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.
Or, we could stick to our system of presuming innocence until guilt is proven.
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.)
Why would you default to that?
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.
You do not need a conviction to make up your mind.
That’s correct. We do, however, need a conviction before stating it as fact instead of opinion.
Not only are you siding with the party with no evidence
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?
Or this dude?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan
Lightning apparently can strike at least seven times if you’re Roy Sullivan.
used to say that a very unusual event is not likely to happen again to the same person or in the same place
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
