Listen for what kids don’t say
Ialways found Michael Jackson’s crotchgrabbing dance moves sleazy, embarrassing even, but my kids thought he was great. Watching this week as one of his child victims mimicked those moves was shocking, a presentiment of what had always been in plain sight.
I watched both documentaries. It was worth the discomfort to witness the restrained account of grooming children, the full-on seduction of their parents, and the imbalance of power between a great music star and ordinary people who just happened to have star-struck, pleasing-looking little boys.
Jackson threw stardust in the parents’ eyes, and they were blinded. He was buying houses for them, giving extended family trips to Neverland, buying the boys endless gifts, including real jewellery, and playing the lonely card to elicit sympathy. There was no wakeup call. They were run over by a human truck.
People will inevitably blame the mothers most, but the real blame lies with Jackson. He was a damaged human being, and a great artist. One doesn’t cancel out the other.
Parents say their kids would tell them if they were being molested, but they’re avoiding the reality of what can happen right under their watch when they trust the person abusing their trust. We need to be awake.
The role of a parent is to actively protect children so it won’t happen, not to rely on being told afterwards – the documentaries made that clear. Children don’t have the language to articulate what’s happening. They believe they’ll get into trouble if they tell, made to feel they’re accomplices and, as the documentaries showed, it is skilfully done. A child is no match for a scheming adult.
An uncle, when I was small, would insist on jiggling me on his knee; it’s probably a common experience. I hated it, but how would I have explained why? In my memory he is faceless, laughing in a way I don’t understand. Nobody noticed, but the room was always full of adults.
We need to notice when kids are uncomfortable. There will be a reason.
A strange woman tried to get me into her car as I was walking home from primary school. I’d been warned about not talking to strangers, and ran away, telling nobody. It didn’t occur to me that anyone would be interested.
We have to talk to kids. There’s a chance they’ll say something important.
Later, older boys in my neighbourhood fired air rifles at me as I came home from school, and rattled the door handles of my mother’s house when I was alone inside, and terrified. She was at work. It never occurred to me that police would be remotely interested in anything I had to say, and my mother was so stressed already that I didn’t want to upset her more.
Children think they’re protecting you when they say nothing. They need to feel you are adult enough to help them.
I mention such stuff because it’s how I was, how kids are. They don’t know what’s important enough to mention; they don’t want to upset their family, fear getting into trouble, and eventually may forget. But I doubt they forget entirely.
This was all trivial stuff compared to the Neverland boys’ experience, but the remnants of such experiences carry over into adult life; the subconscious reason why you’re vigilant about locking doors, maybe, why you disliked an uncle, wariness of strangers, or why you mentally plan escape routes from everyday situations.
Nobody gets out of childhood without emotional scars, but people like Cardinal George Pell, Jimmy Savile, and Michael Jackson rob kids of childhood itself. I call that emotional murder.