HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
03-16-19, 06:27 PM
#151
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
TMZ is reporting Paris Jackson tried to kill herself due to all the backlash from this film. She denies it.
03-16-19, 08:28 PM
#152
DVD Talk Legend
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
again, I have some trouble believing Wade, but fuck... Safechuck looks broken. He's either telling the truth or the best actor since Daniel Day Lewis.
03-17-19, 12:26 AM
#153
DVD Talk Legend
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
As I asked before, would you be OK with your 8 year old son sharing a bed with a 30+ year old man for weeks at a time? There's no evidence that he's a pedophile, so you shouldn't have a problem - right? Or are you going to just ignore this question again?
03-17-19, 12:30 AM
#154
DVD Talk Godfather & 2020 TOTY Winner
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
Indeed they are.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood...se-allegations
10 Undeniable Facts About the Michael Jackson Sexual-Abuse Allegations
The author, who spent more than a decade covering the scandal for V.F., shares the key revelations and insights that viewers of the new HBO documentary Leaving Neverlandneed to know.
byMARCH 1, 2019 3:10 PM The anguished voice of Wade Robson’s father will always haunt me. Back in 1993, when the first charges of sexual abuse were leveled at Michael Jackson by a 13-year-old boy named Jordan “Jordie” Chandler, I was assigned to write about the case for Vanity Fair. I naturally wanted to know if Jackson had befriended any other young boys, and it wasn’t long before I heard the names Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck.
Wade’s mother, Joy, wasn’t talking, but his father, Dennis, surprised me by returning my call from his home in Australia. Dennis explained that Joy had taken Wade and his sister to Los Angeles so Wade could be with Jackson, adding that he was afraid that he might lose his son if he said anything against the pop superstar. Dennis’s sorrow was compounded by his own dark secret: he himself had been molested as a child, he told me, and had been unable to bring himself to tell anyone for 30 years.
Then, a week later, Dennis Robson called me back. He had just gotten through to his wife and now he wanted to change his story and give me a quote praising Jackson. I asked him what had prompted this sudden change of heart. He paused. It was all just a mixup, he said. Dennis, who had been diagnosed as bipolar shortly before his wife left, never got over losing his family, all because his son, then five, had won a local dance contest, and the first prize was a meeting with his idol, Michael Jackson.
In 2002, Dennis Robson committed suicide. In the new HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, Wade Robson says he never fully understood what caused his father’s pain; his father died without ever being close to his son again.
The two-part documentary, which premieres on HBO this Sunday, gives Robson and Safechuck, together with their surviving family members, the opportunity to tell their stories of being first befriended and then seduced, emotionally and—they allege—sexually, by Michael Jackson. What struck me most, as someone who spent more than a decade reporting on allegations against Jackson, was how closely Robson’s and Safechuck’s stories mirrored those of Jordie Chandler and Gavin Arvizo, the 13-year-old whose allegations prompted the 2005 trial in which Jackson was acquitted on 10 felony counts, including four counts of child molestation and one of attempted child molestation. Another boy, Jason Francia, whose mother worked as a housekeeper for Jackson, testified under oath that he was molested by Jackson, bringing to five the number of young men who’ve sworn that Jackson showed them pornography, masturbated them, or introduced them to sex when they were between the ages of 7 and 12.
So many details of each case were the same: the targeting of boys from troubled families, the skillful grooming, the gifts, the seduction, the Jacuzzis, the way sex was performed, the fear and threats of what would befall them if they ever told anyone what Jackson had done. Their dismissals followed a similar pattern, too: as puberty approached, Robson and Safechuck say in the documentary, they were abruptly thrown to the curb and replaced with a new, younger kid.
Even their families got similar treatment: the sisters were put off to the side by Michael, the supposed adorer of all children; the parents were whisked around in limos and private jets, taken shopping, and treated to vintage wine from Neverland’s cellar. Jordie Chandler’s mother got trips to Monaco and Las Vegas, along with a diamond bracelet. Jimmy Safechuck’s parents got a whole house; the documentary never mentions the cars they received, or the permanent residence visa that Wade Robson’s mother testified in 2005 to having received by funneling whatever wages she had received through the Michael Jackson Corporation. Joy Robson also acknowledged accepting a car, a $10,000 payment from Jackson, and a $10,000 loan from Jackson’s investigator.
Both Robson and Safechuck previously testified under oath that Jackson never touched them, but there is good reason to believe they are telling the truth now. Ron Zonen, a prosecutor in the 2005 trial who has tried many sex-abuse cases, told me he understood why Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck came out when they did, instead of “when we needed them.” Especially for male victims, he said, “it has to be on their terms. They finally decide to disclose when the pain becomes unbearable and it’s not going to get better until they talk to somebody and tell the truth about it.”
Jackson’s hardcore supporters allege that Robson and Safechuck memorized details from the other boys’ stories in order to get revenge after their own previous attempts to sue Jackson’s estate for damages were thrown out of court (not because the charges had no merit but because the statute of limitations had run out). That seems far-fetched to me. Why would anyone put himself through this? Robson and Safechuck are not being paid by HBO. They had to come to grips not only with what happened to them but also with the complicity of those closest to them. That kind of stress can and does destroy families. Anyone who has spent time hearing victims tell their stories of sexual assault knows that it is extremely painful to recall detail after detail. You never know which one will stick in your mind, causing depression, nightmares, and P.T.S.D. It can be something as simple as a song.
The Jackson family, for its part, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against HBO, trying to prevent the documentary from being aired. Given all the money and vaunted reputations at stake, that may have seemed like the best course of action, lest viewers see and judge for themselves why two men would go to these lengths and suffer the hate being hurled at them. Robson and Safechuck say it is because they are fathers themselves now. The experience of having children summoned these tangled and terrible memories up from the depths of their psyches and spurred the need to come clean, to point their moral compasses north. Now it’s the public’s turn.
To help viewers contextualize the documentary’s presentation of what ultimately amounts to a narrow slice of a sprawling saga, here are 10 undeniable facts about the sexual-abuse allegations against Michael Jackson.
1. There is no dispute that, at age 34, Michael Jackson slept more than 30 nights in a row in the same bed with 13-year-old Jordie Chandler at the boy’s house with Chandler’s mother present. He also slept in the same bed with Jordie Chandler at Chandler’s father’s house. The parents were divorced.
2. So far, five boys Michael Jackson shared beds with have accused him of abuse: Jordie Chandler, Jason Francia, Gavin Arvizo, Wade Robson, and Jimmy Safechuck. Jackson had the same nickname for Chandler and Arvizo: “Rubba.” He called Robson “Little One” and Safechuck “Applehead.”
3. Jackson paid $25 million to settle the Chandlers’ lawsuit, with $18 million going to Jordie, $2.5 million to each of the parents, and the rest to lawyers. Jackson said he paid that sum to avoid something “long and drawn out.” Francia also received $2.4 million from Jackson.
4. Michael Jackson suffered from the skin discoloration disease vitiligo. Jordie Chandler drew a picture of the markings on the underside of Jackson’s penis. His drawings were sealed in an envelope. A few months later, investigators photographed Jackson’s genitalia. The photographs matched Chandler’s drawings.
5. The hallway leading to Jackson’s bedroom was a serious security zone covered by video and wired for sound so that the steps of anyone approaching would make ding-dong sounds.
6. Jackson had an extensive collection of adult erotic material he kept in a suitcase next to his bed, including S&M bondage photos and a study of naked boys. Forensic experts with experience in the Secret Service found the fingerprints of boys alongside Jackson’s on the same pages. Jackson also had bondage sculptures of women with ball gags in their mouths on his desk, in full view of the boys who slept there.
7. According to the Neverland staff interviewed by the Santa Barbara authorities, no one ever saw or knew of a woman spending the night with Michael Jackson, including his two spouses, Debbie Rowe or Lisa Marie Presley. Rowe, the mother of two of Jackson’s children, made it clear to the Santa Barbara authorities that she never had sex with Jackson.
8. The parents of boys Jackson shared beds with were courted assiduously and given myriad expensive gifts. Wade Robson’s mother testified in the 2005 trial that she funneled wages through Jackson’s company and was given a permanent resident visa. Jimmy Safechuck’s parents got a house. Jordie Chandler’s mother got a diamond bracelet.
9. Two of the fathers of those who have accused Jackson, Jordie Chandler and Wade Robson, committed suicide. Both were estranged from their sons at the time.
10. In a 2002 documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, Jackson told Martin Bashir there was nothing wrong with sharing his bed with boys.
Uh-huh. You have anything to say about those 10 facts that have ZERO to do with Robson & Safechuck's credibility?
Does your bullshit meter move at all for a 30 year old eccentric powerful rich man who likes to spend the night with very young boys he is not related to but claims to have no sexual interest in? Does that sound completely normal and plausible to you? If somebody like that told you he wanted your SEVEN YEAR OLD boy to live with him on the other side of the world from you for one year, you'd think that was a totally normal, reasonable request and not at all inappropriate, right?
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood...se-allegations
10 Undeniable Facts About the Michael Jackson Sexual-Abuse Allegations
The author, who spent more than a decade covering the scandal for V.F., shares the key revelations and insights that viewers of the new HBO documentary Leaving Neverlandneed to know.
byMARCH 1, 2019 3:10 PM The anguished voice of Wade Robson’s father will always haunt me. Back in 1993, when the first charges of sexual abuse were leveled at Michael Jackson by a 13-year-old boy named Jordan “Jordie” Chandler, I was assigned to write about the case for Vanity Fair. I naturally wanted to know if Jackson had befriended any other young boys, and it wasn’t long before I heard the names Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck.
Wade’s mother, Joy, wasn’t talking, but his father, Dennis, surprised me by returning my call from his home in Australia. Dennis explained that Joy had taken Wade and his sister to Los Angeles so Wade could be with Jackson, adding that he was afraid that he might lose his son if he said anything against the pop superstar. Dennis’s sorrow was compounded by his own dark secret: he himself had been molested as a child, he told me, and had been unable to bring himself to tell anyone for 30 years.
Then, a week later, Dennis Robson called me back. He had just gotten through to his wife and now he wanted to change his story and give me a quote praising Jackson. I asked him what had prompted this sudden change of heart. He paused. It was all just a mixup, he said. Dennis, who had been diagnosed as bipolar shortly before his wife left, never got over losing his family, all because his son, then five, had won a local dance contest, and the first prize was a meeting with his idol, Michael Jackson.
In 2002, Dennis Robson committed suicide. In the new HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, Wade Robson says he never fully understood what caused his father’s pain; his father died without ever being close to his son again.
The two-part documentary, which premieres on HBO this Sunday, gives Robson and Safechuck, together with their surviving family members, the opportunity to tell their stories of being first befriended and then seduced, emotionally and—they allege—sexually, by Michael Jackson. What struck me most, as someone who spent more than a decade reporting on allegations against Jackson, was how closely Robson’s and Safechuck’s stories mirrored those of Jordie Chandler and Gavin Arvizo, the 13-year-old whose allegations prompted the 2005 trial in which Jackson was acquitted on 10 felony counts, including four counts of child molestation and one of attempted child molestation. Another boy, Jason Francia, whose mother worked as a housekeeper for Jackson, testified under oath that he was molested by Jackson, bringing to five the number of young men who’ve sworn that Jackson showed them pornography, masturbated them, or introduced them to sex when they were between the ages of 7 and 12.
So many details of each case were the same: the targeting of boys from troubled families, the skillful grooming, the gifts, the seduction, the Jacuzzis, the way sex was performed, the fear and threats of what would befall them if they ever told anyone what Jackson had done. Their dismissals followed a similar pattern, too: as puberty approached, Robson and Safechuck say in the documentary, they were abruptly thrown to the curb and replaced with a new, younger kid.
Even their families got similar treatment: the sisters were put off to the side by Michael, the supposed adorer of all children; the parents were whisked around in limos and private jets, taken shopping, and treated to vintage wine from Neverland’s cellar. Jordie Chandler’s mother got trips to Monaco and Las Vegas, along with a diamond bracelet. Jimmy Safechuck’s parents got a whole house; the documentary never mentions the cars they received, or the permanent residence visa that Wade Robson’s mother testified in 2005 to having received by funneling whatever wages she had received through the Michael Jackson Corporation. Joy Robson also acknowledged accepting a car, a $10,000 payment from Jackson, and a $10,000 loan from Jackson’s investigator.
Both Robson and Safechuck previously testified under oath that Jackson never touched them, but there is good reason to believe they are telling the truth now. Ron Zonen, a prosecutor in the 2005 trial who has tried many sex-abuse cases, told me he understood why Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck came out when they did, instead of “when we needed them.” Especially for male victims, he said, “it has to be on their terms. They finally decide to disclose when the pain becomes unbearable and it’s not going to get better until they talk to somebody and tell the truth about it.”
Jackson’s hardcore supporters allege that Robson and Safechuck memorized details from the other boys’ stories in order to get revenge after their own previous attempts to sue Jackson’s estate for damages were thrown out of court (not because the charges had no merit but because the statute of limitations had run out). That seems far-fetched to me. Why would anyone put himself through this? Robson and Safechuck are not being paid by HBO. They had to come to grips not only with what happened to them but also with the complicity of those closest to them. That kind of stress can and does destroy families. Anyone who has spent time hearing victims tell their stories of sexual assault knows that it is extremely painful to recall detail after detail. You never know which one will stick in your mind, causing depression, nightmares, and P.T.S.D. It can be something as simple as a song.
The Jackson family, for its part, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against HBO, trying to prevent the documentary from being aired. Given all the money and vaunted reputations at stake, that may have seemed like the best course of action, lest viewers see and judge for themselves why two men would go to these lengths and suffer the hate being hurled at them. Robson and Safechuck say it is because they are fathers themselves now. The experience of having children summoned these tangled and terrible memories up from the depths of their psyches and spurred the need to come clean, to point their moral compasses north. Now it’s the public’s turn.
To help viewers contextualize the documentary’s presentation of what ultimately amounts to a narrow slice of a sprawling saga, here are 10 undeniable facts about the sexual-abuse allegations against Michael Jackson.
1. There is no dispute that, at age 34, Michael Jackson slept more than 30 nights in a row in the same bed with 13-year-old Jordie Chandler at the boy’s house with Chandler’s mother present. He also slept in the same bed with Jordie Chandler at Chandler’s father’s house. The parents were divorced.
2. So far, five boys Michael Jackson shared beds with have accused him of abuse: Jordie Chandler, Jason Francia, Gavin Arvizo, Wade Robson, and Jimmy Safechuck. Jackson had the same nickname for Chandler and Arvizo: “Rubba.” He called Robson “Little One” and Safechuck “Applehead.”
3. Jackson paid $25 million to settle the Chandlers’ lawsuit, with $18 million going to Jordie, $2.5 million to each of the parents, and the rest to lawyers. Jackson said he paid that sum to avoid something “long and drawn out.” Francia also received $2.4 million from Jackson.
4. Michael Jackson suffered from the skin discoloration disease vitiligo. Jordie Chandler drew a picture of the markings on the underside of Jackson’s penis. His drawings were sealed in an envelope. A few months later, investigators photographed Jackson’s genitalia. The photographs matched Chandler’s drawings.
5. The hallway leading to Jackson’s bedroom was a serious security zone covered by video and wired for sound so that the steps of anyone approaching would make ding-dong sounds.
6. Jackson had an extensive collection of adult erotic material he kept in a suitcase next to his bed, including S&M bondage photos and a study of naked boys. Forensic experts with experience in the Secret Service found the fingerprints of boys alongside Jackson’s on the same pages. Jackson also had bondage sculptures of women with ball gags in their mouths on his desk, in full view of the boys who slept there.
7. According to the Neverland staff interviewed by the Santa Barbara authorities, no one ever saw or knew of a woman spending the night with Michael Jackson, including his two spouses, Debbie Rowe or Lisa Marie Presley. Rowe, the mother of two of Jackson’s children, made it clear to the Santa Barbara authorities that she never had sex with Jackson.
8. The parents of boys Jackson shared beds with were courted assiduously and given myriad expensive gifts. Wade Robson’s mother testified in the 2005 trial that she funneled wages through Jackson’s company and was given a permanent resident visa. Jimmy Safechuck’s parents got a house. Jordie Chandler’s mother got a diamond bracelet.
9. Two of the fathers of those who have accused Jackson, Jordie Chandler and Wade Robson, committed suicide. Both were estranged from their sons at the time.
10. In a 2002 documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, Jackson told Martin Bashir there was nothing wrong with sharing his bed with boys.
I suppose I have an empirical evidence based worldview unlike people who have a contructed narrative based worldview and fall for any bullshit story. For example, I called out Jussie Smollett on day one because his story sounded so much like bullshit from the get-go.
Does your bullshit meter move at all for a 30 year old eccentric powerful rich man who likes to spend the night with very young boys he is not related to but claims to have no sexual interest in? Does that sound completely normal and plausible to you? If somebody like that told you he wanted your SEVEN YEAR OLD boy to live with him on the other side of the world from you for one year, you'd think that was a totally normal, reasonable request and not at all inappropriate, right?
03-17-19, 12:38 AM
#155
DVD Talk Godfather & 2020 TOTY Winner
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
^ Wow, Coral and I ask the same question at the same time here. Wonder if we will get an answer from dhmac. I kinda doubt that we will.
03-17-19, 03:49 PM
#156
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
Whatever the excuses (and some are valid), MJ did some bad things to kids. Parents loved the money. The kids, who would have normally said something...also loved the money and fame.
Janet Jackson has had younger girls around her over her career (raises questions, imo). I think that entire family is fucked up.
Talented family but that talent was forged by some sick and disturbing behaviors via their parents and/or other entertainers.
Why such great talent? Normal people don't have the focus, the required compartmentalization. This was certainly created by molestation and MJ and maybe even others were touched by it, giving them an edge but also gave them by-product where they knew no other way to express themselves.
Janet Jackson has had younger girls around her over her career (raises questions, imo). I think that entire family is fucked up.
Talented family but that talent was forged by some sick and disturbing behaviors via their parents and/or other entertainers.
Why such great talent? Normal people don't have the focus, the required compartmentalization. This was certainly created by molestation and MJ and maybe even others were touched by it, giving them an edge but also gave them by-product where they knew no other way to express themselves.
03-17-19, 04:05 PM
#157
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
Indeed they are.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood...se-allegations
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood...se-allegations
If you're going to sink that low, why don't you just post from Nancy Grace instead of a Nancy Grace wannabe like Maureen Orth.
If you want an undeniable fact: Maureen Orth is a complete hack
03-17-19, 04:07 PM
#158
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
The way Yellow Journalism rules today regarding Michael Jordan with Tabloid sensationalism trumping actual fact-checked journalism, it's good to see someone like Charles Thomson out there. His article calling out how shameful the media was during the 2005 trial rings even more true today in light of the unquestioning reaction by so many to the misinformation in "Leaving Neverland". Reading up on the 2005 trial is what changed my mind and I just ask: why is basic fact-checking so difficult to do for so many people? Why do people not want to know the truth?
LINK: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/charl..._b_610258.html
LINK: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/charl..._b_610258.html
One of the Most Shameful Episodes In Journalistic History -Charles Thomson (06/13/2010 07:28 pm ET Updated May 25, 2011)
It was five years ago today that twelve jurors unanimously acquitted Michael Jackson on various charges of child molestation, conspiracy and providing alcohol to a minor. It is difficult to know how history will remember the Michael Jackson trial. Perhaps as the epitome of western celebrity obsession. Perhaps as a 21st century lynching. Personally, I think it will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in journalistic history.
It’s not until you find yourself digging through newspaper archives and re-watching hours of TV coverage that you truly understand the magnitude of the media’s failings. It was industry-wide. No doubt, there were certain reporters and even certain publications and TV stations that overtly favored the prosecution, but many of the media’s shortcomings were institutional. In a media obsessed with soundbites, how to you reduce eight hours of testimony into two sentences and remain accurate? In an era of rolling news and instant blogging, how do you resist the temptation to dash out of the courtroom at the earliest opportunity to break news of the latest salacious allegations, even if it means missing a slice of the day’s testimony?
Looking back on the Michael Jackson trial, I see a media out of control. The sheer amount of propaganda, bias, distortion and misinformation is almost beyond comprehension. Reading the court transcripts and comparing them to the newspaper cuttings, the trial that was relayed to us didn’t even resemble the trial that was going on inside the courtroom. The transcripts show an endless parade of seedy prosecution witnesses perjuring themselves on an almost hourly basis and crumbling under cross examination. The newspaper cuttings and the TV news clips detail day after day of heinous accusations and lurid innuendo.
It was November 18th 2003 when 70 sheriffs swooped on Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. As soon as news of the raid broke, news channels abandoned their schedules and switched to 24 hour coverage. When it emerged that Jackson was accused of molesting young cancer survivor Gavin Arvizo, the boy who famously held the singer’s hand in Martin Bashir’s ‘Living With Michael Jackson’, the media went into overdrive. Networks were so obsessed by the Jackson scandal that a terrorist attack in Turkey went almost entirely unreported, with only CNN bothering to broadcast George Bush and Tony Blair’s joint press conference about the disaster.
All three major networks immediately set about producing hour-long specials on the Jackson case, apparently undeterred by the fact that nothing was yet known about the allegations and prosecutors weren’t answering questions. CBS dedicated an episode of 48 Hours Investigates to the arrest, while NBC’s Dateline and ABC’s 20/20 also rushed out Jackson specials. Within two days of the Neverland raid, and before Jackson had even been arrested, VH1 announced a half-hour documentary called ‘Michael Jackson Sex Scandal’.
Daily Variety described the Jackson story as “a godsend for... media outlets, particularly cable news channels and local stations looking to pump up Nielsen numbers in the final week of the all-important November sweeps.”
Daily Variety was right. Celebrity-oriented news shows saw figures spike when the Jackson story hit. Viewing figures for Access Hollywood were up 10% on the previous week. Entertainment Tonight and Extra both achieved season best audience numbers and Celebrity Justice also enjoyed an 8% rise.
Newspapers reacted just as hysterically as TV stations. ‘Sicko!’ shrieked the New York Daily News. ‘Jacko: Now Get Out Of This One’ goaded the New York Post.
The Sun - Britain’s biggest newspaper - ran an article titled ‘He’s Bad, He’s Dangerous, He’s History’. The piece branded Jackson an ‘ex-black ex-superstar’, a ‘freak’ and a ‘twisted individual’ and called for his children to be taken into care. “If he weren’t a pop idol with piles of cash to hide behind,” it said, “he would have been picked up years ago.”
Encouraged by the audience boosts the Jackson scandal had produced, media outlets made it their mission to milk the case for all that they could. Entertainment Weekly’s Tom Sinclair wrote, “Media mavens, from the tackiest tabloid reporter to the nattiest network news anchor, are in overdrive scrambling to fill column inches and airtime with Jacko scoops and talking heads.”
“Pressure on news people is enormous,” attorney Harland Braun told Sinclair. “So lawyers you’ve never heard of wind up on television talking about cases that they have no connection to.”
Sinclair added, “And not just lawyers. Everyone from doctors, writers, and psychiatrists to convenience-store clerks who once waited on Jackson are weighing in on TV and in print.”
While the media was busy badgering a host of quacks and distant acquaintances for their views on the scandal, the team of prosecutors behind the latest Jackson case was engaging in some highly questionable behavior - but the media didn’t seem to care.
During the Neverland raid District Attorney Tom Sneddon - the prosecutor who unsuccessfully pursued Jackson in 1993 - and his officers breached the terms of their own search warrant by entering Jackson’s office and seizing hoards of irrelevant business papers. They also illegally raided the office of a PI working for Jackson’s defense team and lifted defense documents from the home of the singer’s personal assistant.
Sneddon also appeared to be tampering with fundamental elements of his case whenever evidence came to light which undermined the Arvizo family’s claims. For instance, when the DA found out about two taped interviews in which the entire Arvizo family sang Jackson’s praises and denied any abuse, he introduced a conspiracy charge and claimed they’d been forced to lie against their will.
In a similar instance, Jackson’s lawyer Mark Geragos appeared on NBC in January 2004 and announced that the singer had a ‘concrete, iron-clad alibi’ for the dates on the charge sheet. By the time Jackson was re-arraigned in April for the conspiracy charge, the molestation dates on the rap sheet had been shifted by almost two weeks.
Sneddon was later caught seemingly trying to plant fingerprint evidence against Jackson, allowing accuser Gavin Arvizo to handle adult magazines during the grand jury hearings, then bagging them up and sending them away for fingerprint analysis.
Not only did the majority of the media overlook this flurry of questionable and occasionally illegal activity on the part of the prosecution, it also seemed perfectly content to perpetuate damning propaganda on the prosecution’s behalf, despite a complete lack of corroborative evidence. For example, Diane Dimond appeared on Larry King Live days after Jackson’s arrest and spoke repeatedly about a ‘stack of love letters’ the star had supposedly written to Gavin Arvizo.
“Does anyone here... know of the existence of these letters?” asked King.
“Absolutely,” Dimond replied. “I do. I absolutely know of their existence!”
“Diane, have you read them?”
“No, I have not read them.”
Dimond admitted that she’d never even seen the letters, let alone read them, but said she knew about them from “high law enforcement sources”. But those love letters never materialized. When Dimond said she ‘absolutely knew’ of their existence she was basing her comments solely on the words of police sources. At best, the police sources were parroting the Arvizos’ allegations in good faith. At worst, they’d concocted the story themselves to sully Jackson’s name. Either way, the story went around the world with not a shred of evidence to support it.
It was over a year between Jackson’s arrest and the beginning of his trial and the media was forced to try to pad the story out for as long as they could in the interim. Aware that Jackson was bound by gag order and therefore powerless to respond, prosecution sympathizers started leaking documents such as Jordan Chandler’s 1993 police statement. The media, hungry for scandal and sensationalism, pounced on them.
At the same time, allegations sold to tabloid TV shows by disgruntled ex-employees in the 1990s were constantly re-hashed and presented as news. Small details of the Arvizo family’s allegations would also periodically leak.
While most media outlets reported these stories as allegations rather than facts, the sheer amount and frequency of stories connecting Jackson to ugly sexual abuse, coupled with his inability to refute them, had a devastating effect on the star’s public image.
The trial began in early 2005 with jury selection. Asked by NBC about prosecution and defense jury selection tactics, Dimond said the difference was that prosecutors would be looking for jurors who had a sense of ‘good versus evil’ and ‘right and wrong’.
No sooner had the jurors been selected than Newsweek was trying to undermine them, claiming that a middle class jury would be unable to fairly judge a family of lower class accusers. In an article titled ‘Playing the Class Card’ the magazine said, “The Jackson trial may hinge on something other than race. And we don’t mean the evidence.”
As the trial kicked into gear, it became quickly apparent that the case was full of holes. The prosecution’s only ‘evidence’ was a stack of heterosexual porn magazines and a couple of legal art books. Thomas Mesereau wrote in a court motion, “The effort to try Mr. Jackson for having one of the largest private libraries in the world is alarming. Not since the dark day of almost three quarters of a century ago has anyone witnessed a prosecution which claimed that the possession of books by well known artists were evidence of a crime against the state.”
Gavin Arvizo’s brother, Star, took the stand early in the trial and claimed to have witnessed two specific acts of molestation but his testimony was completely inconsistent. Regarding one alleged act, he claimed in court that Jackson had been fondling Gavin, but in a previous description of the same incident he told a wildly different story, claiming Jackson had been rubbing his penis against Gavin’s buttocks. He also told two different stories about the other alleged act on two consecutive days in court.
During cross examination Jackson’s lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, showed the boy a copy of Barely Legal and repeatedly asked if it was the specific edition Jackson had shown him and his brother. The boy insisted that it was, only for Mesereau to reveal that it was published in August 2003; five months after the Arvizo family had left Neverland.
But this information went almost entirely unreported, the media focusing on the boy’s allegations rather than the cross examination which undermined them. Allegations make good soundbites. Complex cross examination does not.
When Gavin Arvizo took the stand, he claimed that Jackson had instigated the first act of molestation by telling him that all boys had to masturbate or else they would turn into rapists. But Mesereau showed under cross examination that the boy had previously admitted his grandmother made that comment, not Jackson, meaning that the whole molestation story was predicated on a lie.
Under cross examination the boy severely undermined the prosecution’s conspiracy charge by claiming he’d never felt afraid at Neverland and he’d never wanted to leave. His accounts of the alleged molestation also differed from his brother’s.
Unfortunately for Jackson, Gavin Arvizo’s cross examination was all but ignored as newspapers giggled and gossiped about what became known as ‘pajama day’. On the first day of the boy’s direct examination Jackson slipped in his shower, bruised his lung and was rushed to hospital. When Judge Rodney Melville ordered a bench warrant for Jackson’s arrest unless he arrived within an hour, the singer sped to the courthouse in the pajama trousers he’d been wearing when he was rushed to hospital.
The photographs of Jackson in his pajamas went all over the word, often with no mention of Jackson’s injury or the reason he was wearing them. Many journalists accused Jackson of faking the entire event in order to gain sympathy, although sympathetic is the last word you’d use to describe the media’s reaction.
The incident didn’t stop the media from sending Gavin Arvizo’s lurid allegations around the world the following day. Some outlets even ran the boy’s testimony as fact rather than conjecture. “He Said If Boys Don’t Do It They Might Turn Into Rapists - Cancer Boy Gavin Tells Court of Jacko Sex,” wrote The Mirror.
But the boy’s cross examination was another story. It went almost completely unreported. Instead of stories about Gavin Arvizo’s lies and the two brothers’ contradictory allegations, newspaper pages were filled with snarky opinion pieces about Jackson’s pajamas, even though ‘pajama day’ had been days previously. Thousands of words were dedicated to whether or not Jackson wore a wig and the Sun even ran an article attacking Jackson for the accessories he pinned to his waistcoats every day. It seemed like the press would write anything to avoid discussing the boy’s cross examination, which severely undermined the prosecution’s case.
This habit of reporting lurid allegations but ignoring the cross examination which discredited them became a distinct trend throughout Jackson’s trial. In an April 2005 interview with Matt Drudge, Fox columnist Roger Friedman explained, “What’s not reported is that the cross examination of these witnesses is usually fatal to them.” He added that whenever anybody said anything salacious or dramatic about Jackson, the media ‘went running outside to report on it’ and missed the subsequent cross examination.
Drudge agreed, adding, “You’re not hearing how witness after witness is disintegrating on the stand. There is not one witness, at least lately, that hasn’t admitted to perjuring themselves in previous proceedings either in this case or in some other case.”
This alarming trend of ignoring cross examination was perhaps most apparent in the media’s coverage of Kiki Fournier’s testimony. Under direct examination by the prosecution, Fournier - a Neverland housekeeper - testified that when at Neverland children often became unruly and she had sometimes seen children so hyperactive that they could, feasibly, have been intoxicated. The media scurried outside to report this apparent bombshell and missed one of the most significant pieces of testimony in the entire trial.
Under cross examination by Thomas Mesereau, Fournier said that during the Arvizo family’s final weeks at Neverland - the period during which the molestation supposedly happened - the two boys’ guest room had been constantly messy, leading her to believe they’d been sleeping in their own quarters all along - not Michael Jackson’s bedroom.
She also testified that Star Arvizo had once pulled a knife on her in the kitchen, explaining that she did not feel it had been intended as a joke and that she thought he’d been ‘trying to assert some sort of authority’.
In a devastating blow to the prosecution’s increasingly hilarious conspiracy charge, Fournier laughed at the idea that anybody could be held prisoner at Neverland Ranch, telling the jurors that there was no high fence around the property and the family could have walked out at any time ‘with ease’.
When Gavin and Star’s mother Janet Arvizo took the stand Tom Sneddon was seen with his head in his hands. She claimed that a videotape of herself and her children praising Jackson had been scripted word for word by a German man who barely spoke English. In outtakes she was seen singing Jackson’s praises then looking embarrassed and asking if she was being recorded. She said that had been scripted too.
She claimed she’d been held hostage at Neverland even though log books and receipts showed that she’d left the ranch and returned on three occasions during the period of ‘captivity’. It became apparent that she was currently under investigation for welfare fraud and had also been falsely obtaining money on the back of her son’s illness, holding benefits to pay for his cancer treatment when he was already covered by insurance.
Even the most ardent prosecution supporters had to admit that Janet Arvizo was a disastrous witness for the state. Except Diane Dimond, who in March 2005 seemed to use Janet Arvizo’s welfare fraud (she was convicted in the wake of Jackson’s trial) as roundabout proof of Jackson’s guilt, signing off a New York Post article with the gob smacking line, “Pedophiles don’t target kids with Ozzie and Harriet parents.”
Watching their case crumble before their eyes, the prosecution applied to the judge for permission to admit evidence of ‘prior bad acts’. Permission was granted. Prosecutors told the jury they would hear evidence of five former victims. But those five prior cases turned out to be even more laughable than the Arvizos’ claims.
A parade of disgruntled security guards and housekeepers took the stand to testify that they had witnessed molestation, much of it carried out on three boys; Wade Robson, Brett Barnes and Macauley Culkin. But those three boys were the defense’s first three witnesses, each of them testifying that Jackson had never touched them and they resented the implication.
Moreover, it was revealed that each of these former employees had been fired by Jackson for stealing from his property or had lost a wrongful termination suit and wound up owing Jackson huge amounts of money. They’d also neglected to tell the police when they supposedly witnessed this molestation, even when questioned in connection with Jordy Chandler’s 1993 allegations, but subsequently tried to sell stories to the press - sometimes successfully. The more money on the table, the more salacious the allegations became.
Roger Friedman complained in an interview with Matt Drudge that the media was ignoring the cross examination of the ‘prior bad acts’ witnesses, resulting in skewed reporting. He said, “When Thursday started, that first hour was with this guy Ralph Chacon who had worked at the Ranch as a security guard. He told the most outrageous story. It was so graphic. And of course everybody went running outside to report on it. But there were ten minutes right before the first break on Thursday when Tom Mesereau got up and cross examined this guy and obliterated him.”
The fourth ‘victim’, Jason Francia, took the stand and claimed that when he was a child, Jackson had molested him on three separate occasions. Pushed for details of the ‘molestation’, he said Jackson had tickled him three times outside his clothes and he’d needed years of therapy to get over it. The jury was seen rolling their eyes but reporters including Dan Abrams heralded him as ‘compelling’, predicting that he could be the witness who put Jackson behind bars.
The media repeatedly claimed that Francia’s allegations had been made in 1990, leading audiences to believe that the Jordy Chandler allegations were predated. In actuality, although Jason Francia claimed that the acts of molestation occurred in 1990, he didn’t report them until after the media storm over Chandler’s claims, at which point his mother, Neverland maid Blanca Francia, promptly extracted $20,000 from Hard Copy for an interview with Diane Dimond and another $2.4million in a settlement from Jackson.
Moreover, transcripts from police interviews showed that the Francia had repeatedly changed his story and had originally insisted that he’d never been molested. Transcripts also showed that he only said he was molested after police officers repeatedly overstepped the mark during interviews. Officers repeatedly referred to Jackson as a ‘molester’. On one occasion they told the boy that Jackson was molesting Macauley Culkin as they spoke, claiming that the only way they could rescue Culkin was if Francia told them he’d been sexually abused by the star. Transcripts also showed that Francia had previously said of the police, “They made me come up with stuff. They kept pushing. I wanted to hit them in the head.”
The fifth ‘victim’ was Jordy Chandler, who fled the country rather than testify against his former friend. Thomas Mesereau said in a Harvard lecture later that year, “The prosecutors tried to get him to show up and he wouldn’t. If he had, I had witnesses who were going to come in and say he told them it never happened and that he would never talk to his parents again for what they made him say. It turned out he’d gone into court and got legal emancipation from his parents.”
June Chandler, Jordy’s mother, testified that she hadn’t spoken to her son in 11 years. Questioned about the 1993 case, she seemed to suffer from a severe case of selective memory. At one point she claimed she couldn’t remember being sued by Michael Jackson and at another she said she’d never heard of her own attorney. She also never witnessed any molestation.
When the prosecution rested, the media seemed to lose interest in the trial. The defense case was given comparatively little newspaper space and air time. The Hollywood Reporter, which had been diligently reporting on the Jackson trial, missed out two whole weeks of the defense case. The attitude seemed to be that unless the testimony was graphic and salacious - unless it made a good soundbite - it wasn’t worth reporting.
The defense called numerous fantastic witnesses; boys and girls who had stayed with Jackson time and again and never witnessed any inappropriate behavior, employees who had witnessed the Arvizo boys helping themselves to alcohol in Jackson’s absence and celebrities who had also been targeted for handouts by the accuser. But little of this testimony was relayed to the public. When DA Tom Sneddon referred to black comic Chris Tucker as ‘boy’ during his cross examination, the media didn’t bat an eyelid.
When both sides rested jurors were told that if they found reasonable doubt, they had to acquit. Anybody who had been paying attention to proceedings could see that the doubt was so far beyond reasonable it wasn’t even funny. Almost every single prosecution witness either perjured themselves or wound up helping the defense. There wasn’t a shred of evidence connecting Jackson to any crime and there wasn’t a single credible witness connecting him to a crime either.
But that didn’t stop journalists and pundits from predicting guilty verdicts, CNN‘s Nancy Grace leading the way. Defense attorney Robert Shapiro, who had once represented the Chandler family, stated with certainty on CNN, “He’s going to be convicted.” Ex-prosecutor Wendy Murphy told Fox News, “There is no question we will see convictions here.”
The hysteria of the fans outside the courthouse was mirrored by that of the reporters who secured seats inside, who were so excitable that Judge Rodney Melville ordered them to ‘restrain themselves’. Thomas Mesereau commented retrospectively that the media had been “almost salivating about having [Jackson] hauled off to jail.”
When the jury delivered 14 ‘not guilty’ verdicts, the media was ‘humiliated’, Mesereau said in a subsequent interview. Media analyst Tim Rutten later commented, “So what happened when Jackson was acquitted on all counts? Red faces? Second thoughts? A little soul-searching, perhaps? Maybe one expression of regret for the rush to judgment? Naaawww. The reaction, instead, was rage liberally laced with contempt and the odd puzzled expression. Its targets were the jurors... Hell hath no fury like a cable anchor held up for scorn.”
In a post-verdict news conference Sneddon continued to refer to Gavin Arvizo as a ‘victim’ and said he suspected that the ‘celebrity factor’ had impeded the jury’s judgment - a line many media pundits swiftly appropriated as they set about undermining the jurors and their verdicts.
Within minutes of the announcement, Nancy Grace appeared on CourtTV to allege that jurors had been seduced by Jackson’s fame and bizarrely claim that the prosecution’s only weak link had been Janet Arvizo.
“I’m having a crow sandwich right now,” she said. “It doesn’t taste very good. But you know what? I’m also not surprised. I thought that celebrity is such a big factor. When you think you know somebody, when you have watched their concerts, listened to their records, read the lyrics, believed they were coming from somebody’s heart... Jackson is very charismatic, although he never took the stand. That has an effect on this jury.
“I’m not gonna throw a stone at the mom, although I think she was the weak link in the state’s case, but the reality is I’m not surprised. I thought that the jury would vote in favor of the similar transaction witnesses. Apparently the defense overwhelmed them with the cross-examining of the mother. I think it boils down to that, plain and simple.”
Grace later stated that Jackson was ‘not guilty by reason of celebrity’ and was seen attempting to hound jury foreman Paul Rodriguez into saying he believed Jackson had molested children. One of Grace’s guests, psychoanalyst Bethany Marshall, leveled personal attacks towards one female juror, saying, “This is a woman who has no life.”
Over on Fox News, Wendy Murphy branded Jackson ‘the Teflon molester’ and said that the jurors needed IQ tests. She later added, “I really think it’s the celebrity factor, not the evidence. I don’t think the jurors even understand how influenced they were by who Michael Jackson is... They basically put targets on the backs of all, especially highly vulnerable, kids that will now come into Michael Jackson’s life.”
Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told CNN that he thought the ‘prior bad acts’ testimony had been ‘effective evidence’, even though various boys at the heart of that testimony had taken the stand as defense witnesses and denied ever being molested. He also claimed that the defense had won because “they could tell a story, and juries, you know, always understand stories rather than sort of individual facts.”
Only Robert Shapiro was dignified in the face of the verdicts, telling viewers that they should accept the jurors’ decision because the jurors were from “a very conservative part of California and if they had no doubt, none of us should have any doubt.”
The following day on Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer upheld the notion that the verdict had been influenced by Jackson’s celebrity status. “Are you sure?” she pleaded. “Are you sure that this gigantically renowned guy walking into the room had no influence at all?”
The Washington Post commented, “An acquittal doesn’t clear his name, it only muddies the water.” Both the New York Post and the New York Daily News ran with the snide headline ‘Boy, Oh, Boy!’
In her final New York Post article about the trial, Diane Dimond bemoaned the not guilty verdict, saying that it left Michael Jackson untouchable. She wrote, “He walked out of court a free man, not guilty on all counts. But Michael Jackson is so much more than free. He now has carte blanche to live his life any way he wants, with whomever he wants, because who would ever try to prosecute Michael Jackson now?”
In Britain’s Sun newspaper, celebrity rent-a-gob and talking head extraordinaire Jane Moore penned an article titled ‘If the jury agree Janet Arvizo is a bad mum (and she IS)... How did they let Jackson off?’ It began: “Michael Jackson is innocent. Justice has been done. Or so the loony tunes gathered outside the courthouse would have us believe.” She went on to question the jurors’ mental capacity and dismiss the American legal system as ‘half-baked’. “Nothing and no one truly emerges as a winner from this sorry mess,” she finished, “least of all what they laughably call American ‘justice’.”
Sun contributor Ally Ross dismissed Jackson’s fans as ‘sad, solitary dick-wits’. Another Sun article, penned by daytime TV presenter Lorraine Kelly, titled ‘Don’t forget the kids still at risk... Jacko’s own’, overtly labeled Jackson a guilty man. Kelly - who never attended Jackson’s trial - bemoaned the fact that Jackson ‘got away with it’, complaining that “instead of languishing in jail, Jackson is now back home in Neverland.” Jackson, she concluded, was “a sad, sick loser who uses his fame and money to dazzle the parents of children he takes a shine to.”
After the initial outrage, the Michael Jackson story slipped out of the headlines. There was little analysis of the not guilty verdicts and how they were reached. An acquittal was considered less profitable than a conviction.
Indeed, Thomas Mesereau said in later years that if Jackson had been convicted it would have created a ‘cottage industry’ for the media, generating a story a day for years to come. Long-running sagas like custody of Jackson’s children, control of his financial empire, other ‘victims’ filing civil suits and the long-winded appeals process would have generated thousands of stories each for months, years, perhaps even decades.
Jackson’s imprisonment would have created a never ending supply of gratuitous headlines; Who is visiting? Who isn’t? Is he in solitary confinement? If not, who are his cellmates? What about his prison wardens? Does he have a prison pen-pal girlfriend? Can we fly a helicopter over the prison yard and film him exercising? The possibilities were endless. A bidding war was raging over who would get the first leaked images of Jackson in his cell before the jury even began its deliberations.
A not guilty verdict was not quite so lucrative. In an interview with Newsweek, CNN boss Jonathan Klein recalled watching the not guilty verdicts come in and then telling his deputies, “We have a less interesting story now.” The Hollywood Reporter noted that hastily assembled TV specials about Jackson’s acquittal performed badly and were beaten in the ratings by a re-run of Nanny 911.
The story was over. There were no apologies and no retractions. There was no scrutiny - no inquiries or investigations. Nobody was held to account for what was done to Michael Jackson. The media was content to let people go on believing their heavily skewed and borderline fictitious account of the trial. That was that.
When Michael Jackson died the media went into overdrive again. What drugs had killed him? How long had he been using them? Who had prescribed them? What else was in his system? How much did he weigh?
But there was one question nobody seemed to want to ask: Why?
Why was Michael Jackson so stressed and so paranoid that he couldn’t even get a decent night’s sleep unless somebody stuck a tube full of anesthetic into his arm? I think the answer can be found in the results of various polls conducted in the wake of Michael Jackson’s trial.
A poll conducted by Gallup in the hours after the verdict showed that 54% of White Americans and 48% of the overall population disagreed with the jury’s decision of ‘not guilty’. The poll also found that 62% of people felt Jackson’s celebrity status was instrumental in the verdicts. 34% said they were ‘saddened’ by the verdict and 24% said they were ‘outraged’. In a Fox News poll 37% of voters said the verdict was ‘wrong’ while an additional 25% said ‘celebrities buy justice’. A poll by People Weekly found that a staggering 88% of readers disagreed with the jury’s decision.
The media did a number on its audience and it did a number on Jackson. After battling his way through an exhausting and horrifying trial, riddled with hideous accusations and character assassinations, Michael Jackson should have felt vindicated when the jury delivered 14 unanimous not guilty verdicts. But the media’s irresponsible coverage of the trial made it impossible for Jackson to ever feel truly vindicated. The legal system may have declared him innocent but the public, on the whole, still thought otherwise. Allegations which were disproven in court went unchallenged in the press. Shaky testimony was presented as fact. The defense’s case was all but ignored.
When asked about those who doubted the verdicts, the jury replied, “They didn’t see what we saw.”
They’re right. We didn’t. But we should have done. And those who refused to tell us remain in their jobs unchecked, unpunished and free to do exactly the same thing to anybody they desire.
Now that’s what I call injustice.
It was five years ago today that twelve jurors unanimously acquitted Michael Jackson on various charges of child molestation, conspiracy and providing alcohol to a minor. It is difficult to know how history will remember the Michael Jackson trial. Perhaps as the epitome of western celebrity obsession. Perhaps as a 21st century lynching. Personally, I think it will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in journalistic history.
It’s not until you find yourself digging through newspaper archives and re-watching hours of TV coverage that you truly understand the magnitude of the media’s failings. It was industry-wide. No doubt, there were certain reporters and even certain publications and TV stations that overtly favored the prosecution, but many of the media’s shortcomings were institutional. In a media obsessed with soundbites, how to you reduce eight hours of testimony into two sentences and remain accurate? In an era of rolling news and instant blogging, how do you resist the temptation to dash out of the courtroom at the earliest opportunity to break news of the latest salacious allegations, even if it means missing a slice of the day’s testimony?
Looking back on the Michael Jackson trial, I see a media out of control. The sheer amount of propaganda, bias, distortion and misinformation is almost beyond comprehension. Reading the court transcripts and comparing them to the newspaper cuttings, the trial that was relayed to us didn’t even resemble the trial that was going on inside the courtroom. The transcripts show an endless parade of seedy prosecution witnesses perjuring themselves on an almost hourly basis and crumbling under cross examination. The newspaper cuttings and the TV news clips detail day after day of heinous accusations and lurid innuendo.
It was November 18th 2003 when 70 sheriffs swooped on Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. As soon as news of the raid broke, news channels abandoned their schedules and switched to 24 hour coverage. When it emerged that Jackson was accused of molesting young cancer survivor Gavin Arvizo, the boy who famously held the singer’s hand in Martin Bashir’s ‘Living With Michael Jackson’, the media went into overdrive. Networks were so obsessed by the Jackson scandal that a terrorist attack in Turkey went almost entirely unreported, with only CNN bothering to broadcast George Bush and Tony Blair’s joint press conference about the disaster.
All three major networks immediately set about producing hour-long specials on the Jackson case, apparently undeterred by the fact that nothing was yet known about the allegations and prosecutors weren’t answering questions. CBS dedicated an episode of 48 Hours Investigates to the arrest, while NBC’s Dateline and ABC’s 20/20 also rushed out Jackson specials. Within two days of the Neverland raid, and before Jackson had even been arrested, VH1 announced a half-hour documentary called ‘Michael Jackson Sex Scandal’.
Daily Variety described the Jackson story as “a godsend for... media outlets, particularly cable news channels and local stations looking to pump up Nielsen numbers in the final week of the all-important November sweeps.”
Daily Variety was right. Celebrity-oriented news shows saw figures spike when the Jackson story hit. Viewing figures for Access Hollywood were up 10% on the previous week. Entertainment Tonight and Extra both achieved season best audience numbers and Celebrity Justice also enjoyed an 8% rise.
Newspapers reacted just as hysterically as TV stations. ‘Sicko!’ shrieked the New York Daily News. ‘Jacko: Now Get Out Of This One’ goaded the New York Post.
The Sun - Britain’s biggest newspaper - ran an article titled ‘He’s Bad, He’s Dangerous, He’s History’. The piece branded Jackson an ‘ex-black ex-superstar’, a ‘freak’ and a ‘twisted individual’ and called for his children to be taken into care. “If he weren’t a pop idol with piles of cash to hide behind,” it said, “he would have been picked up years ago.”
Encouraged by the audience boosts the Jackson scandal had produced, media outlets made it their mission to milk the case for all that they could. Entertainment Weekly’s Tom Sinclair wrote, “Media mavens, from the tackiest tabloid reporter to the nattiest network news anchor, are in overdrive scrambling to fill column inches and airtime with Jacko scoops and talking heads.”
“Pressure on news people is enormous,” attorney Harland Braun told Sinclair. “So lawyers you’ve never heard of wind up on television talking about cases that they have no connection to.”
Sinclair added, “And not just lawyers. Everyone from doctors, writers, and psychiatrists to convenience-store clerks who once waited on Jackson are weighing in on TV and in print.”
While the media was busy badgering a host of quacks and distant acquaintances for their views on the scandal, the team of prosecutors behind the latest Jackson case was engaging in some highly questionable behavior - but the media didn’t seem to care.
During the Neverland raid District Attorney Tom Sneddon - the prosecutor who unsuccessfully pursued Jackson in 1993 - and his officers breached the terms of their own search warrant by entering Jackson’s office and seizing hoards of irrelevant business papers. They also illegally raided the office of a PI working for Jackson’s defense team and lifted defense documents from the home of the singer’s personal assistant.
Sneddon also appeared to be tampering with fundamental elements of his case whenever evidence came to light which undermined the Arvizo family’s claims. For instance, when the DA found out about two taped interviews in which the entire Arvizo family sang Jackson’s praises and denied any abuse, he introduced a conspiracy charge and claimed they’d been forced to lie against their will.
In a similar instance, Jackson’s lawyer Mark Geragos appeared on NBC in January 2004 and announced that the singer had a ‘concrete, iron-clad alibi’ for the dates on the charge sheet. By the time Jackson was re-arraigned in April for the conspiracy charge, the molestation dates on the rap sheet had been shifted by almost two weeks.
Sneddon was later caught seemingly trying to plant fingerprint evidence against Jackson, allowing accuser Gavin Arvizo to handle adult magazines during the grand jury hearings, then bagging them up and sending them away for fingerprint analysis.
Not only did the majority of the media overlook this flurry of questionable and occasionally illegal activity on the part of the prosecution, it also seemed perfectly content to perpetuate damning propaganda on the prosecution’s behalf, despite a complete lack of corroborative evidence. For example, Diane Dimond appeared on Larry King Live days after Jackson’s arrest and spoke repeatedly about a ‘stack of love letters’ the star had supposedly written to Gavin Arvizo.
“Does anyone here... know of the existence of these letters?” asked King.
“Absolutely,” Dimond replied. “I do. I absolutely know of their existence!”
“Diane, have you read them?”
“No, I have not read them.”
Dimond admitted that she’d never even seen the letters, let alone read them, but said she knew about them from “high law enforcement sources”. But those love letters never materialized. When Dimond said she ‘absolutely knew’ of their existence she was basing her comments solely on the words of police sources. At best, the police sources were parroting the Arvizos’ allegations in good faith. At worst, they’d concocted the story themselves to sully Jackson’s name. Either way, the story went around the world with not a shred of evidence to support it.
It was over a year between Jackson’s arrest and the beginning of his trial and the media was forced to try to pad the story out for as long as they could in the interim. Aware that Jackson was bound by gag order and therefore powerless to respond, prosecution sympathizers started leaking documents such as Jordan Chandler’s 1993 police statement. The media, hungry for scandal and sensationalism, pounced on them.
At the same time, allegations sold to tabloid TV shows by disgruntled ex-employees in the 1990s were constantly re-hashed and presented as news. Small details of the Arvizo family’s allegations would also periodically leak.
While most media outlets reported these stories as allegations rather than facts, the sheer amount and frequency of stories connecting Jackson to ugly sexual abuse, coupled with his inability to refute them, had a devastating effect on the star’s public image.
The trial began in early 2005 with jury selection. Asked by NBC about prosecution and defense jury selection tactics, Dimond said the difference was that prosecutors would be looking for jurors who had a sense of ‘good versus evil’ and ‘right and wrong’.
No sooner had the jurors been selected than Newsweek was trying to undermine them, claiming that a middle class jury would be unable to fairly judge a family of lower class accusers. In an article titled ‘Playing the Class Card’ the magazine said, “The Jackson trial may hinge on something other than race. And we don’t mean the evidence.”
As the trial kicked into gear, it became quickly apparent that the case was full of holes. The prosecution’s only ‘evidence’ was a stack of heterosexual porn magazines and a couple of legal art books. Thomas Mesereau wrote in a court motion, “The effort to try Mr. Jackson for having one of the largest private libraries in the world is alarming. Not since the dark day of almost three quarters of a century ago has anyone witnessed a prosecution which claimed that the possession of books by well known artists were evidence of a crime against the state.”
Gavin Arvizo’s brother, Star, took the stand early in the trial and claimed to have witnessed two specific acts of molestation but his testimony was completely inconsistent. Regarding one alleged act, he claimed in court that Jackson had been fondling Gavin, but in a previous description of the same incident he told a wildly different story, claiming Jackson had been rubbing his penis against Gavin’s buttocks. He also told two different stories about the other alleged act on two consecutive days in court.
During cross examination Jackson’s lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, showed the boy a copy of Barely Legal and repeatedly asked if it was the specific edition Jackson had shown him and his brother. The boy insisted that it was, only for Mesereau to reveal that it was published in August 2003; five months after the Arvizo family had left Neverland.
But this information went almost entirely unreported, the media focusing on the boy’s allegations rather than the cross examination which undermined them. Allegations make good soundbites. Complex cross examination does not.
When Gavin Arvizo took the stand, he claimed that Jackson had instigated the first act of molestation by telling him that all boys had to masturbate or else they would turn into rapists. But Mesereau showed under cross examination that the boy had previously admitted his grandmother made that comment, not Jackson, meaning that the whole molestation story was predicated on a lie.
Under cross examination the boy severely undermined the prosecution’s conspiracy charge by claiming he’d never felt afraid at Neverland and he’d never wanted to leave. His accounts of the alleged molestation also differed from his brother’s.
Unfortunately for Jackson, Gavin Arvizo’s cross examination was all but ignored as newspapers giggled and gossiped about what became known as ‘pajama day’. On the first day of the boy’s direct examination Jackson slipped in his shower, bruised his lung and was rushed to hospital. When Judge Rodney Melville ordered a bench warrant for Jackson’s arrest unless he arrived within an hour, the singer sped to the courthouse in the pajama trousers he’d been wearing when he was rushed to hospital.
The photographs of Jackson in his pajamas went all over the word, often with no mention of Jackson’s injury or the reason he was wearing them. Many journalists accused Jackson of faking the entire event in order to gain sympathy, although sympathetic is the last word you’d use to describe the media’s reaction.
The incident didn’t stop the media from sending Gavin Arvizo’s lurid allegations around the world the following day. Some outlets even ran the boy’s testimony as fact rather than conjecture. “He Said If Boys Don’t Do It They Might Turn Into Rapists - Cancer Boy Gavin Tells Court of Jacko Sex,” wrote The Mirror.
But the boy’s cross examination was another story. It went almost completely unreported. Instead of stories about Gavin Arvizo’s lies and the two brothers’ contradictory allegations, newspaper pages were filled with snarky opinion pieces about Jackson’s pajamas, even though ‘pajama day’ had been days previously. Thousands of words were dedicated to whether or not Jackson wore a wig and the Sun even ran an article attacking Jackson for the accessories he pinned to his waistcoats every day. It seemed like the press would write anything to avoid discussing the boy’s cross examination, which severely undermined the prosecution’s case.
This habit of reporting lurid allegations but ignoring the cross examination which discredited them became a distinct trend throughout Jackson’s trial. In an April 2005 interview with Matt Drudge, Fox columnist Roger Friedman explained, “What’s not reported is that the cross examination of these witnesses is usually fatal to them.” He added that whenever anybody said anything salacious or dramatic about Jackson, the media ‘went running outside to report on it’ and missed the subsequent cross examination.
Drudge agreed, adding, “You’re not hearing how witness after witness is disintegrating on the stand. There is not one witness, at least lately, that hasn’t admitted to perjuring themselves in previous proceedings either in this case or in some other case.”
This alarming trend of ignoring cross examination was perhaps most apparent in the media’s coverage of Kiki Fournier’s testimony. Under direct examination by the prosecution, Fournier - a Neverland housekeeper - testified that when at Neverland children often became unruly and she had sometimes seen children so hyperactive that they could, feasibly, have been intoxicated. The media scurried outside to report this apparent bombshell and missed one of the most significant pieces of testimony in the entire trial.
Under cross examination by Thomas Mesereau, Fournier said that during the Arvizo family’s final weeks at Neverland - the period during which the molestation supposedly happened - the two boys’ guest room had been constantly messy, leading her to believe they’d been sleeping in their own quarters all along - not Michael Jackson’s bedroom.
She also testified that Star Arvizo had once pulled a knife on her in the kitchen, explaining that she did not feel it had been intended as a joke and that she thought he’d been ‘trying to assert some sort of authority’.
In a devastating blow to the prosecution’s increasingly hilarious conspiracy charge, Fournier laughed at the idea that anybody could be held prisoner at Neverland Ranch, telling the jurors that there was no high fence around the property and the family could have walked out at any time ‘with ease’.
When Gavin and Star’s mother Janet Arvizo took the stand Tom Sneddon was seen with his head in his hands. She claimed that a videotape of herself and her children praising Jackson had been scripted word for word by a German man who barely spoke English. In outtakes she was seen singing Jackson’s praises then looking embarrassed and asking if she was being recorded. She said that had been scripted too.
She claimed she’d been held hostage at Neverland even though log books and receipts showed that she’d left the ranch and returned on three occasions during the period of ‘captivity’. It became apparent that she was currently under investigation for welfare fraud and had also been falsely obtaining money on the back of her son’s illness, holding benefits to pay for his cancer treatment when he was already covered by insurance.
Even the most ardent prosecution supporters had to admit that Janet Arvizo was a disastrous witness for the state. Except Diane Dimond, who in March 2005 seemed to use Janet Arvizo’s welfare fraud (she was convicted in the wake of Jackson’s trial) as roundabout proof of Jackson’s guilt, signing off a New York Post article with the gob smacking line, “Pedophiles don’t target kids with Ozzie and Harriet parents.”
Watching their case crumble before their eyes, the prosecution applied to the judge for permission to admit evidence of ‘prior bad acts’. Permission was granted. Prosecutors told the jury they would hear evidence of five former victims. But those five prior cases turned out to be even more laughable than the Arvizos’ claims.
A parade of disgruntled security guards and housekeepers took the stand to testify that they had witnessed molestation, much of it carried out on three boys; Wade Robson, Brett Barnes and Macauley Culkin. But those three boys were the defense’s first three witnesses, each of them testifying that Jackson had never touched them and they resented the implication.
Moreover, it was revealed that each of these former employees had been fired by Jackson for stealing from his property or had lost a wrongful termination suit and wound up owing Jackson huge amounts of money. They’d also neglected to tell the police when they supposedly witnessed this molestation, even when questioned in connection with Jordy Chandler’s 1993 allegations, but subsequently tried to sell stories to the press - sometimes successfully. The more money on the table, the more salacious the allegations became.
Roger Friedman complained in an interview with Matt Drudge that the media was ignoring the cross examination of the ‘prior bad acts’ witnesses, resulting in skewed reporting. He said, “When Thursday started, that first hour was with this guy Ralph Chacon who had worked at the Ranch as a security guard. He told the most outrageous story. It was so graphic. And of course everybody went running outside to report on it. But there were ten minutes right before the first break on Thursday when Tom Mesereau got up and cross examined this guy and obliterated him.”
The fourth ‘victim’, Jason Francia, took the stand and claimed that when he was a child, Jackson had molested him on three separate occasions. Pushed for details of the ‘molestation’, he said Jackson had tickled him three times outside his clothes and he’d needed years of therapy to get over it. The jury was seen rolling their eyes but reporters including Dan Abrams heralded him as ‘compelling’, predicting that he could be the witness who put Jackson behind bars.
The media repeatedly claimed that Francia’s allegations had been made in 1990, leading audiences to believe that the Jordy Chandler allegations were predated. In actuality, although Jason Francia claimed that the acts of molestation occurred in 1990, he didn’t report them until after the media storm over Chandler’s claims, at which point his mother, Neverland maid Blanca Francia, promptly extracted $20,000 from Hard Copy for an interview with Diane Dimond and another $2.4million in a settlement from Jackson.
Moreover, transcripts from police interviews showed that the Francia had repeatedly changed his story and had originally insisted that he’d never been molested. Transcripts also showed that he only said he was molested after police officers repeatedly overstepped the mark during interviews. Officers repeatedly referred to Jackson as a ‘molester’. On one occasion they told the boy that Jackson was molesting Macauley Culkin as they spoke, claiming that the only way they could rescue Culkin was if Francia told them he’d been sexually abused by the star. Transcripts also showed that Francia had previously said of the police, “They made me come up with stuff. They kept pushing. I wanted to hit them in the head.”
The fifth ‘victim’ was Jordy Chandler, who fled the country rather than testify against his former friend. Thomas Mesereau said in a Harvard lecture later that year, “The prosecutors tried to get him to show up and he wouldn’t. If he had, I had witnesses who were going to come in and say he told them it never happened and that he would never talk to his parents again for what they made him say. It turned out he’d gone into court and got legal emancipation from his parents.”
June Chandler, Jordy’s mother, testified that she hadn’t spoken to her son in 11 years. Questioned about the 1993 case, she seemed to suffer from a severe case of selective memory. At one point she claimed she couldn’t remember being sued by Michael Jackson and at another she said she’d never heard of her own attorney. She also never witnessed any molestation.
When the prosecution rested, the media seemed to lose interest in the trial. The defense case was given comparatively little newspaper space and air time. The Hollywood Reporter, which had been diligently reporting on the Jackson trial, missed out two whole weeks of the defense case. The attitude seemed to be that unless the testimony was graphic and salacious - unless it made a good soundbite - it wasn’t worth reporting.
The defense called numerous fantastic witnesses; boys and girls who had stayed with Jackson time and again and never witnessed any inappropriate behavior, employees who had witnessed the Arvizo boys helping themselves to alcohol in Jackson’s absence and celebrities who had also been targeted for handouts by the accuser. But little of this testimony was relayed to the public. When DA Tom Sneddon referred to black comic Chris Tucker as ‘boy’ during his cross examination, the media didn’t bat an eyelid.
When both sides rested jurors were told that if they found reasonable doubt, they had to acquit. Anybody who had been paying attention to proceedings could see that the doubt was so far beyond reasonable it wasn’t even funny. Almost every single prosecution witness either perjured themselves or wound up helping the defense. There wasn’t a shred of evidence connecting Jackson to any crime and there wasn’t a single credible witness connecting him to a crime either.
But that didn’t stop journalists and pundits from predicting guilty verdicts, CNN‘s Nancy Grace leading the way. Defense attorney Robert Shapiro, who had once represented the Chandler family, stated with certainty on CNN, “He’s going to be convicted.” Ex-prosecutor Wendy Murphy told Fox News, “There is no question we will see convictions here.”
The hysteria of the fans outside the courthouse was mirrored by that of the reporters who secured seats inside, who were so excitable that Judge Rodney Melville ordered them to ‘restrain themselves’. Thomas Mesereau commented retrospectively that the media had been “almost salivating about having [Jackson] hauled off to jail.”
When the jury delivered 14 ‘not guilty’ verdicts, the media was ‘humiliated’, Mesereau said in a subsequent interview. Media analyst Tim Rutten later commented, “So what happened when Jackson was acquitted on all counts? Red faces? Second thoughts? A little soul-searching, perhaps? Maybe one expression of regret for the rush to judgment? Naaawww. The reaction, instead, was rage liberally laced with contempt and the odd puzzled expression. Its targets were the jurors... Hell hath no fury like a cable anchor held up for scorn.”
In a post-verdict news conference Sneddon continued to refer to Gavin Arvizo as a ‘victim’ and said he suspected that the ‘celebrity factor’ had impeded the jury’s judgment - a line many media pundits swiftly appropriated as they set about undermining the jurors and their verdicts.
Within minutes of the announcement, Nancy Grace appeared on CourtTV to allege that jurors had been seduced by Jackson’s fame and bizarrely claim that the prosecution’s only weak link had been Janet Arvizo.
“I’m having a crow sandwich right now,” she said. “It doesn’t taste very good. But you know what? I’m also not surprised. I thought that celebrity is such a big factor. When you think you know somebody, when you have watched their concerts, listened to their records, read the lyrics, believed they were coming from somebody’s heart... Jackson is very charismatic, although he never took the stand. That has an effect on this jury.
“I’m not gonna throw a stone at the mom, although I think she was the weak link in the state’s case, but the reality is I’m not surprised. I thought that the jury would vote in favor of the similar transaction witnesses. Apparently the defense overwhelmed them with the cross-examining of the mother. I think it boils down to that, plain and simple.”
Grace later stated that Jackson was ‘not guilty by reason of celebrity’ and was seen attempting to hound jury foreman Paul Rodriguez into saying he believed Jackson had molested children. One of Grace’s guests, psychoanalyst Bethany Marshall, leveled personal attacks towards one female juror, saying, “This is a woman who has no life.”
Over on Fox News, Wendy Murphy branded Jackson ‘the Teflon molester’ and said that the jurors needed IQ tests. She later added, “I really think it’s the celebrity factor, not the evidence. I don’t think the jurors even understand how influenced they were by who Michael Jackson is... They basically put targets on the backs of all, especially highly vulnerable, kids that will now come into Michael Jackson’s life.”
Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told CNN that he thought the ‘prior bad acts’ testimony had been ‘effective evidence’, even though various boys at the heart of that testimony had taken the stand as defense witnesses and denied ever being molested. He also claimed that the defense had won because “they could tell a story, and juries, you know, always understand stories rather than sort of individual facts.”
Only Robert Shapiro was dignified in the face of the verdicts, telling viewers that they should accept the jurors’ decision because the jurors were from “a very conservative part of California and if they had no doubt, none of us should have any doubt.”
The following day on Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer upheld the notion that the verdict had been influenced by Jackson’s celebrity status. “Are you sure?” she pleaded. “Are you sure that this gigantically renowned guy walking into the room had no influence at all?”
The Washington Post commented, “An acquittal doesn’t clear his name, it only muddies the water.” Both the New York Post and the New York Daily News ran with the snide headline ‘Boy, Oh, Boy!’
In her final New York Post article about the trial, Diane Dimond bemoaned the not guilty verdict, saying that it left Michael Jackson untouchable. She wrote, “He walked out of court a free man, not guilty on all counts. But Michael Jackson is so much more than free. He now has carte blanche to live his life any way he wants, with whomever he wants, because who would ever try to prosecute Michael Jackson now?”
In Britain’s Sun newspaper, celebrity rent-a-gob and talking head extraordinaire Jane Moore penned an article titled ‘If the jury agree Janet Arvizo is a bad mum (and she IS)... How did they let Jackson off?’ It began: “Michael Jackson is innocent. Justice has been done. Or so the loony tunes gathered outside the courthouse would have us believe.” She went on to question the jurors’ mental capacity and dismiss the American legal system as ‘half-baked’. “Nothing and no one truly emerges as a winner from this sorry mess,” she finished, “least of all what they laughably call American ‘justice’.”
Sun contributor Ally Ross dismissed Jackson’s fans as ‘sad, solitary dick-wits’. Another Sun article, penned by daytime TV presenter Lorraine Kelly, titled ‘Don’t forget the kids still at risk... Jacko’s own’, overtly labeled Jackson a guilty man. Kelly - who never attended Jackson’s trial - bemoaned the fact that Jackson ‘got away with it’, complaining that “instead of languishing in jail, Jackson is now back home in Neverland.” Jackson, she concluded, was “a sad, sick loser who uses his fame and money to dazzle the parents of children he takes a shine to.”
After the initial outrage, the Michael Jackson story slipped out of the headlines. There was little analysis of the not guilty verdicts and how they were reached. An acquittal was considered less profitable than a conviction.
Indeed, Thomas Mesereau said in later years that if Jackson had been convicted it would have created a ‘cottage industry’ for the media, generating a story a day for years to come. Long-running sagas like custody of Jackson’s children, control of his financial empire, other ‘victims’ filing civil suits and the long-winded appeals process would have generated thousands of stories each for months, years, perhaps even decades.
Jackson’s imprisonment would have created a never ending supply of gratuitous headlines; Who is visiting? Who isn’t? Is he in solitary confinement? If not, who are his cellmates? What about his prison wardens? Does he have a prison pen-pal girlfriend? Can we fly a helicopter over the prison yard and film him exercising? The possibilities were endless. A bidding war was raging over who would get the first leaked images of Jackson in his cell before the jury even began its deliberations.
A not guilty verdict was not quite so lucrative. In an interview with Newsweek, CNN boss Jonathan Klein recalled watching the not guilty verdicts come in and then telling his deputies, “We have a less interesting story now.” The Hollywood Reporter noted that hastily assembled TV specials about Jackson’s acquittal performed badly and were beaten in the ratings by a re-run of Nanny 911.
The story was over. There were no apologies and no retractions. There was no scrutiny - no inquiries or investigations. Nobody was held to account for what was done to Michael Jackson. The media was content to let people go on believing their heavily skewed and borderline fictitious account of the trial. That was that.
When Michael Jackson died the media went into overdrive again. What drugs had killed him? How long had he been using them? Who had prescribed them? What else was in his system? How much did he weigh?
But there was one question nobody seemed to want to ask: Why?
Why was Michael Jackson so stressed and so paranoid that he couldn’t even get a decent night’s sleep unless somebody stuck a tube full of anesthetic into his arm? I think the answer can be found in the results of various polls conducted in the wake of Michael Jackson’s trial.
A poll conducted by Gallup in the hours after the verdict showed that 54% of White Americans and 48% of the overall population disagreed with the jury’s decision of ‘not guilty’. The poll also found that 62% of people felt Jackson’s celebrity status was instrumental in the verdicts. 34% said they were ‘saddened’ by the verdict and 24% said they were ‘outraged’. In a Fox News poll 37% of voters said the verdict was ‘wrong’ while an additional 25% said ‘celebrities buy justice’. A poll by People Weekly found that a staggering 88% of readers disagreed with the jury’s decision.
The media did a number on its audience and it did a number on Jackson. After battling his way through an exhausting and horrifying trial, riddled with hideous accusations and character assassinations, Michael Jackson should have felt vindicated when the jury delivered 14 unanimous not guilty verdicts. But the media’s irresponsible coverage of the trial made it impossible for Jackson to ever feel truly vindicated. The legal system may have declared him innocent but the public, on the whole, still thought otherwise. Allegations which were disproven in court went unchallenged in the press. Shaky testimony was presented as fact. The defense’s case was all but ignored.
When asked about those who doubted the verdicts, the jury replied, “They didn’t see what we saw.”
They’re right. We didn’t. But we should have done. And those who refused to tell us remain in their jobs unchecked, unpunished and free to do exactly the same thing to anybody they desire.
Now that’s what I call injustice.
03-17-19, 04:34 PM
#159
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
So, do you deny all 10 points that person made?
If so, let's break it down, one by one, and understand why you disagree.
03-17-19, 04:50 PM
#160
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
As the trial kicked into gear, it became quickly apparent that the case was full of holes. The prosecution’s only ‘evidence’ was a stack of heterosexual porn magazines and a couple of legal art books. Thomas Mesereau wrote in a court motion, “The effort to try Mr. Jackson for having one of the largest private libraries in the world is alarming. Not since the dark day of almost three quarters of a century ago has anyone witnessed a prosecution which claimed that the possession of books by well known artists were evidence of a crime against the state.”
James Bidgood, Rineka Dijkstra, Ed Templeton, Robert Maxwell, Tom Bianchi, and well-known 19th-century images by Wilhelm von Gloeden of young men in particular "poses".
The Fourth Sex: Adolescent Extremes was among Jackson’s possessions. The book includes "art" by Jake and Dino Chapman, Vanessa Beecroft, Raymond Pettibon, Mike Kelley, Elizabeth Peyton, Karen Kilimnik, Charles Ray, Takashi Murakami, Larry Clark, Rineke Dijkstra, Paul McCarthy, Richard Prince, Gilbert & George, Gavin Turk, and Richard Billingham.
Does this "reporter" know who Taormina Wilhelm Von Gloeden is. If he did, he would have shut the fuck up and not rambled on so long. This guy loved doing "studies" on young Sicilian boys. Heterosexual my asshole. This reporter is purposely distracting us from the subject matter of MJ's house. MJ was into homoerotic images of young boys. Period. He was fascinated with young private parts of mostly boys but also was overall fascinated with young children who didn't have defined genitalia.
Need more proof or do we all have a nice copy of this guy's book lying around our homes with children...
I won't disagree that the testimony of these kids is contradicting, but we have to consider the circumstantial evidence obtained at his home, his own behaviors, and make a determination of the likelyhood of the accusations. The kids did say one thing, but then later in life said the opposite. However, I think there is justification for that, which goes beyond just simple gold digging.
Last edited by DVD Polizei; 03-17-19 at 05:00 PM.
03-17-19, 05:00 PM
#161
DVD Talk Godfather & 2020 TOTY Winner
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
03-17-19, 05:02 PM
#162
DVD Talk Godfather & 2020 TOTY Winner
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
03-17-19, 07:01 PM
#163
DVD Talk Legend
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
So when given a chance to respond to 10 undeniable facts, the guy who links to articles from www.mjinnocent.com chooses instead to criticize the veteran magazine journalist from Vanity Fair and ignore the question asked? Typical.
It's obvious he's just a fan of MJ and that inhibits him to think rationally and with logic.
If he was a young teenager I can understand not wanting to believe that MJ was a pedophile, but as an adult who should be able to separate the artist from the person - it's pretty pathetic.
No point in debating with a child.
03-18-19, 04:13 AM
#164
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
If there's even a tiny bit of the accusations that are true, I want some fucking culpability for those dumbass parents!
03-24-19, 12:40 PM
#165
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
Taking some time off from basketball to post my rebuttal to Maureen Orth's laughable list of 10 undeniable facts...( LINK )
ORTH CLAIM #1. There is no dispute that, at age 34, Michael Jackson slept more than 30 nights in a row in the same bed with 13-year-old Jordie Chandler at the boy’s house with Chandler’s mother present. He also slept in the same bed with Jordie Chandler at Chandler’s father’s house. The parents were divorced.
REBUTTAL:
Here's an undeniable fact: Sleeping in the same bed DOES NOT MEAN anything sexual happened
Another undeniable fact is that Michael Jackson was weird, strange, eccentric. And that Michael Jackson loved children.
And here's yet another undeniable fact: being weird/strange/eccentric and loving children DOES NOT make someone a gay child molester. You might as well call Mr. Rogers a gay child molester, if that's how you think.
As for sharing his bedroom or his bed, to some people that seems like a slam dunk that he molested children. But it's possible to share a bedroom and a bed with someone without anything sexual happening.
And I think it's important to remember that Michael Jackson grew up sharing BOTH a bedroom AND a bed with his brothers. Growing up in a family of his parents and 9 kids, they didn't get their own bedrooms. He and his brothers (the entire Jackson 5) shared one bedroom and he shared a bed with Marlon Jackson for his early life up until his teenage years, including sharing a bed when the band was on the road. This is the difference between someone who grows up in a large family and someone who grows up in a small family. People in large families think sharing a bedroom and even a bed with someone just for sleeping is perfectly normal, while someone who grew up in a small family in which they always had their own bed and own bedroom don't think this way at all and see sharing a bed with someone as almost always sexual or at the very least as extremely strange. (And growing up this way is probably one reason why Michael Jackson and Macauley Culkin clicked so well as friends because Macauley had a similar upbringing and grew up sharing a small one-bedroom apartment with his parents and his 6 siblings, a situation that didn't end until after "Home Alone" was released.)
And it's also important to remember that Michael Jackson liked having surrogate FAMILIES so that's why he liked spending time with entire families, it wasn't just the children of the family. So when kids were at his home, so were the parents in almost every case. Maybe this was from Michael Jackson growing up in a large family, I don't know, but anyone who has ever had a friend who has a close-knit family and experienced being treated almost like one of the family when at their home should understand why a person may like the experience of having surrogate families. And those “supposedly incriminating” photos of Michael Jackson with children, it's important to remember that a main reason the parents are missing from those photos is because they are the ones taking the picture. And when he let children sleep in his bedroom or bed, it was ALL of the children in the family. If the family had children that were both boys and girls, then all of the boys and girls slept in his bed. If the family had only girls, then all of the girls slept in his bed. And if the family had only boys, then all of the boys slept in his bed. The rare times only a lone boy slept in his bed was when the boy was an only child.
As to why the fact that young girls also slept in his bedroom or bed is not as widely known as the stories of the young boys, this is because these salacious claims started in the tabloid press. The tabloids want the most scandalous story possible and, given that being gay was a lot less acceptable back in the 1980s & 1990s than it is now, it was a more shocking claim to say that Michael Jackson was a “gay child molester” instead of just a “child molester”. The fact that all the young girls who stayed at Neverland are left out is why this view really does seem to completely originate from the tabloids. And that this is what so many people believe these days is amazing, given that it originated from the same publications that also claim Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster are real.
And on a final note of this particular claim, Carrie Fisher was friends with Michael Jackson and I think her quote about him from one of her later books says it best: “I never thought that Michael's whole thing with kids was sexual. Never. Granted, it was miles from appropriate, but just because it wasn't normal doesn't mean that it had to be perverse.”
ORTH CLAIM #2. So far, five boys Michael Jackson shared beds with have accused him of abuse: Jordie Chandler, Jason Francia, Gavin Arvizo, Wade Robson, and Jimmy Safechuck.
REBUTTAL: Jordy Chandler, Jason Francia, and Gavin Arvizo were all covered in the 2005 trial as the prosecution tried to throw everything they had at him and Michael Jackson was exonerated of all of them. And that trial was not like some other celebrity trials in which the defense used some odd strategy to avoid a conviction, but the defense took all the accusations head-on and showed that the accusers lacked any credibility.
And here's an undeniable fact: Michael Jackson let a lot of children share his bedroom, probably around 100 over the years. This included both boys and girls. Yet, after all of that, only a small handful ever claimed he molested them?
Another undeniable fact: Every family or person who has made a molestation allegation against Michael Jackson sought some sort of money payout first and foremost. No exceptions.
Why would they seek a payout first before going to the police to report a crime? (Just think about that for a moment before reading on.)
Additionally, why did Jordy Chandler and his entire family, after getting a payout for their civil case, completely refuse to cooperate with the police on the investigation into the criminal case? There was nothing in the payout prohibiting this, so why did they all of a sudden lose interest? Their lack of cooperation is why the criminal case was closed due to “lack of evidence”. (However, the DA office did eventually throw it in with the 2005 trial and, like everything else, it fell apart there too.)
ORTH CLAIM #3. Jackson paid $25 million to settle the Chandlers’ lawsuit, with $18 million going to Jordie, $2.5 million to each of the parents, and the rest to lawyers. Jackson said he paid that sum to avoid something “long and drawn out.” Francia also received $2.4 million from Jackson.
REBUTTAL: An example of Maureen Orth's poor research skills. For one thing, Michael Jackson didn't make the payout, his insurance company did. The amount was $23.3 million total, with $15.3 million going to a trust for Jordy Chandler, $1.5 million each going to his biological father (Evan Chandler) and his mother (June), and the rest going to the lawyers. So she's wrong about the total amount even though the document was leaked over a decade ago and the barest amount of research would've discovered this (just pointing this out as another reminder on what a lousy researcher Maureen Orth is).
After the settlement in the 1993/1994 civil case, some people may think "He settled, therefore he's probably guilty" because I know I thought that for a long time, until I finally researched it in detail on my own. (Note to anyone reading: Have you even bothered to do that?)
Here's an undeniable fact about the Chandler settlement: It was the record company and Michael Jackson's business interests, not Michael Jackson himself, that insisted on settling because they didn't want bad press affecting both record and concert sales. The settlement included legal language essentially saying that the settlement was not an admission of guilt but was done solely to protect Michael Jackson's business interests from the negative effects of bad publicity. As well as language saying that it is “compensatory damages for alleged personal injuries arising out of claims of negligence and not for claims of intentional or wrongful acts of sexual molestation.” So they specifically cited “negligence” as the reason for the settlement. And even though Michael Jackson went along with this settlement at the time because he also wanted to avoid the media circus of a celebrity trial, he later regretted agreeing to settle and wished he had fought the allegations in court instead. (The smaller Jason Francia settlement soon afterwards was done by the same companies for the same reasons.)
ORTH CLAIM #4. Michael Jackson suffered from the skin discoloration disease vitiligo. Jordie Chandler drew a picture of the markings on the underside of Jackson’s penis. His drawings were sealed in an envelope. A few months later, investigators photographed Jackson’s genitalia. The photographs matched Chandler’s drawings.
REBUTTAL: Yet another common claim based on little evidence. The claim that Jordy Chandler's drawing matched Michael Jackson's penis has some problems with it.
Problem #1: Jordy Chandler drew a penis without foreskin, but Michael Jackson was uncircumcised (a fact verified by his autopsy), so not a match. Some will claim that Jordy didn't draw foreskin because he drew an erect penis. But that claim means they were comparing a drawing of an erect penis with photos of a flaccid penis, and as anyone who know anything about what a penis looks like, the erect form of a penis looks nothing like the flaccid form, so once again, the picture still would not match.
Problem #2: We can't see the photo or the drawing for ourselves to verify either way, but there is one undeniable fact: the police who had both the photo and the drawing opted NOT to admit them into evidence. So if it was such a clear match, it's a bit surprising that they avoided doing this.
On a related note about identifying penises, does anyone remember Dave Chappelle accurately describing Michael Jackson's penis on the Chappelle Show?
And with that, I rest my case on this topic.
ORTH CLAIM #5. The hallway leading to Jackson’s bedroom was a serious security zone covered by video and wired for sound so that the steps of anyone approaching would make ding-dong sounds.
REBUTTAL: A rich person had security features installed in his house. So what? This means NOTHING. Anyone who thinks this is some sort of damning evidence is an idiot. (COUGH)Maureen Orth(COUGH)
ORTH CLAIM #6. Jackson had an extensive collection of adult erotic material he kept in a suitcase next to his bed, including S&M bondage photos and a study of naked boys.
REBUTTAL: Here's where Maureen Orth really jumps the rails with ridiculous claims. The "S&M bondage photos and a study of naked boys" were a few coffee table art books with artsy-fartsy pictures of models of all ages in them. He also had a collection of dolls and mannequins - so what?
The "extensive collection of adult erotic material" Michael Jackson had were documented by the police after their raid of Neverland Ranch ( LINK https://lacienegasmiled.wordpress.co...jacksons-porn/ ), here's a summary of what it included:
It had issues of Playboy, issues of Penthouse, issues of Hustler, issues of Barely Legal, issues of Finally Legal, issues of Jugg, various issues of other magazines of naked women, and some photos of naked women
An undeniable fact is the one thing all of these have in common: they are all porn created for straight men! For anyone who thinks Michael Jackson was gay, this is some compelling evidence that he was actually straight.
The DA was so disappointed at the complete lack of gay porn or child porn that they tried to enter the coffee table art books into evidence as "gay porn" and "child porn". The judge disallowed it because of the obvious ridiculousness of claiming that art books that anyone could buy legally in a bookstore were porn.
ORTH CLAIM #7. According to the Neverland staff interviewed by the Santa Barbara authorities, no one ever saw or knew of a woman spending the night with Michael Jackson, including his two spouses, Debbie Rowe or Lisa Marie Presley. Rowe, the mother of two of Jackson’s children, made it clear to the Santa Barbara authorities that she never had sex with Jackson.
REBUTTAL: Once again showing what a lousy journalist Maureen Orth is. How about talk about Lisa Marie Presley more? Because Lisa Marie Presley says that she had sex with Michael Jackson from the years 1992 through 1999. They were only married for a couple of those years (her refusal to have children is what ended that marriage) but continued to see each other in hookups for a few years after the divorce. And some of Michael Jackson's bodyguards claim that Michael Jackson privately saw a lot of women when he was on the road. Michael Jackson did have a bad habit of getting coy and going silent when asked about women in his life - maybe he did this to protect them from the paparazzi - but the fact that he frequently did this in interviews does not mean he was gay. As I mentioned, the claims that he was gay seem to have in the originated in the tabloids because they wanted to scandalously smear him as a "gay pedophile" instead of just smearing him as a "pedophile" - after all, he allowed both boys AND girls to sleep in his bedroom and his actual porn collection had pictures of barely legal girls in it – but this smear ends up completely falling apart once the undeniable fact that he was 100% heterosexual is factored in. (And there have been female accusers who claim Michael Jackson molested them, all seeking a payout of course, but the tabloids seemed to have mostly ignored them because they just want to spin the salacious claim that he's a gay child molester.)
ORTH CLAIM #8. The parents of boys Jackson shared beds with were courted assiduously and given myriad expensive gifts.
REBUTTAL: And this means what exactly? That Michael Jackson was a generous guy who lavished gifts on everyone around him? Yes, that's true but it doesn't mean anything sexual was going on. Michael Jackson used to give $100 bills to homeless people, so does that mean he was sexually molesting the homeless people too? The one thing about this undeniable fact is that it means absolutely nothing except that he was a generous and trusting guy. (The trusting part is what really backfired on him.) He also loaned the people money to buy a house, but when they failed to pay him back, he forgave the loan. Ultimately, this could be distorted into claiming he "gave them a house" but really, he was expecting to get paid back but couldn't bring himself to kick people out when they failed to pay him back, so he just let them keep the house.
ORTH CLAIM #9. Two of the fathers of those who have accused Jackson, Jordie Chandler and Wade Robson, committed suicide. Both were estranged from their sons at the time
REBUTTAL: Once again an “undeniable fact” that means jackshit. As to the details about these men who committed suicide, one (Dennis Robson) was bipolar and the suicide attempt rate of bipolar people is over 50% so that's probably the main reason he did it.
The other father, Evan Chandler, has a lot more to his story that could explain why he committed suicide. He was the father of Jordy Chandler and was divorced from Jordy's mother at the time Michael Jackson was spending time with his family. Evan Chandler at some point cooked up a plan to shakedown Michael Jackson for millions of dollars. If you think this is a far-fetched claim, there's an audio recording of him talking to Jordy's step-father and bragging about how he'll get everything he wants (which turned out to be a large payout) otherwise he'd ruin Michael Jackson's reputation so much that no one would buy his music. And he did initially try to get hush money from Michael Jackson. What did Michael Jackson do? Did he payout hush money to keep this horrible allegation from getting out? NOPE. He refused to pay, so that's when Evan Chandler took it to the next level and filed a lawsuit against Michael Jackson in civil court. And, oh yeah, he eventually called the police too as kind of an afterthought.
The thing is Evan Chandler's shakedown kind of fell apart from what he planned. Initially, he allegedly did it so he would get $20 million and custody of his son (his ex-wife had custody at the time). But the settlement put the lion's share of the money in a trust for Jordy and Evan only got $1.5 million (a nice sum but substantially less than what he wanted). And not all that long after the settlement, Jordy Chandler applied for and received legal emancipation from his parents and, for the most part, never saw his biological father (or his mother) again. So even Evan Chandler's plan to get back his son completely backfired on him and he ended his life alienated from his son in misery. CORRECTION: Jordy Chandler never saw his mother and stepfather again, but did live with his biological father for a few years. But later, he applied for and got a permanent restraining order against his biological father for physical abuse and that's when he never saw him again after that. And then the few years later is when his biological father committed suicide.
And, on a side note, Jordy Chandler, once he "divorced" his parents and was on his own, has steadfastly refused to testify in court against Michael Jackson. The 1993/1994 criminal case fell apart because of his refusal to testify against Michael Jackson. And in the 2005 trial, the prosecution tried to find him and get him to testify. Once again, he refused to testify against Michael Jackson and even said that he would legally fight any attempt to subpoena him and force him to testify. It really does appear that Jordy Chandler hated his biological father, but didn't hate Michael Jackson. Why can only be speculation.
ORTH CLAIM #10. In a 2002 documentary, “Living with Michael Jackson”, Jackson told Martin Bashir there was nothing wrong with sharing his bed with boys.
REBUTTAL: Okay, so we know Michael Jackson thinks there is nothing wrong with sharing his bedroom with CHILDREN. But by this point in time, Michael Jackson essentially gave up his bed to children at Neverland Ranch if they asked and their parents allowed it, but he DID NOT sleep in the same bed anymore. He either slept in a different bed or would sleep on the floor of his bedroom on a pallet of blankets. And when the Arvizo family was at Neverland and Gavin begged Michael to allow him to sleep in his bed (and he had a tough time ever saying "no" to a child), Michael was so distrustful of the motives Gavin's mother may have had at that point, that he allowed it but Michael insisted that his assistant Frank Cascio sleep in the bedroom too. So Gavin and his brother slept on Michael's bed, while Michael and his assistant slept on the floor in the bedroom.
Here's Frank Cascio talking about this:
And for people cherrypicking quotes that they somehow think are slam dunks against him, Michael Jackson also said that he would never harm a child to Martin Bashir, so why is that quote so conveniently omitted when people talk about this? And why do they avoid quoting all the celebrities who say (and testified) to the effect that the Arvizo family were all a bunch of con artists who worked together and that nothing they claim can be trusted?
FINAL REBUTTAL NOTE:
So that's Maureen Orth's undeniable facts list. That's it. That's the best she could do for her “slam dunk” against Michael Jackson. This list of “undeniable facts” is little more than a list that combines things that mean nothing one way or the other and some very deniable claims that indicate extremely poor research and are cherrypicked in such a way that omits so much actual information. She does this because that's the only way for her to weave a narrative. Actually digging deep and checking the facts on Michael Jackson – you know, that thing called “real journalism” – leads in only one direction: that, despite his weirdness, Michael Jackson was most likely innocent of all the allegations and that those allegations were apparently only made for a monetary incentive, first and foremost.
.
ORTH CLAIM #1. There is no dispute that, at age 34, Michael Jackson slept more than 30 nights in a row in the same bed with 13-year-old Jordie Chandler at the boy’s house with Chandler’s mother present. He also slept in the same bed with Jordie Chandler at Chandler’s father’s house. The parents were divorced.
REBUTTAL:
Here's an undeniable fact: Sleeping in the same bed DOES NOT MEAN anything sexual happened
Another undeniable fact is that Michael Jackson was weird, strange, eccentric. And that Michael Jackson loved children.
And here's yet another undeniable fact: being weird/strange/eccentric and loving children DOES NOT make someone a gay child molester. You might as well call Mr. Rogers a gay child molester, if that's how you think.
As for sharing his bedroom or his bed, to some people that seems like a slam dunk that he molested children. But it's possible to share a bedroom and a bed with someone without anything sexual happening.
And I think it's important to remember that Michael Jackson grew up sharing BOTH a bedroom AND a bed with his brothers. Growing up in a family of his parents and 9 kids, they didn't get their own bedrooms. He and his brothers (the entire Jackson 5) shared one bedroom and he shared a bed with Marlon Jackson for his early life up until his teenage years, including sharing a bed when the band was on the road. This is the difference between someone who grows up in a large family and someone who grows up in a small family. People in large families think sharing a bedroom and even a bed with someone just for sleeping is perfectly normal, while someone who grew up in a small family in which they always had their own bed and own bedroom don't think this way at all and see sharing a bed with someone as almost always sexual or at the very least as extremely strange. (And growing up this way is probably one reason why Michael Jackson and Macauley Culkin clicked so well as friends because Macauley had a similar upbringing and grew up sharing a small one-bedroom apartment with his parents and his 6 siblings, a situation that didn't end until after "Home Alone" was released.)
And it's also important to remember that Michael Jackson liked having surrogate FAMILIES so that's why he liked spending time with entire families, it wasn't just the children of the family. So when kids were at his home, so were the parents in almost every case. Maybe this was from Michael Jackson growing up in a large family, I don't know, but anyone who has ever had a friend who has a close-knit family and experienced being treated almost like one of the family when at their home should understand why a person may like the experience of having surrogate families. And those “supposedly incriminating” photos of Michael Jackson with children, it's important to remember that a main reason the parents are missing from those photos is because they are the ones taking the picture. And when he let children sleep in his bedroom or bed, it was ALL of the children in the family. If the family had children that were both boys and girls, then all of the boys and girls slept in his bed. If the family had only girls, then all of the girls slept in his bed. And if the family had only boys, then all of the boys slept in his bed. The rare times only a lone boy slept in his bed was when the boy was an only child.
As to why the fact that young girls also slept in his bedroom or bed is not as widely known as the stories of the young boys, this is because these salacious claims started in the tabloid press. The tabloids want the most scandalous story possible and, given that being gay was a lot less acceptable back in the 1980s & 1990s than it is now, it was a more shocking claim to say that Michael Jackson was a “gay child molester” instead of just a “child molester”. The fact that all the young girls who stayed at Neverland are left out is why this view really does seem to completely originate from the tabloids. And that this is what so many people believe these days is amazing, given that it originated from the same publications that also claim Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster are real.
And on a final note of this particular claim, Carrie Fisher was friends with Michael Jackson and I think her quote about him from one of her later books says it best: “I never thought that Michael's whole thing with kids was sexual. Never. Granted, it was miles from appropriate, but just because it wasn't normal doesn't mean that it had to be perverse.”
ORTH CLAIM #2. So far, five boys Michael Jackson shared beds with have accused him of abuse: Jordie Chandler, Jason Francia, Gavin Arvizo, Wade Robson, and Jimmy Safechuck.
REBUTTAL: Jordy Chandler, Jason Francia, and Gavin Arvizo were all covered in the 2005 trial as the prosecution tried to throw everything they had at him and Michael Jackson was exonerated of all of them. And that trial was not like some other celebrity trials in which the defense used some odd strategy to avoid a conviction, but the defense took all the accusations head-on and showed that the accusers lacked any credibility.
And here's an undeniable fact: Michael Jackson let a lot of children share his bedroom, probably around 100 over the years. This included both boys and girls. Yet, after all of that, only a small handful ever claimed he molested them?
Another undeniable fact: Every family or person who has made a molestation allegation against Michael Jackson sought some sort of money payout first and foremost. No exceptions.
Why would they seek a payout first before going to the police to report a crime? (Just think about that for a moment before reading on.)
Additionally, why did Jordy Chandler and his entire family, after getting a payout for their civil case, completely refuse to cooperate with the police on the investigation into the criminal case? There was nothing in the payout prohibiting this, so why did they all of a sudden lose interest? Their lack of cooperation is why the criminal case was closed due to “lack of evidence”. (However, the DA office did eventually throw it in with the 2005 trial and, like everything else, it fell apart there too.)
ORTH CLAIM #3. Jackson paid $25 million to settle the Chandlers’ lawsuit, with $18 million going to Jordie, $2.5 million to each of the parents, and the rest to lawyers. Jackson said he paid that sum to avoid something “long and drawn out.” Francia also received $2.4 million from Jackson.
REBUTTAL: An example of Maureen Orth's poor research skills. For one thing, Michael Jackson didn't make the payout, his insurance company did. The amount was $23.3 million total, with $15.3 million going to a trust for Jordy Chandler, $1.5 million each going to his biological father (Evan Chandler) and his mother (June), and the rest going to the lawyers. So she's wrong about the total amount even though the document was leaked over a decade ago and the barest amount of research would've discovered this (just pointing this out as another reminder on what a lousy researcher Maureen Orth is).
After the settlement in the 1993/1994 civil case, some people may think "He settled, therefore he's probably guilty" because I know I thought that for a long time, until I finally researched it in detail on my own. (Note to anyone reading: Have you even bothered to do that?)
Here's an undeniable fact about the Chandler settlement: It was the record company and Michael Jackson's business interests, not Michael Jackson himself, that insisted on settling because they didn't want bad press affecting both record and concert sales. The settlement included legal language essentially saying that the settlement was not an admission of guilt but was done solely to protect Michael Jackson's business interests from the negative effects of bad publicity. As well as language saying that it is “compensatory damages for alleged personal injuries arising out of claims of negligence and not for claims of intentional or wrongful acts of sexual molestation.” So they specifically cited “negligence” as the reason for the settlement. And even though Michael Jackson went along with this settlement at the time because he also wanted to avoid the media circus of a celebrity trial, he later regretted agreeing to settle and wished he had fought the allegations in court instead. (The smaller Jason Francia settlement soon afterwards was done by the same companies for the same reasons.)
ORTH CLAIM #4. Michael Jackson suffered from the skin discoloration disease vitiligo. Jordie Chandler drew a picture of the markings on the underside of Jackson’s penis. His drawings were sealed in an envelope. A few months later, investigators photographed Jackson’s genitalia. The photographs matched Chandler’s drawings.
REBUTTAL: Yet another common claim based on little evidence. The claim that Jordy Chandler's drawing matched Michael Jackson's penis has some problems with it.
Problem #1: Jordy Chandler drew a penis without foreskin, but Michael Jackson was uncircumcised (a fact verified by his autopsy), so not a match. Some will claim that Jordy didn't draw foreskin because he drew an erect penis. But that claim means they were comparing a drawing of an erect penis with photos of a flaccid penis, and as anyone who know anything about what a penis looks like, the erect form of a penis looks nothing like the flaccid form, so once again, the picture still would not match.
Problem #2: We can't see the photo or the drawing for ourselves to verify either way, but there is one undeniable fact: the police who had both the photo and the drawing opted NOT to admit them into evidence. So if it was such a clear match, it's a bit surprising that they avoided doing this.
On a related note about identifying penises, does anyone remember Dave Chappelle accurately describing Michael Jackson's penis on the Chappelle Show?
And with that, I rest my case on this topic.
ORTH CLAIM #5. The hallway leading to Jackson’s bedroom was a serious security zone covered by video and wired for sound so that the steps of anyone approaching would make ding-dong sounds.
REBUTTAL: A rich person had security features installed in his house. So what? This means NOTHING. Anyone who thinks this is some sort of damning evidence is an idiot. (COUGH)Maureen Orth(COUGH)
ORTH CLAIM #6. Jackson had an extensive collection of adult erotic material he kept in a suitcase next to his bed, including S&M bondage photos and a study of naked boys.
REBUTTAL: Here's where Maureen Orth really jumps the rails with ridiculous claims. The "S&M bondage photos and a study of naked boys" were a few coffee table art books with artsy-fartsy pictures of models of all ages in them. He also had a collection of dolls and mannequins - so what?
The "extensive collection of adult erotic material" Michael Jackson had were documented by the police after their raid of Neverland Ranch ( LINK https://lacienegasmiled.wordpress.co...jacksons-porn/ ), here's a summary of what it included:
It had issues of Playboy, issues of Penthouse, issues of Hustler, issues of Barely Legal, issues of Finally Legal, issues of Jugg, various issues of other magazines of naked women, and some photos of naked women
An undeniable fact is the one thing all of these have in common: they are all porn created for straight men! For anyone who thinks Michael Jackson was gay, this is some compelling evidence that he was actually straight.
The DA was so disappointed at the complete lack of gay porn or child porn that they tried to enter the coffee table art books into evidence as "gay porn" and "child porn". The judge disallowed it because of the obvious ridiculousness of claiming that art books that anyone could buy legally in a bookstore were porn.
ORTH CLAIM #7. According to the Neverland staff interviewed by the Santa Barbara authorities, no one ever saw or knew of a woman spending the night with Michael Jackson, including his two spouses, Debbie Rowe or Lisa Marie Presley. Rowe, the mother of two of Jackson’s children, made it clear to the Santa Barbara authorities that she never had sex with Jackson.
REBUTTAL: Once again showing what a lousy journalist Maureen Orth is. How about talk about Lisa Marie Presley more? Because Lisa Marie Presley says that she had sex with Michael Jackson from the years 1992 through 1999. They were only married for a couple of those years (her refusal to have children is what ended that marriage) but continued to see each other in hookups for a few years after the divorce. And some of Michael Jackson's bodyguards claim that Michael Jackson privately saw a lot of women when he was on the road. Michael Jackson did have a bad habit of getting coy and going silent when asked about women in his life - maybe he did this to protect them from the paparazzi - but the fact that he frequently did this in interviews does not mean he was gay. As I mentioned, the claims that he was gay seem to have in the originated in the tabloids because they wanted to scandalously smear him as a "gay pedophile" instead of just smearing him as a "pedophile" - after all, he allowed both boys AND girls to sleep in his bedroom and his actual porn collection had pictures of barely legal girls in it – but this smear ends up completely falling apart once the undeniable fact that he was 100% heterosexual is factored in. (And there have been female accusers who claim Michael Jackson molested them, all seeking a payout of course, but the tabloids seemed to have mostly ignored them because they just want to spin the salacious claim that he's a gay child molester.)
ORTH CLAIM #8. The parents of boys Jackson shared beds with were courted assiduously and given myriad expensive gifts.
REBUTTAL: And this means what exactly? That Michael Jackson was a generous guy who lavished gifts on everyone around him? Yes, that's true but it doesn't mean anything sexual was going on. Michael Jackson used to give $100 bills to homeless people, so does that mean he was sexually molesting the homeless people too? The one thing about this undeniable fact is that it means absolutely nothing except that he was a generous and trusting guy. (The trusting part is what really backfired on him.) He also loaned the people money to buy a house, but when they failed to pay him back, he forgave the loan. Ultimately, this could be distorted into claiming he "gave them a house" but really, he was expecting to get paid back but couldn't bring himself to kick people out when they failed to pay him back, so he just let them keep the house.
ORTH CLAIM #9. Two of the fathers of those who have accused Jackson, Jordie Chandler and Wade Robson, committed suicide. Both were estranged from their sons at the time
REBUTTAL: Once again an “undeniable fact” that means jackshit. As to the details about these men who committed suicide, one (Dennis Robson) was bipolar and the suicide attempt rate of bipolar people is over 50% so that's probably the main reason he did it.
The other father, Evan Chandler, has a lot more to his story that could explain why he committed suicide. He was the father of Jordy Chandler and was divorced from Jordy's mother at the time Michael Jackson was spending time with his family. Evan Chandler at some point cooked up a plan to shakedown Michael Jackson for millions of dollars. If you think this is a far-fetched claim, there's an audio recording of him talking to Jordy's step-father and bragging about how he'll get everything he wants (which turned out to be a large payout) otherwise he'd ruin Michael Jackson's reputation so much that no one would buy his music. And he did initially try to get hush money from Michael Jackson. What did Michael Jackson do? Did he payout hush money to keep this horrible allegation from getting out? NOPE. He refused to pay, so that's when Evan Chandler took it to the next level and filed a lawsuit against Michael Jackson in civil court. And, oh yeah, he eventually called the police too as kind of an afterthought.
The thing is Evan Chandler's shakedown kind of fell apart from what he planned. Initially, he allegedly did it so he would get $20 million and custody of his son (his ex-wife had custody at the time). But the settlement put the lion's share of the money in a trust for Jordy and Evan only got $1.5 million (a nice sum but substantially less than what he wanted). And not all that long after the settlement, Jordy Chandler applied for and received legal emancipation from his parents and, for the most part, never saw his biological father (or his mother) again. So even Evan Chandler's plan to get back his son completely backfired on him and he ended his life alienated from his son in misery. CORRECTION: Jordy Chandler never saw his mother and stepfather again, but did live with his biological father for a few years. But later, he applied for and got a permanent restraining order against his biological father for physical abuse and that's when he never saw him again after that. And then the few years later is when his biological father committed suicide.
And, on a side note, Jordy Chandler, once he "divorced" his parents and was on his own, has steadfastly refused to testify in court against Michael Jackson. The 1993/1994 criminal case fell apart because of his refusal to testify against Michael Jackson. And in the 2005 trial, the prosecution tried to find him and get him to testify. Once again, he refused to testify against Michael Jackson and even said that he would legally fight any attempt to subpoena him and force him to testify. It really does appear that Jordy Chandler hated his biological father, but didn't hate Michael Jackson. Why can only be speculation.
ORTH CLAIM #10. In a 2002 documentary, “Living with Michael Jackson”, Jackson told Martin Bashir there was nothing wrong with sharing his bed with boys.
REBUTTAL: Okay, so we know Michael Jackson thinks there is nothing wrong with sharing his bedroom with CHILDREN. But by this point in time, Michael Jackson essentially gave up his bed to children at Neverland Ranch if they asked and their parents allowed it, but he DID NOT sleep in the same bed anymore. He either slept in a different bed or would sleep on the floor of his bedroom on a pallet of blankets. And when the Arvizo family was at Neverland and Gavin begged Michael to allow him to sleep in his bed (and he had a tough time ever saying "no" to a child), Michael was so distrustful of the motives Gavin's mother may have had at that point, that he allowed it but Michael insisted that his assistant Frank Cascio sleep in the bedroom too. So Gavin and his brother slept on Michael's bed, while Michael and his assistant slept on the floor in the bedroom.
Here's Frank Cascio talking about this:
And for people cherrypicking quotes that they somehow think are slam dunks against him, Michael Jackson also said that he would never harm a child to Martin Bashir, so why is that quote so conveniently omitted when people talk about this? And why do they avoid quoting all the celebrities who say (and testified) to the effect that the Arvizo family were all a bunch of con artists who worked together and that nothing they claim can be trusted?
FINAL REBUTTAL NOTE:
So that's Maureen Orth's undeniable facts list. That's it. That's the best she could do for her “slam dunk” against Michael Jackson. This list of “undeniable facts” is little more than a list that combines things that mean nothing one way or the other and some very deniable claims that indicate extremely poor research and are cherrypicked in such a way that omits so much actual information. She does this because that's the only way for her to weave a narrative. Actually digging deep and checking the facts on Michael Jackson – you know, that thing called “real journalism” – leads in only one direction: that, despite his weirdness, Michael Jackson was most likely innocent of all the allegations and that those allegations were apparently only made for a monetary incentive, first and foremost.
.
Last edited by dhmac; 03-26-19 at 10:24 AM. Reason: typos and a getting a name wrong
03-24-19, 03:35 PM
#166
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Thread Starter
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
I don't even have words right now. Dhmac, if you had young sons, would you let them spend the weekend or have overnight stays with Michael Jackson if he were still alive?
03-24-19, 04:53 PM
#167
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
End of the day we know for a fact he had a rotating harem of little boys he slept in the same bed with and treated like boyfriends. That's enough for me to know and enough for people with sense to not defend him.
03-24-19, 06:11 PM
#168
DVD Talk Hero
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
ORTH CLAIM #1. There is no dispute that, at age 34, Michael Jackson slept more than 30 nights in a row in the same bed with 13-year-old Jordie Chandler at the boy’s house with Chandler’s mother present. He also slept in the same bed with Jordie Chandler at Chandler’s father’s house. The parents were divorced.
03-24-19, 06:46 PM
#169
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
You're an example of how people are so easily manipulated by this tabloid stuff. It really has taken over to the point that people can't think for themselves anymore.
03-24-19, 06:47 PM
#170
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
Michael Jackson was strange, not doubt about that. But he wasn't a child molester, I have no doubt about that either.
03-24-19, 07:10 PM
#171
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
Someone uploaded this 1994 episode of Frontline titled "Tabloid Truth: The Michael Jackson Story" about how sensationalistic tabloid stories were taking over and being believed as the actual truth by people. (Very prophetic, IMO)
03-24-19, 09:20 PM
#172
DVD Talk Legend
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
It's not just letting them stay in his bedroom... it's letting them sleep in the same bed for days at a time and WITHOUT parental supervision. You're downplaying this fact.
03-24-19, 09:24 PM
#173
DVD Talk Legend
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
No doubt. Also, I consider the amusement park at Neverland Ranch to be the equivalent of luring in kids into their windowless van with candy.
03-24-19, 09:42 PM
#174
DVD Talk Godfather & 2020 TOTY Winner
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
It's really mind-boggling the lengths you go to in order to defend this dead Piece of Shit. You're aware that none of those responses in any way disproves the claims or makes it less likely that he was a molester, right? He had mostly straight porn and arty child porn? So that means he didn't molest kids? The kids describe being forced to watch straight porn at age 7 and 10. His insurance paid the claims? So what, they were on the hook for his actions. If you run somebody over and your insurance pays the damages, does that mean you didn't really run them over? MJ buying the Safechucks a house after James testified on MJ's behalf was because he suddenly became generous? After ignoring them for years? The super secure hidden room in the back of the closet was rigged with alarms because he had a lot of money? And what, he wanted to know if a bugler was coming down the hallway to see the back of his closet? He kid didn't draw foreskin? Guess what : Kids don't know what foreskin is or that some are circumcised and some aren't, so it's not a distinction that a small boy would even know to make. He knows what his penis looks like and he remembered the distinctive markings. The fact that he didn't get the circ/uncirc stuff exact really means nothing. The fact that he got the markings correct means he saw the penis. He slept alone with little boys in his bed for years, islolating them from their parents and putting the sister in a different room because he was weird? Do you even hear yourself?
Man, the mental gymnastics you have to put yourself through to try and defend a pedo is mind-boggling. You like his music? Fine, enjoy his music. But you're plugging you ears, closing your eyes and humming in the face of the truth. You are on the wrong side of history here.
Man, the mental gymnastics you have to put yourself through to try and defend a pedo is mind-boggling. You like his music? Fine, enjoy his music. But you're plugging you ears, closing your eyes and humming in the face of the truth. You are on the wrong side of history here.
03-24-19, 11:26 PM
#175
DVD Talk Legend
Re: HBO's Michael Jackson Documentary Leaving Neverland
^Yeah, I'd say the circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling, even if it is strictly testimonial. I finally slogged through the last hour of the protracted documentary last night, and found the kids/men credible. Is it possible Jackson never molested anyone? It's possible, but it's more probable than not that he did, I think.
I was never a fan, though I do like a couple of his songs, and there's no questioning his brilliance as a dancer, singer, and entertainer.
I was never a fan, though I do like a couple of his songs, and there's no questioning his brilliance as a dancer, singer, and entertainer.