Neil Gaiman has asked a Wisconsin federal court to throw out Scarlett Pavlovich’s lawsuit against him, pointing to text messages that he says refute her “outrageous” claims — and arguing that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over allegations arising in New Zealand anyway. In February, Pavlovich sued Gaiman for human trafficking and sexual abuse, claiming that he “repeatedly raped” her while she was a live-in nanny for his child in New Zealand in 2022. She previously detailed these allegations in a New York Magazine cover story in which multiple other women accused the author of nonconsensual sexual activity. Gaiman has denied the allegations. In a March 4 motion to dismiss Pavlovich’s suit, his lawyers said her claims were a “sham” and part of a “plan to maximize adverse publicity against Gaiman.” The filing characterized his relationship with Pavlovich as one that “involved consensual physical intimacy, not sexual intercourse,” alleging that she “invented” the “sexual scenarios she describes deliberately in graphic detail” in the suit.
The motion to dismiss included alleged WhatsApp messages between Gaiman and Pavlovich that his legal team says show that any sexual conduct that occurred between them was “in all ways consensual.” The filing further argues that “on many occasions, it was initiated and/or encouraged by Plaintiff herself,” pointing to messages sent after an alleged sexual encounter where she appeared to thank him for a “lovely lovely night” or described being “consumed by thoughts” of him, among other texts.
Pavlovich has stated that she did not initially view what allegedly happened to her as rape or sexual assault, but that her perspective changed as she spoke to other women. She also addressed some of her texts to Gaiman in New York’s cover story; when Gaiman shared that he’d heard that she was telling people he had raped her, she recalled being scared to upset him before reassuring him in a reply that it “was consensual (and wonderful).”
In addition to her suit filed in Wisconsin, where Gaiman owns a home, Pavlovich has sued Gaiman’s wife, Amanda Palmer, in New York and Massachusetts. These complaints accuse Palmer of allegedly “procuring and presenting” Pavlovich to her husband; Palmer has denied the allegations.