Unsurprisingly, Gaiman is alleging that Pavlovich invented her claims to extort money out of a wealthy, powerful, famous man. To support his version of events, he produced text messages between himself and Pavlovich in which she agrees with him, on multiple occasions, that their encounters were consensual. In one message, she denies having told Palmer that Gaiman “raped” her and that she was planning on “Me Tooing” him. “But I’m horrified by your message – me too you? Rape? WHAT? This is the first I have heard of this. Wow. I need a moment to digest your message… I have never used the word rape, I’m just so shocked, I honestly don’t know what to say,” she wrote to him.
Gaiman’s “gotcha” messages are actually consistent with the account Pavlovich gave to New York Magazine. In it, she described their first sexual encounter—in which Gaiman got into a tub with her uninvited—as assault, but admitted to continuing in and encouraging their sexual relationship for some time after. (She even shared some of the same text messages Gaiman is trying to use to discredit her.) However, within their relationship, she alleges that he forced acts upon her that were explicitly non-consensual. In the text messages Gaiman provided, Pavlovich emphasized that there were no hard feelings between her and him. But she also wrote, “I have told Amanda that even though it began questionably eventually it was undoubtedly consensual and I enjoyed it”—not exactly a ringing endorsement for the beginning of the relationship. “So many narratives unfolding and I feel like mine has been twisted along the way so much for various reasons I don’t quite understand,” she wrote in a later message.
But beyond the narrative-spinning, Gaiman’s filing has another purpose. Pavlovich filed her suit against Gaiman and Palmer in Wisconsin, and against Palmer alone in Massachusetts and New York. “No matter what Plaintiff says happened, it all happened in New Zealand between a New Zealand citizen and a New Zealand permanent resident,” Gaiman’s motion argues (via Deadline). “There is no legal authority to adjudicate her lawsuit in federal court in Wisconsin, or in other federal courts around the United States,” asserting that while her claims are false, “there is no dispute that all of the conduct alleged in the Complaint occurred in New Zealand, the proper forum, if any, for this lawsuit.”
