Two more women “accuse Neil Gaiman of sexual assault and abuse” in a fifth installment of Tortoise Media’s podcast series Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman. There is also an article synopsizing the podcast with quotes and specific details at the link. The women came forward after Tortoise published accounts last month of two other women who say they were sexually assaulted by Gaiman while in otherwise consensual relationships with him.

According to the new claims – which Gaiman denies – beginning in 2017 he pressured Caroline Wallner, a mother of three, to have sex with him in return for letting her live with her daughters at his property in upstate New York; and following negotiations between attorneys in 2021 obtained a non-disclosure agreement from her in return for a $275,000 payment to help her cope with post-traumatic stress and depression following their sexual relationship. The report says, “There is no suggestion of physical force, but rather of coercion in light of her housing and family situation.”

Wallner told Tortoise Media she said she wanted to speak out against feelings of “fear and shame – those feelings don’t belong to me”. She said she wanted to tell her story to support the first two women who came forward, adding “the fact they were the same age as my daughters now was painful to hear.” Wallner said that the trait she shared with the two women wasn’t age, but vulnerability. “Saying ‘yes’ to an exchange with a powerful, wealthy man when you are vulnerable and fearful is never simple or clear,” she said. “Even if it’s seemingly consensual.”

A second woman, Julia Hobsbawm OBE, was a 22-year-old book publicist when in 1986 she was with Gaiman, then 25, at her studio flat in Chalk Farm, London. In what was “an aggressive, unwanted pass” Hobsbawm says Gaiman tried to kiss her.

Tortoise represents to have an account from Gaiman “that when he realised Hobsbawm wasn’t receptive to his attempt to kiss her, he stopped. His position is that it was no more than a young man misreading a situation…”

Tortoise reports Hobsbawm “says she now wished she had called Gaiman out back then as she is plagued by the incident to this day and worries that she enabled his alleged misconduct to continue.”

This brings to five the number of women who have shared their stories accusing Gaiman of sexual misconduct, beginning with two in the original Tortoise Media release (which is free to listen to), and a third woman on the Am I Broken: Survivor Stories podcast.