Neil Gaiman Is Innocent: The Accusers Are ''Poor-Mouthing''
Claims of economic dependence significantly shape how we see these accusations. It's a way to dismiss the consistent evidence of consent. ''They had no real choice.'' One problem. They aren't poor.
In two out of the 5 accusers, the claims center on economic dependence. Caroline Wallner said she was terrified of losing her rent-free studio in Gaiman’s Hudson Valley estate. In Scarlett Pavlovich’s case, she claims to have been housing insecure.
I had to search for a term for what is happening here and found a good one; ‘Poor Mouthing’. It’s an on-the-nose Apallachian term for when someone fraudulently downplays their wealth and connections for some base advantage. ‘Performative poverty’ and ‘class cosplay’ were also-rans.
Large swathes of the public seem to think Scarlett was a ‘‘homeless drifter’’ who slept on the beach, who was estranged from her family - who in any case were abusive towards her.
All this is what we’ve been led to believe by Master and There Is No Safe Word, as well as Pavlovich’s Complaint document in the now dismissed court case.
This investigation can reveal that Scarlett is in fact the daughter of CEO Bernard Pavlovich. He owned the highly successful Pavlovich Coachlines, before selling up at a huge profit last year.
She is not estranged from her parents, but in fact goes on family holidays in the Mediterranean with them. This is Bernard Pavlovich, here with his yacht.
And here is Scarlett Pavlovich on the yacht just this year - a still from a video uploaded to her father’s social media.
Here is a video from the same trip. It has been slowed down and 90 degrees rotated to be easier to view. I’ll place downloads of the raw originals at the end of the article in case anyone wants to check their authenticity.
I should mention at this point, I will only be talking about the two accusers who claimed a level of economic dependency. These questions are not raised in the case of the other three.
DID SHE GROW UP IN AN ABUSIVE HOUSEHOLD?
Just because someone’s family is rich, doesn’t mean they had an easy time of it growing up. She makes a number of claims about her childhood in There Is No Safe Word.
So on balance, do they stack up?
Shapiro’s article leaves a lot of questions, it doesn’t say which family members beat her with a belt, or strangled her, and how often. That’s important because it changes our understanding of Scarlett’s safety net, and to what extent not seeing them was her choice.
In the WhatsApp messages she merely says:
Scarlett (19:07)
Thank you Neil. ❤️ My address now is ——————. Also I was wondering I have to shift all my stuff from my ————- place this week but I have no way of transporting it… my dad and I are not on speaking terms anymore (which hurts). Would I be able to potentially borrow your car somehow?! Finally got my license! No more L plates!
This was some time after all Neil’s alleged abuse, and she’ll keep on making requests for him to pay her rent during this time, always playing up her poverty while planning her next trip aboard.
The term ‘estranged’ usually means to be more or less permanently cut off, rather than a temporary falling out, and this sounds more like spat. She makes no mention of her mother.
Scarlett was actually 16 when she left home, as she mentions in archived blogs. She would also go to a fee-paying school in Scotland for 2 years, run by Tilda Swinton. She claims to have got a scholarship, but if it was on the basis of need as is implied why would the daughter of a CEO get financial aid?
Her leaving is presented as running away from an abusive situation. Social media from the time suggests she had the full support of her father, and if they fell out it was much later. And clearly she’s not paying for her 5-7 years of travelling herself.
You really can’t tell just by looking at someone whether they had a difficult childhood. But the general vagueness, and the overall posh background, alongside the omission of all mention of her family’s wealth certainly raises a lot of doubt.
Her mother is Dr Kathryn Pavlovich, Professor in Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability at the University of Waikato, which is 2 hours outside Auckland. She lectures on a empathy, Yoga and spirituality.
And again, you can never really know for sure. But it’s hard to square this person with someone who strangles their kids. From the following podcast, it seems like her students really like her.
She doesn’t mention Scarlett directly here, but she does say a few things that may relate to her.
‘‘And really it was having my children which was at the age of 25 that gave me this huge purpose, and that really changed they gave me a security I’d never had, a purpose I’d never had, this is despite having a good upbringing there wasn’t anything traumatic about my upbringing in any way. But yeah having my children was quite significant in having that medicine. And I think if I extrapolate that for the rest of my life its about having a sense of purpose having that meaning its been quite significant, navigating change…
But then again when your purpose shifts… it endangers or it falls apart .. that’s a huge trough you can go into because you know purpose is and you know what meaning is and then suddenly being without it is quite a traumatic experience…’’
No mention of a separation from Bernard Pavolovich. There are lots of videos, here about ‘Quantum Empathy’ and ‘Purposeful Empathy.’
And here she is giving a talk to some young people:
THE FULL PICTURE
It’s hard not to get a sense of someone with highly supportive, empathetic parents. At least a lot better start in life than most people get. A hard luck case? Not in the usual sense, certainly.
And part of an extended family where the daughters have everything they want, her cousin appears to be an equestrian for instance.
And not only was she not homeless, it looks like her family owns a significant part of Auckland, inheriting a variety of landholding companies from the family patriarch - likely something that Scarlett will be heir to in time.
And so on…
Today Scarlett goes to St Andrews, it’s a university that has a reputation for only being for ‘‘posh, priveleged rich kids’’. At 27 minutes into the last episode of Master, you’ll notice she’s lost her New Zealand twang and sounds exceedingly well bred for a homeless drifter.
It’s now been revealed that she crossed paths with Master investigator Rachel Johnson long before she met Neil Gaiman. It’s unclear whether they spoke, or whether she was just in attendance, but according to Johnson she was here at the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2019, listening to ‘Writing about the Rich: From Gatsby to Starry Nights’.
You’ll notice that Rachel Johnson in her usual tone-deaf fashion consistently laments how people don’t take the issues of the rich seriously enough, and how unfortunate is that the public don’t pity them as much as poor people.
I can only guess that this is a message that warmed Scarlett Pavlovich to her considerably.
After Master a lot of messages have been removed from Scarlett’s instagram.
Apologies for the poor picture quality, because this is the only impression of this now deleted message. Here Rachel Johnson, says:
‘‘Do you speak Balmain?’’
This is a kind of fashion-insider expression, related to the luxury clothing brand Balmain. It means ‘‘are you fluent in expensive taste?’’ Or ‘‘do you know your luxury brands?’’ Or ‘‘are you part of our elite luxury lifestyle?’’ It’s the sort of thing that only one rich person would say to another.
Not only is Scarlett Pavlovich not poor, but the journalist who has helped present her as poor and economically dependent knows this.
And who is that commenting with a heart symbol? Tivolitilesny is the instagram account of other accuser Caroline Wallner.
CAROLINE WALLNER
Pavlovich’s claims to economic dependence are pretty much in tatters at this point, even before we consider that she was only at Gaiman’s for a few weeks, and didn’t even stay permanently at his place - but came and went to Auckland.
But Caroline lived on Gaiman’s property for 6 years, albeit rent-free, and claims to have been so terrified of losing her place there that she agreed to a sex-for-rent exchange with Neil Gaiman. That he suggesed she would be able to keep her place if she had sex with him.
Others note that she seemed to willingly pursue Neil of her volition, and that her house and studio was due for renovation, so her time there was coming to and end.
Like Pavlovich her claims revolve around this notion of economic dependance, which in court is something that can be taken seriously. It can be an argument that consent was invalid, because someone had ‘‘no real choice’’.
In the main article on Wallner I go into a great deal of depth about the background, and the arguments over real estate that precipated the move to legal action. But this section here is just about her economic status.
She has three daughters, who by the time she started making allegations were college aged. They all were sent to liberal arts colleges, which must have been expensive. But it wasn’t something Wallner had to do - so feasibly that money would have been available for her own use.
She was of course living there on the estate for six years rent-free, she also had a ceramics studio there in the barn. Was she just an ordinary artist, trying to get noticed?
Well no, she actually sold the ceramics to a large variety of wealthy and famous patrons, including long-term friend Michael Stipe, lead singer of REM. In fact this 2023 Milan exhibition was presented by both of them.
These are not cheap ceramics, and she sold to the sort of clients where she could effectively name her price. All from a free studio.
Couldn’t those wealthy contacts could have been leant on to step in when Gaiman and Palmer asked her to leave. Why couldn’t she live in one of Stipe’s houses in Athens?
Would it even be possible to pressure someone who had access to these sorts of options?
It seemed she had decent enough income to house herself, her daughters by this point heading off to college. But even if that were not true, couldn’t she ask someone to lend her money or help her in some way?
What does economic dependence really mean when someone is this well connected to a world of wealthy patrons?
Like Scarlett, if Wallner can’t prove that she literally had ‘‘no other choice’’ but to have sex with Neil Gaiman, then she was simply having sex consensually by choice.
In Master she says of the relationship generally it ‘‘felt nice’’, and ‘‘I really thought he might like me’’. She was upset when he said he didn’t see it as a romantic relationship. Is this not sufficient enough evidence that she pursued a relationship with him, for her own personal reasons? And if you look at the full article on Wallner, you’ll see that there are other motives for taking legal action.
RAW VIDEOS
As promised here are the raw files of Scarlett Pavlovich on her father’s yacht for anyone who should want to check them.
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