Don’t Watch the New Michael Jackson Documentary Before Bed. Or Lunch. Or Dinner.

 

This week HBO released the long-awaited documentary Leaving Neverland, a two-part series of interviews with two alleged victims of childhood sexual abuse by entertainer Michael Jackson. It’s part of a recent evaluation of sexual crimes of the rich and famous during the #MeToo era, and comes on the heels of a similarly disturbing documentary of musician R. Kelly.

The series tells the stories of two of Jackson’s alleged victims, an Australian boy named Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who describe their abuse as spanning in time from when they were around age seven to their early teens.

Like many viewers of the documentary, I grew up knowing Michael Jackson and loving his music. My mother was a fan, and yet, as a victim of childhood sexual abuse herself, I don’t remember a time where discussion of Jackson didn’t come along with an acknowledgment that he was a serial predator. Even before the first accusations emerged in 1993, my mother saw how Jackson would befriend young boys and immediately knew it for what it was: grooming; and Jackson himself for what he was: a pedophile.

Writing at the Daily Wire, Matt Walsh lays out what we know about Jackson and his history with children in a bullet point list of seven points. Here are the most notable, in my opinion:

(1) Jackson sought and befriended prepubescent boys. He took these boys as companions and traveled the world with them. Every so often, he would find a new young male companion and move on from the old one. This fact is not disputed.

(4) Jackson invited the boys into his bed. This fact is not disputed.

It’s shocking that this needs to be said, but:

The Daily Beast broke down a bit of what we know about the allegations of abuse against Jackson,

“More, it indicts so many people: the Safechuck and Robson families, the people in Jackson’s camp, Jackson’s fans, the media, and all of us. This was happening in plain sight. The amount of footage of Jackson walking hand-in-hand with a carousel of young boys through the years is shocking. He was exonerated for it twice. In many fans’ eyes, for a lifetime.”

The Daily Beast’s Stereo Williams added, “There was never a time when the biggest star in the world jet-setting with what seemed like an endless line of young ‘traveling companions’ should have been endorsed or normalized. There was never a time when him admitting he slept in beds with them should have been defended.”

The partial, heavily redacted FBI files on Michael Jackson that were released in 2009 offer their own insight into this epic saga—the allegations, exonerations, and years of investigating and compiling evidence. Some revelations from the file are strikingly incomplete. There are multiple pages about a videocassette tape, “marked in part ‘Michael Jackson’s Neverland Favorites An All Boy Anthology.’” The subject of a 1995 analysis request from US Customs is “child pornography.” It is unclear from the report what exactly was on the tape.

Those three paragraphs accurately describe the Leaving Neverland documentary as well: strikingly incomplete, but damning nonetheless.

In the first part of the documentary, Robeson and Safechuck detail in painful and stomach-turning detail how Jackson identified them, how he separated them from their families while convincing them to trust him alone with their sons, and then groomed the boys for abuse. After the first part, I was struck by how little evidence was actually offered. In the wake of decades-old allegations in the political and entertainment sphere, I have come to establish a litmus test for how I evaluated claims. The allegations have to be plausible, they have to have been shared contemporaneously with other people or written in some form, and tangible evidence of some kind of a relationship between the two parties is necessary.

According to this litmus test, Robeson and Safechuck don’t come out looking great: the allegations they make have been made by other young boys in Jackson’s orbit, and are plausible given his inappropriate relationships with young boys over the years, and there is plenty of evidence that they spent time together alone. But not only did Robeson and Safechuck not tell anyone at the time or even years later of the abuse they suffered, but they testified multiple times that it did not. While Jackson was alive and in debt, they defended his conduct, and after his death, when his estate is flush with cash, they are suing for millions. They are not impartial victims, and that, unfortunately, is the most damning strike against them.

The second part of the documentary chronicles what the abuse they describe has done to their lives, their relationships with their parents, their wives and their children. It is, remarkably, even more disturbing in its content than the first part, where graphic details of the abuse are shared. How does a son tell his mother that the man she allowed him to be around abused him? How does a husband tell his wife that his first sexual encounters were with a grown man? And how does a father cope with his abuse while raising a child the same age as he was when the abuse began?

While there are holes in the credibility of both victims, after watching both parts it’s clear there is something there. Not just because every single family member would earn an Oscar for their performance if it wasn’t, but also because it’s common sense. The series isn’t just an indictment against Jackson, but against the families of the boys who allowed their sons to travel with Jackson, to share his bed, to have unfettered access over the course of months. Some of the physical evidence offered by the Robeson family includes dozens of faxes that Jackson would send to their son over the course of months, sent several times a day, amounting to love notes. At the end of the second part, Robeson’s siblings, wife, and Robeson himself don’t hold back about how Robeson’s mother failed to protect him.

Legions of Jackson’s fans, while defending their idol, have asked why now? Why drag Jackson’s name through the mud after his death? What is the purpose? And this is it: We need to have a reckoning as a society, how did we watch Jackson cavorting with young boys and turn away? How did these parents make such a profound mistake when it came to the safety of their sons? We need to come to terms with these answers in order to keep kids like Robeson and Safechuck safe in the future.

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  1. Vance Richards Inactive
    Vance Richards
    @VanceRichards

    Bethany Mandel: While Jackson was alive and in debt, they defended his conduct, and after his death, when his estate is flush with cash, they are suing for millions. They are not impartial victims, and that, unfortunately, is the most damning strike against them.

    Hard to tell at this time what really happened. But here is a simple bit of parenting advice: If a grown man wants your child to sleep with him in his bed, say “No!” And here is the part that seems hard to some, say “No” even if the man is famous.

    • #1
  2. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    I only saw the LAST ten minutes of it and it was too much – The Jackson Five are supposed to be playing at the Panama City Beach Jazz Festival very soon, and I heard they cut their Australian Tour short to return to “deal with” this documentary before the show – it’s just very sad that such a talented family and Michael Jackson kept this hidden – surely someone knew something – and what about the mothers or parents of these small kids that were given “special privileges” at Neverland? Hello – red flag! 

    • #2
  3. Shawn Buell (Majestyk) Member
    Shawn Buell (Majestyk)
    @Majestyk

    This is the same reckoning we need to have with a lot of beloved figures – the most notable I can think of being Bill Cosby.

    It does seem as if there was a culture of complete indulgence for the talent’s quirks/kinks/grotesquely-illegal-and-immoral-behaviors in the entertainment business… and so long as the money kept on flowing in, the people in orbit around these black holes who were financially feeding off of their gravitational pull were more than happy to continue to abet them.

    But money and fame are like morphine.  The families who allowed this to happen benefited from being in Jackson’s orbit financially even as they were torn to shreds.  People lose their minds at the briefest touch of fame, seemingly.

    • #3
  4. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    I’m going to take the advice your post title suggests and not watch, period.

    • #4
  5. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    And yet, we’ve already seen the attempts at exoneration and/or explanation. Slate is particularly good at offering up this kind of folderol. From “ it complicates our view of victimhood,” to it was his father’s fault, to why aren’t we talking about race when black men are disproportionately falsely accused, to my favorite, “it shows the limitations of the ‘believe  victims’ credo.” Oh, sure. Now it has limitations.

    Periodically, people make a run at “pedophilia is not a choice, it is a sexual orientation just like heterosexuality.*” The NY Times made that argument in 2014 and Ted Talks released one on their videos on it last year. Can you imagine the hellfire that would be released if you tried that argument with rape? Oh, wait. They are. Because that’s exactly what pedophiles engage in. It’s rape, plain and simple. And yet the hellfire stays in the holster. 

     

    *Notice they never compare it to homosexuality?

    • #5
  6. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk): It does seem as if there was a culture of complete indulgence for the talent’s quirks/kinks/grotesquely-illegal-and-immoral-behaviors in the entertainment business…

    Jimmy Savile of the BBC is a perfect example.

    • #6
  7. unsk2 Member
    unsk2
    @

    For the life of me, I don’t know why they still play Jackson’s music on the radio. This horrendous child abuse story has been out there in one form or another for years.  Michael Jackson was a monster. He was seen openly escorting little boys to his hotel room , particularly in the Middle East where they btw don’t care at all about such things.

    Michael Jackson’s father abused all his brothers and sisters, including of course Michael.   I know someone in the music industry very connected to black music royalty and who has been around the Jackson family. She says they are all strange, with the possible exception of Janet. But who wouldn’t be if you were sexually abused by your father?

    • #7
  8. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Bethany Mandel: We need to have a reckoning as a society, how did we watch Jackson cavorting with young boys and turn away? How did these parents make such a profound mistake when it came to the safety of their sons? We need to come to terms with these answers in order to keep kids like Robeson and Safechuck safe in the future.

    How would one do this, exactly?

    First of all, I was around at the time.  Exactly what was I supposed to do?  I’m not a cop, not a prosecutor, and had no connection whatsoever to Jackson or the victims.

    Second of all, how are “we” supposed to keep kids safe if they don’t report abuse?  Not that they would have reported to me, anyway.  I’ve never heard of any of these kids.  

    If the point is that as parents, we shouldn’t let one of our children associate too closely with an unrelated and unknown adult — especially a celebrity who is taking an odd interest in our child — then, well, duh.

    So this comes down to bad parenting, doesn’t it?  If the allegations are true, which sounds questionable.

    • #8
  9. Ralphie Inactive
    Ralphie
    @Ralphie

    In ten years you could change the narrative to “right in plain sight” it wasn’t a good idea to give kids hormones and mastectomies.  The old emperor’s new clothes keeps being repeated.

    I guess old Joe Jackson got away with the most.

    Most child prodigies do not escape being damaged, and as good as Jackson was (and he was a good entertainer) he was basically a freak show the last decade of his life.  It seems in the hands of an opportunistic parent, they  suffer themselves, and also inflict damage on others.  

    • #9
  10. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Had he lived another decade, it’s hard to see how Jackson wouldn’t have gotten caught up in the #MeToo movement over the past 18 months — either that, or Kevin Spacey would have to have been given a free pass for his actions with slightly older boys, since it would have been hard to see the bill finally coming due for Spacey without at least some of the spotlight being turned on Jackson and his actions, no matter what earlier court verdicts were.

    • #10
  11. Joe Boyle Member
    Joe Boyle
    @JoeBoyle

    Check out Abducted in Plan Sight on Netflix. In it (a true story) a very smart, manipulative pedophile, a very naive, stupid, easily manipulated, morally flawed family, and a naive 12 year old girl all come together in a tale of two kidnaps, and abuse that happens over a period of years. It’s about 90 minutes long. At 60 minutes, I thought this can’t get stranger or more perverse.  I was wrong.

    • #11
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