National Post (National Edition)
JACKSON’S ALLEGED ABUSE REVEALED
Asecret system of bells to warn when other adults were approaching. A mock wedding ceremony with a young boy complete with a gold ring studded with diamonds. Parents who were only too happy to be guests at Neverland, unaware what was happening to their sons a few closed doors away.
By the time he died at age 50 in 2009, Michael Jackson had been trailed by allegations of child sexual abuse for more than 15 years. That side of his life is the subject of a new two-part documentary Leaving Neverland, which aired on HBO over two nights. It contains granular, disturbing details that could reshape his legacy for years to come.
Jackson’s estate has denied all the allegations, likened the documentary to a character attack and sued HBO.
Here are some key points:
LURE OF FAME IRRESISTIBLE
The movie shows how two boys and their families were pulled deep into Jackson’s orbit through fame and show business.
Wade Robson, an aspiring dancer who became a successful choreographer as an adult, met Jackson after winning a dance competition. His mother Joy went so far as to move herself, Robson and her daughter to Los Angeles from their native Australia, leaving behind her husband and eldest son on promises Jackson would work with them to make Robson a star.
James Safechuck met Jackson when he was cast in a Pepsi commercial that featured Jackson and at age 10 Safechuck joined Jackson on tour. His mother Stephanie recounted meeting celebrities like Sean Connery, flying first class and being chauffeured in limousines. Safechuck describes the otherworldly frenzy of just walking with Jackson to his car, slicing through waves of screaming fans.
Every night, he said, he would sleep in a hotel room with Jackson. His mother recounts that as the tour went on, her room got farther and farther from the one her son and Jackson shared.
“Everybody wanted to meet Michael or be with Michael,” Safechuck says as the film opens. “He was already larger than life. And then he likes you.”
JACKSON BUILT TRUST WITH FAMILIES
He nurtured relationships, including with the boys’ mothers. He spent hours on the phone with Safechuck and Robson, but he would also call their moms, just to talk to them.
Jackson also spent time at the Safechucks’ modest home in Simi Valley, Calif. He could have been anywhere in the world, Stephanie said, but he chose to be with them.
“He was a son I started to take care for,” Stephanie said. “He would spend the night, I’d wash his clothes.”
She said she once told Jackson she had prayed for her son’s success in getting into commercials and that he went on to find success right away.
In response, she said, Jackson told her he had prayed, too. He had prayed for a friend and then he found Safechuck.
NEVERLAND RANCH HAUNTS DOCUMENTARY
Neverland Ranch was Jackson’s California compound that included an arcade, amusement park, assortment of exotic animals and a train station. It was the perfect playground for children and, in the documentary, it is also portrayed as the perfect place to keep a child apart from his parents.
Robson’s and Safechuck’s families were offered rooms in a guesthouse, which was separate from the main house where the boys would each stay with Jackson. Robson’s mother Joy recounted she got the sense during one long visit her son and Jackson were avoiding her — and in such a big place, that was easy to do. She said she spent a lot of time alone and with Jackson’s chimpanzees.
One of the most uncomfortable sequences in the film is when Safechuck recounts all the places in Neverland where he said he and Jackson had sex: On a blanket in Jackson’s closet, where several doors and a system of bells would alert them if someone was coming. In a private screening room at the back of the movie theatre. In a house filled with Jackson’s memorabilia, such as a rhinestone jacket he wore to the Grammys. In an attic. In a castle in the theme park. In an upstairs room in the train station.
The property had been for sale for several years with an asking price as high as $100 million and was recently listed with new brokers for $31 million.
ACCOUNTS DISTURBING
Safechuck takes a small gold ring, studded with diamonds, out of a jewelry box and slips it onto his finger. It doesn’t fit past the fingernail of his adult hand.
This was the ring, he said, he and Jackson used in a mock wedding ceremony. When they went to a jewelry store to pick it out, they pretended Jackson was buying it for a woman whose hands were small, like the boy’s.
As each sits alone in front of the camera, Robson and Safechuck recount a frightening pattern of abuse by Jackson, made even more disturbing by the similarities between them.
Both said Jackson would ask them to get on all fours so he could look at them from behind while he masturbated. He asked them to rub his nipples. He would perform oral sex on them and they on him. He showed them pornography.
Safechuck said the abuse started when he was 10. Robson said it began when he was seven. They said it went on for years.
JACKSON ESTATE HITS BACK
Jackson was the subject of two child molestation investigations during his lifetime. The first time, Jackson reached a settlement with the boy who accused him and no charges were filed against him. The second time, after a trial, Jackson was acquitted.
Jackson’s defenders have pointed out Safechuck and Robson have told authorities in the past they were not molested by Jackson and Robson took the stand in Jackson’s defence during the trial. Both men said Jackson had trained them for those moments for years, drilling into them that if anyone found out, their lives would be over or they would all go to jail.
The Jackson family and his estate have emphatically denied the allegations, though neither they nor any other Jackson supporters appear in the film.
“The creators of this film were not interested in the truth,” the family said in a statement. “They never interviewed a single solitary soul who knew Michael except the two perjurers and their families.”
The statement said Jackson “was and always will be 100 per cent innocent of these false allegations.”
Last month, the coexecutors of Jackson’s estate sued HBO and its parent company Time Warner for $100 million for breach of contract, saying that by airing the documentary HBO violated a non-disparagement clause in a 1992 contract it signed before airing a Jackson concert in Romania. HBO said it would not change course.
“Despite the desperate lengths taken to undermine the film, our plans remain unchanged,” HBO said in a statement.