428,6125,156,3029,9903,71,51244,692,8241,11518,11788,111,139,69,2171,3109,82742,1527,17703,64460],"class_list":["post-266083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-after","tag-again","tag-allegations","tag-amid","tag-as","tag-assault","tag-author","tag-claims","tag-comeback","tag-denied","tag-denies","tag-disgraced","tag-entertainment","tag-eye","tag-fantasy","tag-from","tag-gaiman","tag-he","tag-himself","tag-misconduct","tag-neil","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-plans","tag-public","tag-removing","tag-return","tag-sexual","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}