Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Good Omens, American Gods, etc) was accused of sexual assault by two women in an episode of the podcast Tortoise, “Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman,” in July, and Rolling Stone reported the following month that three more women had come forward with allegations of their own against the author. Tori Amos, who has been a longtime friend and collaborator of Gaiman’s, has now responded to the allegations for the first time. Speaking to The Guardian, she said she was “shocked” to hear about them, saying, “And if the allegations are true, that’s not the Neil that I knew, that’s not the friend that I knew, nor a friend that I ever want to know. So in some ways it’s a heartbreaking grief. I never saw that side of Neil. Neither did my crew. And my crew has seen a lot.”
More from The Guardian:
She says it’s devastating for the women involved, and I ask if she has listened to the podcasts. “No,” she says. “But I’ve read …” She looks as if she’s about to cry. “He’s godfather to Tash.” Her eyes well up. She struggles to contain herself. “My manager was the one who told me, because the girls” – Tash and her cousin, Kelsey – “found out about it from a paper. Tash said, ‘Kels, we’re not telling Mom’ – they call me ‘T-Bird’, but she might have said ‘Mom’ here. But she said, ‘We’re not telling Mom right now, we’re going straight to John [Witherspoon], because we don’t know, first of all, the legality. We have to work through this, and it’s the holiday weekend [4 July is Independence Day in the US], and Mom has to work through this.’
“And so John said, ‘I will speak to her as soon as she gets off the plane,’ and that’s what happened.
“I haven’t publicly said anything because: what do I say? I didn’t hire the nannies. I wasn’t there. I’ve never met these people. And I’ve never received a letter – of the thousands of letters I’ve gotten in 33 years – I’ve never received anything that was about Neil, except praise for his work and how much his work meant to people. That’s all I ever knew.”
Read the interview in full on The Guardian.
Amos was the first spokesperson for RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), and her Little Earthquakes track “Me and a Gun” recounts her own experience with sexual assault at 21.
Amos has a new live album, Diving Deep Live, out on December 6 via Decca Records, featuring songs recorded during her 2022-2023 Ocean to Ocean tour. Hear a rendition of her classic Under the Pink track “Cornflake Girl” from that below.