Neil Gaiman in 2023
Getty Images for The Moth
Neil Gaiman has filed an arbitration claim against one of the women who has accused him of sexual assault, Vulture reports. The author is reportedly seeking over $500,000 from Caroline Wallner for allegedly violating a nondisclosure agreement.
Wallner, a divorced mother of three, lived and worked as a caretaker at Gaiman’s property in Woodstock, New York, from 2014 to 2021. She claims the author began to abuse her in 2018, after Wallner’s marriage had fallen apart and her ex-husband left the property. Wallner, who had no income at the time, alleged that Gaiman pressured her into sex in exchange for staying on the property.
“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,” Wallner said on the 2024 podcast, Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman.
Wallner also claimed that when she tried to resist the author’s advances, Gaiman would suggest that his former wife, Amanda Palmer, wanted to reclaim the home Wallner and her family were living in. “But you take care of me and I’ll take care of you,” Wallner said Gaiman told her.
Gaiman has denied Wallner’s allegations and claimed she initiated their sexual encounters. (He’s denied all other allegations against him, as well.) In 2021, Gaiman paid Wallner $275,000 for signing a nondisclosure agreement, stopping her from filing a lawsuit or speaking about her allegations publicly. The NDA was reported on when Wallner first spoke on the Master podcast; she has since also discussed her allegations against Gaiman in New York magazine.
Gaiman’s new claim for arbitration alleges that Wallner violated the confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses of the NDA. He’s asking a full repayment of the original settlement, attorneys’ fees, and $50,000 for each interview she’s given. Wallner’s ex-husband is also named in the claim.
Vincent White, an attorney for Wallner, shared a statement with Rolling Stone: “Mr. Gaiman must feel he has nothing left to lose, I suspect he can feel us closing in on him. The idea that he would try to silence a woman he has already done so much to is disgusting. If we read a similar plot point in one of his stories we would think he was being too heavy handed in fleshing out his villain. Yet here he is, showing us that he was the real monster all along.”
Representatives for Gaiman did not immediately return a request for comment, though a rep did tell Vulture: “Caroline Wallner’s purported claims are completely meritless. We have no doubt that we will prevail in arbitration — and that Ms. Wallner’s actions will result in her having to pay Neil’s legal fees.”
While Wallner has been looking for legal remedies to void the NDA, she also filed an arbitration claim of her own against Gaiman last winter. She alleged that Gaiman’s lawyers held onto videos, photos, and text messages she’d sent Gaiman during the time of the alleged abuse in violation of a clause in the NDA requiring all parties to destroy such material.
From Rolling Stone US.
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