MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Federal judges have dismissed three lawsuits accusing bestselling British fantasy author Neil Gaiman of sexually assaulting his children's nanny in New Zealand four years ago.
Scarlett Pavlovich filed a lawsuit against Gaiman and his wife, Amanda Palmer, in Wisconsin in February 2025, accusing Gaiman of multiple sexual assaults while she worked as the family's nanny in 2022. She filed lawsuits against Palmer in Massachusetts and in New York on the same day she filed the Wisconsin action.
Gaiman has a home in northwestern Wisconsin, and Palmer lives in Massachusetts. Pavlovich moved to drop the New York lawsuit against Palmer in May, explaining in court documents that she filed an action in that state because Palmer had recently relocated from New York to Massachusetts and she was unsure which state had jurisdiction. U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil in New York City granted the request in June.
Pavlovich also dropped the portion of the Wisconsin lawsuit against Palmer in May, and U.S. District Judge James Peterson in Madison dismissed the rest of it in October, saying Pavlovich needed to pursue the case in New Zealand. U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton in Boston threw out the Massachusetts filing on Friday on the same grounds.
Pavlovich's attorneys didn’t respond to emails from The Associated Press seeking comment on Monday. Attorneys listed for Gaiman and Palmer didn’t respond to messages, either.
The AP doesn't identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they publicly identify themselves. Pavlovich identified herself in an interview with New York magazine, which published an article in January 2025 detailing allegations of assault, abuse and coercion leveled by eight women.
Pavlovich alleged in her lawsuits that she was 22 years old and homeless when she met Palmer in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2020. Palmer invited Pavlovich to the couple's Waiheke Island home, and she eventually became their son's nanny, according to the filings.
Gaiman sexually assaulted her on the night they met in February 2022, she alleged in the lawsuits. The assaults continued, but she kept working for the couple because she was broke and homeless, and Gaiman had told her that he would help her writing career, according to the filings.
When she told Palmer about the assaults, Palmer told her that more than a dozen women had told her in the past that Gaiman had sexually abused them, according to the lawsuits. The assaults finally stopped when Pavlovich told Palmer that she was going to kill herself, according to the filings.
Pavlovich went on to allege that Palmer knew of Gaiman's sexual desires and presented her to him, knowing he would assault her. She argued that Gaiman and Palmer violated federal human trafficking prohibitions and demanded at least $7 million in damages
Gaiman released a statement after the New York magazine article was published, denying he had ever engaged in non-consensual sex with anyone.
Gaiman's attorneys argued in a motion to dismiss the Wisconsin lawsuit that Gaiman and Pavlovich had a brief personal relationship that involved “consensual physical intimacy."
Police in New Zealand investigated her assault allegations and found them meritless, the motion says. The attorneys went on to argue that Pavlovich's lawsuits were the culmination of a plan to smear Gaiman and that any legal disputes should be resolved in New Zealand, not the United States.
Gaiman has authored numerous science fiction and fantasy works, including the novels “American Gods,” "The Graveyard Book," "Anansi Boys" and the dark children's fairy tale “Coraline.”
His 2013 novel, “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” won the British National Book Award.
FILE - Neil Gaiman arrives at the Art of Elysium Heaven Gala on Jan. 6, 2024, at The Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, declined to answer questions from House lawmakers in a deposition Monday, but indicated that if President Donald Trump ended her prison sentence, she was willing to testify that neither he nor former President Bill Clinton had done anything wrong in their connections with Epstein.
The House Oversight Committee had wanted Maxwell to answer questions during a video call to the federal prison camp in Texas where she’s serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, but she invoked her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions that would be self-incriminating. She’s come under new scrutiny as lawmakers try to investigate how Epstein, a well-connected financier, was able to sexually abuse underage girls for years.
Amid a reckoning over Epstein's abuse that has spilled into the highest levels of businesses and governments around the globe, lawmakers are searching for anyone who was connected to Epstein and may have facilitated his abuse. So far, the revelations have shown how both Trump and Clinton spent time with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, but they have not been credibly accused of wrongdoing.
During the closed-door deposition Monday, Maxwell's attorney David Oscar Markus said in a statement to the committee that “Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.”
He added that both Trump and Clinton “are innocent of any wrongdoing," but that ”Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation."
Democrats said that was a brazen effort by Maxwell to have Trump end her prison sentence.
“It’s very clear she’s campaigning for clemency,” said Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat.
Another Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, described Maxwell’s demeanor during the short video call as “robotic” and “unrepentant.”
Asked Monday about Maxwell's appeal, the White House pointed to previous remarks from the president that indicated the prospect of a pardon was not on his radar.
And other Republicans push backed to the notion quickly after Maxwell made the appeal.
“NO CLEMENCY. You comply or face punishment,” Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, wrote on social media. “You deserve JUSTICE for what you did you monster.”
Maxwell has also been seeking to have her conviction overturned, arguing that she was wrongfully convicted. The Supreme Court rejected her appeal last year, but in December she requested that a federal judge in New York consider what her attorneys describe as “substantial new evidence” that her trial was spoiled by constitutional violations.
Maxwell's attorney cited that petition as he told lawmakers she would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights.
Family members of the late Virginia Giuffre, one of the most outspoken victims of Epstein, also released a letter to Maxwell making it clear they did not consider her “a bystander” to Epstein's abuse.
“You were a central, deliberate actor in a system built to find children, isolate them, groom them, and deliver them to abuse,” Sky and Amanda Roberts wrote in the letter addressed to Maxwell.
Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison camp in Texas last summer after she participated in two-days of interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The Republican chair of the committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, had also subpoenaed her at the time, but her attorneys have consistently told the committee that she wouldn't answer questions. However, Comer came under pressure to hold the deposition as he pressed for the committee to enforce subpoenas on Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After Comer threatened them with contempt of Congress charges, they both agreed to sit for depositions later this month.
Comer has been haggling with the Clintons over whether that testimony should be held in a public hearing, but Comer reiterated Monday that he would insist on holding closed-door depositions and later releasing transcripts and video.
Meanwhile, several lawmakers visited a Justice Department office in Washington Monday to look through unredacted versions of the files on Epstein that the department has released to comply with a law passed by Congress last year. As part of an arrangement with the Justice Department, lawmakers were given access to the over 3 million released files in a reading room with four computers. Lawmakers can only make handwritten notes, and their staff are not allowed in with them.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, spent several hours in the reading room Monday morning. He told reporters as he returned to the Capitol that even if all the House members who triggered the vote on releasing the files “spent every waking hour over at the Department of Justice, it would still take us months to get through all of those documents.”
Democrats on Raskin's committee are looking ahead to a Wednesday hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi, where they are expected to sharply question her on the publication of the Epstein files. The Justice Department failed to redact the personal information of many victims, including inadvertently releasing nude photos of them.
“Over and over we begged them, please be careful, please be more careful,” said Jennifer Freeman, an attorney representing survivors. “The damage has already been done. It feels incompetent, it feels intimidating and it feels intentional.”
Democrats also say the Justice Department redacted information that should have been made public, including information that could lead to scrutiny of Epstein’s associates.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who sponsored the legislation to force the release of the files, said that after reviewing the unredacted versions for several hours, he had found the names of six men “that are likely incriminated by their inclusion.” He called on the Justice Department to pursue accountability for the men, but said he could potentially name them in a House floor speech, where his actions would be constitutionally protected from lawsuits.
Massie, along with California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, said they also came across a number of files that still had redactions. They said that was likely because the FBI had turned over redacted versions of the files to the Justice Department.
Khanna said “it wasn't just Epstein and Maxwell” who were involved in sexually abusing underage girls.
Release of the files has set in motion multiple political crises around the world, including in the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer is clinging to his job after it was revealed his former ambassador to the U.S. had maintained close ties to Epstein. But Democratic lawmakers bemoaned that so far U.S. political figures seem to be escaping unscathed.
“I’m just afraid that the general worsening and degradation of American life has somehow conditioned people not to take this as seriously as we should be taking it,” Raskin said.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., joined at left by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., speaks to reporters after a closed-circuit deposition with Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend and confidante of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., flanked by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., left, and Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., speaks to reporters after a closed-circuit deposition with Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend and confidante of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
