He whipped to fame with left Michael
The full extent of his Jackson’s brutality did not emerge until 1993. Tortured Thriller icon Michael – who died aged 50 from a drug overdose in June 2009 – finally opened up to TV chat show host Oprah Winfrey about how ruthless his father could be.
The King of Pop told how Jackson would sit with a belt in his hands while he watched him and his brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon rehearse their routines as The Jackson 5 during the 60s. Michael told Oprah: “If you didn’t do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you.”
He also said even just the sight of his father made him throw up.
Many people close to the family believe his extensive plastic surgery was a desperate effort to undo his close resemblance to “Papa Joe”.
Jackson later admitted he “whipped” Michael but denied it could be categorised as a beating. “I whipped him with a switch (cane) and a belt. I never beat him. You beat someone with a stick,” he told the BBC’S Louis Theroux in a 2003 interview.
The chat also made headlines because Jackson said in response to a question about his superstar son: “We don’t believe in gays. I can’t stand them.”
Jackson’s children said his whippings with his belt or cane would “sting like fury” and leave bloody welts.
Even when they were into their 20s and married, the Jackson brothers lived in fear of their father’s violent anger.
Several times, their mum Katherine had to intervene when Jackson attacked one of his sons with a belt.
“They are grown now, Joe, they are
ON REHEARSAL BEATINGS
stars, they have fans,” she would plead. “What are you going to do with a belt?”
Jackson’s relentless aggression pushed many of his children into early marriages and doomed relationships as they desperately sought to flee his control.
And the abuse was not confined to his sons – daughters Rebbie, Janet and La Toya were also subject to his outbursts.
Janet once recalled him striking her when she was getting out of the bath as a little girl. “I don’t remember if I truly deserved it,” she said.
In her 1991 memoir, La Toya, 62, wrote that in addition to beating his children, he molested her and Rebbie.
She said: “When your father gets out of bed with your mother and gets into bed with his daughter and you hear the mother saying, ‘No, Joe, not tonight. Let her rest. Leave her alone, she’s tired’, that makes you crazy.” Rebbie, 68, claimed at the time of the book’s release she was not raped.
But when interviewed later for a planned book of her own, she said: “Joseph did inappropriately touch me.”
Born in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, in 1928, Joseph Walter Jackson was the oldest of five children.
His parents split when he was 12 and he went with his father to Oakland, California, while his mother moved to Indiana.
Jackson moved to be with her at 18 and trained to be a boxer. He wed Katherine Scruse in 1949, having annulled a previous marriage to be with her.
They went on to have 10 children together. Noticing the musical talent of many of his offspring, Jackson became a manager for them.
The Jackson 5 had formed by 1966 and went on to have hits including I W You Back, ABC and Never Can Goodbye. But the family were riven decades by internal strife, legal bat jealousies, arguments over cash estrangements.
If you didn’t do it right, he would tear you up, really get you
MICHAEL JACKSON
Central to all the family’s woes Joe, whose affairs led their lives descending fur into chaos. According to Katherine Jackson’s autobiography, her husband cheate her throughout their 60-year marria
She filed for divorce in 1973 but it later rescinded.
In 1974, Joh’vonnie Jackson was b out of a decades-long affair Jackson with Cheryl Terrell.
Katherine would file for divor second time, although she never leg went through with the split and t