Michael Jackson’s Alleged
Sexual Abuse
News reports from the period depicted in “Leaving
Neverland” show how Jackson carefully controlled
his image, thanks to an army of defenders and a
celebrity mythmaking machine.
By Marina Fang
| Updated 3 hours ago
A few months after the King of Pop faced his first
public sexual abuse allegations, Vanity Fair reporter
Maureen Orth wrote in January 1994 that “even by
Hollywood standards, Michael Jackson’s weirdness
is legendary, but he has always been protected by
the armor of his celebrity.”
“Almost no one, especially those C.E.O.’s and
moguls who make millions off him, has ever really
questioned his motives: why this reclusive man-
child with no known history of romantic
relationships prefers to live a fantasy life in the
company of children,” Orth wrote of Jackson, who
later privately settled with accuser Jordan Chandler.
At its core, HBO’s “Leaving Neverland” is a
devastating and searing excavation of how sexual
abuse can tear apart the lives of accusers and their
families. But particularly in its second half, airing
Monday night, the documentary hints at how
Jackson’s otherworldly superstardom enabled his
alleged abuse to evade major scrutiny from the
media during much of his career.
As with many sexual misconduct cases, media
outlets faced the challenge of corroborating the
allegations against Jackson. According to Orth’s
1994 article, some saw them as too salacious to
cover.
Orth went on to detail how people often took their
stories about Jackson to the tabloids because they
would get paid by “the profitable and ever growing
celebrity-gossip mill.” Reputable outlets such as
The New York Times and Los Angeles Times didn’t
extensively cover Chandler’s allegations in 1993,
and when they did, they instead focused on the
response from Jackson’s team, who claimed the
singer had been extorted.
“A lot of people simply did not want to believe that
Michael Jackson could molest little boys, and the
tepid Establishment-press coverage reflected the
public’s repugnance and ambivalence,” Orth wrote.
Jackson, who died in 2009, was the product of a
machine of celebrity mythmaking, in which
reporters, fans, and the people in his orbit ―
including “Leaving Neverland” accusers Wade
Robson and James Safechuck and their families ―
became sometimes unwitting participants.
I love children and learn so
much from being around them. I
realize that many of our world’s
problems today ― from the
inner-city crime, to large-scale
wars and terrorism, and our
overcrowded prisons ― are a
result of the fact that children
have had their childhood stolen
from them.
—Michael Jackson, 1993
The machine continues to this day, as Jackson’s
family, estate, and ardent fans have protested the
documentary, and subjected Robson, Safechuck,
and director Dan Reed to threats .
A look at media coverage of Jackson from the
1980s and early 1990s shows how that machine
may have made it easier for the world to look the
other way.
With the help of a savvy team of handlers who
went after his critics, Jackson controlled his
image.
Jackson, who denied the multiple abuse charges
made during his lifetime and was acquitted after a
2005 trial, had plenty of defenders who thought the
accusations were intended to take him down. A GQ
cover story in 1994 opined over whether he had
been “framed,” calling the coverage of the 1993
allegations “one of the nation’s worst episodes of
media excess.”
Diane Dimond, a reporter for the TV tabloid show
“Hard Copy,” broke the story on the initial
allegations in 1993, but discovered sources close
to Jackson had either been instructed not to talk or
“wanted money.”
“They say, ‘I’d like to tell you something about
Michael. He’s a dear sweet boy, and for $5,000 I’ll
come on and tell you this.’ It absolutely has
impeded me from presenting a full Jackson side of
the story,” she said in 1994.
According to Vanity Fair , she received threats from
Jackson’s representatives (which they denied).
Dimond later wrote that fans attacked her outside
her office, someone broke into her car on one
occasion, and ”my office phone was tapped by
Jackson’s private detective (confirmed to me by
FBI sources),” she said in 2005.
Jackson contributed to his “squeaky-clean image”
and universal appeal by giving few interviews and
steering news reports toward his wide range of
charity work involving children.
Jackson exerted power over his image and largely
avoided interviews, as noted in a 1987 Rolling
Stone profile that detailed “his control mania.”
Director Steven Spielberg ― who cast Jackson as
the narrator for the soundtrack to “E.T.” ― told the
magazine in 1983 that the singer was “one of the
last living innocents who is in complete control of
his life.”
When Jackson did agree to the rare interview, it
was often connected to his philanthropy and took
on a sympathetic tone, like a 1992 Ebony
magazine profile , which argued that Jackson had
faced “a negative media campaign.”
Many of the charitable initiatives that morphed his
public image involved assisting sick children.
Some were invited to spend time at his Neverland
Ranch, where he hosted sleepovers — during which
some of the alleged sexual abuse occurred.
“It’s part of my gift to make everybody happy, and
to bring joy to everyone, especially children like
this,” Jackson told Newsday in 1989 , when
meeting then 4-year-old leukemia patient Darian
Pagan at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York. “My
dream is to do a tour and see all the world’s
children, all the hungry kids. Imagine that.”
Jackson often surrounded himself with children
during his public appearances. During a 1985 PBS
Newshour segment on Jackson’s famous Pepsi
commercials, marketing analyst Faith Popcorn
remarked on why children were among the singer’s
biggest fans.
“All the young people emulate Michael Jackson in
this country,” she said, according to a transcript of
the segment. “And it must be every young boy’s
fantasy to turn around and see Michael Jackson. I
mean, how wonderful.”
Two years later, one of Jackson’s commercials
starred then-9-year-old Safechuck turning around in
amazement when seeing Jackson in his dressing
room.
Profiles of Jackson often cast a tone of
fascination and curiosity, writing off questionable
behavior as mostly innocuous “personal oddities”
or “eccentricities.”
News coverage in the 1980s and early 1990s often
described Jackson as “child-like,” “wide-eyed,”
“innocent,” an “enigma,” a “recluse” or a “Pied
Piper.”
Certain stories made passing references to the
sleepovers at Neverland and how many of his
friends were children, details that look eerie now.
A 1992 Rolling Stone feature described Jackson’s
bizarre retreats for kids:
Jackson frequently has children over to
play. According to his personal
spokesperson, Bob Jones (who first
worked with Jackson at Motown when the
singer was a member of the Jackson 5),
these regularly include “busloads” of
underprivileged and terminally ill kids
(such as the late Ryan White), as well as
young personal friends of the superstar.
“When the children are here, sometimes
they get so excited they just can’t go to
sleep,” says Lee Tucker, who helped
design Jackson’s movie theater and serves
as his projectionist. “I’ll get a call at 2:00
a.m. sometimes: ‘Lee, can you show such-
and-such movie?’ Neverland isn’t about
kids going to sleep at a certain time. The
kids really run the place when they’re
here.”
In some news reports from that time, Robson was
described as one of Jackson’s “young friends,” and
Safechuck as his “new little friend.”
News coverage also emphasized how he liked
being around children because he did not have
his own childhood.
Jackson frequently told reporters that he felt most
comfortable around children because he related to
them more than he did with adults.
“They don’t wear masks,” he told Rolling Stone in
1983.
Similarly, the 1992 Rolling Stone profile noted:
Jackson is extremely fond of children.
Those who know him believe that one
reason he can relax with kids is that he
truly believes they like him for himself, not
because he’s a big star. As one associate
observed, “If you’re under three feet tall,
you can have complete access to Michael
Jackson.”
He and his defenders often attributed some of his
behavior to the fact that he had been famous his
entire life and lived in a lonely bubble.
“With Michael, as with any superstar, reality and
fantasy are totally confused,” John Landis, who
directed Jackson’s “Thriller” music video, said in
1992. “It’s very difficult to remain sane.”
Also cited was his difficult childhood, including
alleged physical abuse from his notoriously
controlling father, which Jackson discussed at
length with Oprah Winfrey in a 1993 live TV
interview. But that defense is full of complications.
As Slate’s Daniel Engber wrote this week , “the
theory of intergenerational transmission of abuse”
is a complex claim because “the science is filled
with too many nuances and caveats to allow such a
clear-cut explanation.”
These stories often referred to Jackson having
dual images: one as an otherworldly superstar
and unparalleled performer, the other as a tabloid
fascination.
“I think he’s really Peter Pan,” his choreographer
Michael Peters told the New York Times in 1984 .
“He is this constant dichotomy of man and child.
He can run corporations and tell record companies
what he wants, and then he can sit in a trailer and
play Hearts for hours with a friend who is 12 years
old.”
“As an entertainer he has no peer,” Rolling Stone
wrote in 1987 , while also noting that Jackson
simultaneously was “the flighty-genius star-child, a
celebrity virtually all his life, who dwells in a fairy-
tale kingdom of fellow celebrities, animals,
mannequins and cartoons ... ”
Tabloid stories about “his plots to buy the Elephant
Man’s remains, to oxygenate his body by sleeping
in a hyperbaric chamber or to marry Elizabeth
Taylor” further cemented that image.
While Jackson denounced these stories as
“completely made up,” notably in the Oprah
interview that was designed to rehabilitate his
image , some reports suggest that the rumors
(which led to the “Wacko Jacko” moniker in the
tabloids) may have been planted by himself or his
representatives.
In February of 1993, just weeks after the Oprah
interview and months before Chandler made his
allegations, Jackson was awarded the Grammy
Legend Award. His acceptance speech now reads
as a chilling summary of all of his different
defenses promulgated over the years.
“I wasn’t aware that the world thought I was so
weird and bizarre. But when you grow up as I did, in
front of 100 million people since the age of 5, you
are automatically different,” he said. “My childhood
was completely taken away from me. There was no
Christmas, there was no birthdays. It was not a
normal childhood, no normal pleasures of
childhood. Those were exchanged for hard work,
struggle and pain.”
Jackson went on to thank “all the children of the
world, including the sick and deprived.”
“I love children and learn so much from being
around them,” he said. “I realize that many of our
world’s problems today ― from the inner-city
crime, to large-scale wars and terrorism, and our
overcrowded prisons ― are a result of the fact that
children have had their childhood stolen from them.”
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault
Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence
Resource Center’s website .
Inside ‘Leaving Neverland,’ The Film Detailing
Michael Jackson’s Alleged Child Abuse...
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