Film lifts lid on Jackson child-sex
According to his family, Michael Jackson lived a ‘‘fairy-tale existence’’ in a ‘‘singular and wondrous world’’ that he created at his California ranch, Neverland, with the fortune he earned as one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century.
Yet a decade after Jackson’s death in Los Angeles in 2009, a devastating new documentary, Leaving Neverland, may change for ever the image of the man once known as the King of Pop.
The two-part, four-hour documentary by the Bafta-winning British director Dan Reed was shown publicly for the first time at the Sundance film festival in Utah on Saturday. It begins with a warning to audiences about ‘‘graphic’’ descriptions of sexual acts between Jackson and two boys, one of whom was seven years old when the alleged abuse began.
By the end, a critic for Rolling Stone magazine noted, ‘‘the crowd looked completely shellshocked’’. Another American reviewer concluded: ‘‘One’s inevitable response is to recoil in horror at Michael Jackson’s predatory sickness.’’
A third critic said: ‘‘Jackson’s legacy is never going to be the same again.’’
The documentary is based on extensive on-camera interviews with Wade Robson, who met the singer after winning a competition when he was five, and James Safechuck, a former child actor who was 10 when he appeared alongside Jackson in a television ad for Pepsi.
While it has long been alleged that Jackson groomed and abused boys on the ranch, his victims have never spoken in such excruciating detail of their ordeal at the hands of the singer.
Robson claims the abuse began with mutual fondling, before progressing to kissing, showering together, and oral sex. Jackson nicknamed Robson ‘‘Little One’’ and the sexual activity continued even when Robson’s mother was staying in the next room. Robson claimed Jackson told him: ‘‘You and I were brought together by God. This is how we show our love.’’
Safechuck claims that at one point Jackson staged a mock wedding and the pair exchanged vows they wrote together. Then Jackson presented his boy ‘‘bride’’ with a diamond-studded gold ring, which Safechuck still possesses.
Safechuck, a computer programmer, is now married and has children of his own. Brisbaneborn Robson, who is also married with a family, is a choreographer who has worked with Britney Spears.
The Jackson estate has dismissed both men as ‘‘perjurers’’ and ‘‘admitted liars’’ who have provided ‘‘no independent evidence and absolutely no proof in support of their accusations’’.
It added in a statement: ‘‘Leaving Neverland isn’t a documentary, it is the kind of tabloid character assassination Michael Jackson endured in life, and now in death.’’
One of Jackson’s nephews, Taj Jackson, has launched an online campaign to raise funds for a new documentary to counter what he described as ‘‘vicious and calculated lies’’.
Both Wade and Robson explain the pressures they say drove them to deny, in a 1993 court case, that Jackson had abused them.
The singer was accused of molesting Jordan Chandler, a 13-year-old boy who had also been staying at Neverland.
The case was settled out of court in 1994. The documentary claims Jackson would repeatedly warn the boys that both they and he would go to prison for life if they discussed their activities together.
– Sunday Times