Neil Gaiman — the best-selling author whose work includes comic book series *The Sandman *and the novels Good Omens and American Gods — has denied sexual assault allegations made against him by two women with whom he had relationships with at the time, Tortoise Media reports.
The allegations were made during Tortoise’s four-part podcast Master: the Allegations Against Neil Gaiman, which was released Wednesday. In it, the women allege “rough and degrading sex” with the author, which the women claim was not always consensual.
One of the women, a 23-year-old named Scarlett, worked as a nanny to his child.
Editing this comment because it appears it has come across to some as doubting the accusers, when I intended to present a skeptical comment about Gaiman. To clarify, my point is that they have plenty of evidence and he has made one rebuttal, which included a lie about one of the victims.
Lighting definitely strikes more than twice.
Just like my dad
…in ten pin bowling, right?
… right?
Or, we could stick to our system of presuming innocence until guilt is proven.
Nah, it’s Trial by Twitter for most of the last decade.
Sounds like communism. /s
I’m going to copy and paste my reply from elsewhere:
Of course we shouldn’t lock someone up based on an accusation but courts are imperfect. Many people are convicted of crimes they did not commit and other crimes are difficult to convince people on. It’s also highly unlikely Gaiman will ever go to a criminal trial over this, like so many other people who commit sexual assault. That’s why you don’t wait for a conviction to support women.
Estimates of false accusations are usually under 1 in 20. This article claims 2-10%. why would you default to that position? Again, we are not a court of law. You do not need a conviction to make up your mind.
Regardless, the evidence presented so far is more than sufficient for a conviction. In the Gaiman cases, we have multiple witnesses and contemporaneous evidence for both women. It’s not just 2 random people making claims. Why would this be a vast conspiracy of 2 women who faked contemporaneous evidence and both have multiple witnesses and physical evidence? What evidence do you have that all of their evidence is fake?
Edit: let’s go one step farther. The 2 women have witnesses and contemporaneous evidence. Gaiman made a claim that one woman had a memory disorder, which has already been proven false. Not only are you siding with the party with no evidence, you are siding with the one whose only evidence has been debunked within hours. Again, why?
I’m all for supporting women. Give them a chance to speak out, make sure they are fairly listened to and taken seriously. You’ve gone a step beyond that, you’ve already decided guilt and innocence and proclaimed it. More, you’re doing so from a position of influence (yes, as a moderator of a large community, that’s what you are). This is the sort of thing that libel charges get filed for (ok, not gonna happen at our current size, but you may want to start keeping that in mind.)
Because that’s the basis of our legal bloody system! Innocent until proven guilty! There’s a thousand law professors out there who can explain it better and more eloquently than I could in a thousand years, but that’s the gist of it.
That’s correct. We do, however, need a conviction before stating it as fact instead of opinion.
I beg to differ. I have not sided with any party. What is it about people today that they seem unable to grasp the concept of neutrality?
How is that neutrality? If you’re going to troll, do better dude
Troll? I was pointing out the issues in your logic. Was the blatant sarcasm not blatant enough for you?
Thanks for the Times article link, interesting history for discounting women’s claims specifically in rape cases.
Have you ever heard of a lightning rod?
Or this dude?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan
Lightning apparently can strike at least seven times if you’re Roy Sullivan.
deleted by creator
As commentary on the idiom and not the topic of the thread, surely it’s an ineffective idiom if the meaning is vastly different from the saying? I feel like everyone had a “it does strike twice, though” moment in their life after hearing this exact phrase
Except the whole “women coming after him” is steeped in misogyny and not reality. How many people get accused by multiple victims of the same thing, with evidence and witnesses? I’m not clear about the 2005 case, but the more recent one has physical evidence and witnesses. Gaiman’s evidence is an already disproven claim. One side has physical evidence while one is lying.
So what you’re saying is, all I need to do to get one of my exes jailed is get to know another disgruntled ex of theirs? Awesome!
Edit: Just to note that parent comment has been ninja edited, multiple hours after my comment was made and a whole conversation was carried out. The original comment was something to the effect of ‘Two people accused him, it MUST be true!’
Yes, it’s a conspiracy! That’s a great first assumption. Classic misogyny
No, you’re the one who started with the assumptions. The correct behaviour is to make no assumptions and wait for the legal system to sort things out.
Jeez, I can’t believe I’m having to explain this to a mod on one of the biggest communities on lemmy.
Of course we shouldn’t lock someone up based on an accusation but courts are imperfect. Many people are convicted of crimes they did not commit and other crimes are difficult to convince people on. It’s also highly unlikely Gaiman will ever go to a criminal trial over this, like so many other people who commit sexual assault. That’s why you don’t wait for a conviction to support women.
Estimates of false accusations are usually under 1 in 20. This article claims 2-10%. why would you default to that position? Again, we are not a court of law. You do not need a conviction to make up your mind.
Regardless, the evidence presented so far is more than sufficient for a conviction. In the Gaiman cases, we have multiple witnesses and contemporaneous evidence for both women. It’s not just 2 random people making claims. Why would this be a vast conspiracy of 2 women who faked contemporaneous evidence and both have multiple witnesses and physical evidence? What evidence do you have that all of their evidence is fake?
Edit: let’s go one step farther. The 2 women have witnesses and contemporaneous evidence. Gaiman made a claim that one woman had a memory disorder, which has already been proven false. Not only are you siding with the party with no evidence, you are siding with the one whose only evidence has been debunked within hours. Again, why?
No one forced you to watch the Amazon adaption of Good Omens. You can have just stuck with the book.
brain dead take