Leaving Neverland

[Scarlett45]

6 hours ago, Robert Lynch said:

You think if MJ was diagnosed with this unhealthy impulse much earlier by some psychologist or doctor, would he have spared the kids he was with altogether? Or was it too late either way? I mean, he could have started a PSA or something. 

I don’t know. I do think there are people who have these impulses that work hard not to act on them and don’t hurt any kids. But there’s so much cultural shame around the idea of pedophila to ADMIT out loud that you need help (even to a doctor) before you’ve actually hurt anyone is rare. Really rare.

And once someone offends they are likely to reoffend again and again. 

[qtpye]

6 hours ago, Slovenly Muse said:

Wow. I just watched that Living with Michael Jackson documentary, and holy hell. Not that I didn't already 100% believe the accusations, but his comments on children were really quite damning. And the way he and Gavin were leaning on each other and holding hands in that interview... it was really chilling. What's more, and I almost can't BELIEVE this hasn't been brought up previously in this thread, but in that documentary, he denied anything inappropriate happening with children in EXACTLY the same awkward, emphatic, mounting hyperbole way of speaking that he used IN THE SAME INTERVIEW to deny that he'd had ANY cosmetic surgery or other work done to change his appearance (apart from his nose so he could breathe more easily while singing), and that his change of skin colour and entire facial structure had been the result of... puberty. In his 20s. (But he hadn't really changed that much, that's just "ignorance." 🙄) How could anyone find his word on ANYTHING credible after that? It was actually eerily reminiscent of listening to Trump talk about his crowd size. Dude, we can see it with our eyes.

I was a young teenager when all this went down with MJ, and I wasn't familiar with the case or really with his music, but I do remember feeling profoundly affected when he died. His was the only celebrity death that really hit me, and I barely knew anything about him. The problem was, I think the public didn't quite believe he was innocent of the molestation charges, and couldn't quite embrace him fully... but also didn't quite believe he was guilty, and couldn't really condemn him. So the world was living in this weird grey area, where the only thing we could figure to do was to ridicule him for his appearance and turn him into a figure of public mockery. Nowadays, we tend to be a bit more sensitive to body dysmorphia than in the past. For example, most people know now that if someone is suffering from anorexia, the worst thing you can do is tell them they're too skinny... they don't need to reinforce the idea that their body is wrong and they need to change it, this only makes the problem worse. But in the 90's it became almost a trend to joke about models and actresses needing to "eat a sandwich" as some sort of fucked up way of combating eating disorders. My impression, when MJ died, was that he had been mocked, ridiculed (seriously, I remember some of those comedy bits, and they were savage), and driven deeper into the grips of the personal, psychological issues that had caused him to alter his appearance and behave so eccentrically. In a way, I felt like the world mourned him so affectionately because we were afraid WE had killed him, and we had never, and would never, get closure on the accusations against him, or be able to see him come back from the brutal treatment he'd received from the media, and it really kind of felt like we had ridiculed this sensitive, damaged man until he retreated into an addiction that killed him. This hit me hard at the time. I have a great deal of empathy for the suffering MJ went through as a child, and the suffering he went through later in life as a cultural punching bag, but it is absolutely crystal clear to me that he sexually abused those children, and got away with it through sheer starpower. He needed help as a child when he was being abused, and people were too enamoured with his talent to do anything. He needed help at so many points in his life (including help with his impulses to engage in sex acts with children), and everyone who could or should have intervened decided to bury their heads in the sand and just enjoy his music.

It's too late for Michael, but we can still intervene to help his victims, by believing them, by not ignoring what happened to them and blindly venerating "The King of Pop," and by giving them the space and respect to heal in their own way, in their own time. We can let others who may have potentially been victims control their own narrative, rather than rampantly speculating and hounding them about what may or may not have happened. We can watch for the signs of grooming, especially when we see red flags with celebrities, and we can remind ourselves that no one's talent is greater than another person's life. If the documentary made anything clear, I hope it's that. So much love for James and Wade, who showed incredible strength coming forward. I hope they inspire others to do the same, even if only to themselves or their loved ones.

Very well written and a good summary of all the horror and confusion a lot of us are feeling. Yes, we all kind of despised him, except for the hardcore Stans but he was acquitted and there seemed to be nothing anyone could do to bring him to justice. This article talks about how much his life was a mess financially at the time of his death. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/268276/michael-jackson-died-deeply-in-debt

[Robert Lynch]

1 minute ago, Scarlett45 said:

I don’t know. I do think there are people who have these impulses that work hard not to act on them and don’t hurt any kids. But there’s so much cultural shame around the idea of pedophila to ADMIT out loud that you need help (even to a doctor) before you’ve actually hurt anyone is rare. Really rare.

And once someone offends they are likely to reoffend again and again. 

I think you maybe right on that. That’s something l didn’t know.

To return to the topic, I remember all the spoofs on MJ, but color me shocked when I realized all the MJ  jokes dated back to Eddie Murphy’s HBO 1983 special. I find it interesting that the jokes stopped in 2005 when he was announced not guilty, leaving Aries Spiers and Amy Poehler the last comedians to spoof on him. I wondered what the comedians are thinking about this documentary now. If you watch any SNL or Mad TV skit on MJ, they were really savage in attacking MJ himself. 

[TigerLynx]

13 hours ago, DangerousMinds said:

Oh, I agree it wasn’t normal. As 12-year old boys they described having the silly adolescent “look, boobs!” reactions. Of course we don’t know if anything more happened, just that they deny it did.

This was part of the problem the jury had when they were deliberating.  Of the boys who did accuse MJ of molesting them - one of their families, the Chandlers, accepted money to go away, and the Arvizos were known con-artists.  They had previously tried to extort money from George Lopez and Chris Tucker.  Some of the jurors felt like there were actual victims, but they were the ones who were testifying that Jackson hadn't molested them.  They couldn't convict Jackson on their belief or feeling that he was a pedophile.  They needed actual evidence.

9 hours ago, Simon Boccanegra said:

Now, they cannot let go of an image of MJ as ethereal unicorn and accept that he could have perpetrated horrors out of a network procedural drama. That's essentially what I wrote in my first post in this thread, before Leaving Neverland had been seen publicly anywhere but the Sundance Festival.

Early on Jackson was smart.  He was giving money to children's charities, and visiting children in the hospital in the various cities he toured in, before he ever built Neverland.  Lots of people have favorite charities.  Originally, it looked like MJ wanted to help children, and several of the children invited to Neverland had cancer or other illnesses.

I'm surprised Culkin's father never tried to extort money from MJ, even though Culkin denies there was any abuse.  Culkin's father was also a nasty piece of work.  Him and Joe Jackson would have got along great.

6 minutes ago, qtpye said:

Very well written and a good summary of all the horror and confusion a lot of us are feeling. Yes, we all kind of despised him, except for the hardcore Stans but he was acquitted and there seemed to be nothing anyone could do to bring him to justice. This article talks about how much his life was a mess financially at the time of his death. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/268276/michael-jackson-died-deeply-in-debt

Thanks for posting this.

[merylinkid]

17 minutes ago, TigerLynx said:

Early on Jackson was smart.  He was giving money to children's charities, and visiting children in the hospital in the various cities he toured in, before he ever built Neverland.

Pedophiles go where the kids are.   That's why the pedophile is a scout leader, not the organizer of political activists on a college campus.   Neverland made it easier to get to the kids instead of going to them, they came to him.   It was part putting up this great image and part giving his access to his victims.

[IntrovertGal]

Spot on opinion column by Dan Reed:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/10/dan-reed-shocked-those-wont-accept-michael-jackson-abuser

[TigerLynx]

54 minutes ago, merylinkid said:

Pedophiles go where the kids are.   That's why the pedophile is a scout leader, not the organizer of political activists on a college campus.   Neverland made it easier to get to the kids instead of going to them, they came to him.   It was part putting up this great image and part giving his access to his victims.

And it worked for a while.  Along with his taking gifts to sick children at the hospital, donating money to charity, and having parties for sick children at Neverland, there were Jackson's claims that adults always wanted to make money off of him so he liked spending his free time doing things he didn't get to do as a child because he was working when he was a kid.  So originally, he might have seemed eccentric, but not dangerous.

[Blakeston]

16 hours ago, Shakma said:

I don't think Michael exclusively targeted white boys.  Emmanuel Lewis was black, of course.  I don't know the ethnicities of Brett Barnes, Jordan Chandler, Omer Bhatti, or Gavin Arvizo, but they look like people of color, to me.  When he did go for white boys, they seemed to be the of the blonde, blue-eyed variety, but I don't think that's all he went for. 

Aside from Macaulay Culkin, which of MJ's child 'friends" were blond?

Having read through these (fascinating) comments, there a few things I'd like to chime in on:

- I actually believe that all of MJ's children are his biological children. The one people are often the most skeptical about is the older son, but he very, very likely has vitiligo. If you do a Google image search for "prince michael jackson vitiligo" you'll see photos of him at the beach with the telltale skin discolorations.

- Also, I have no trouble believing that MJ was chemically castrated when he was a child, as Conrad Murray said. A lot of people hear the term "chemical castration" and assume that it refers to removing the testicles or rendering them inoperable.

But it's a very misleading term. He could have been "chemically castrated" and still had functioning testicles and a decent sex drive.

- My understanding is that fixated pedophiles usually have a strong preference for either boys or girls, and that "equal opportunity" pedophiles like Jimmy Savile (who molested lots of boys and lots of girls) are somewhat unusual. So I doubt that Michael chose boys as his victims because of easy access - I think it was more because boys were his "type."

[Robert Lynch]

I always thought Blanket looked more Native American and Paris bares an uncanny resemblance to Madonna, but that is just me.

[sistermagpie]

9 hours ago, ruby24 said:

Just one example is Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland- almost certainly a pedophile (look him up).

He actually wasn't certainly a pedophile at all. In his case the closer the look the more you can relax. No children were harmed in the production of those books, which is nice to know.

4 hours ago, CrinkleCutCat said:

A couple of times MJ mentions circumstances  “...brings tears to my eyes” which pricked my attention.... rather  than the circumstance making him feel sadness he focuses on the need to have tears because he can’t relate to the emotion/sadness.

Yes--I think even the parents would talk about all the stuff that "made him cry." Which of course just made people be nicer to him to avoid making him cry. It's a way of controlling the situation, but even they don't seem to really talk about it in a way that makes it sound empathetic, as if they were crying with him over his hurt. It was more just that things were "too much for him" so you had to be sensitive.

You notice with all those hours of talk about how generous and great Michael was, nobody ever really gives a single example of him being that supportive outside of reinforcing that they were special because he loved them. There's just tons of stuff about them being supportive of him--being there whenever he needed them, listening to him cry, even doing his laundry. People talk about how generous he was, but it's repeating the things he always put out about himself. I find myself comparing it to Robin Williams when he died and how there was this tidal wave of people sharing stories about what a good friend and kind person he was.

[A.Ham]

I apologize in advance for the long post. 

I am starting to feel like others on this thread, like it is just too much, but on the other hand writing the thoughts down and sharing them helps me process what I have seen. 

So I had never actually been an MJ fan. Partly because I didn’t live in this country and I was also too young, all I recall is people talking about him being a weirdo as a kid (late 80’s-early 90’s). I arrived to the US in 1992, in the midst of his first big scandal popping up. Didn’t pay much attention to that other than, yup, he’s a weirdo. I mean, I thought his music was “cool” but nothing that inspired fandom in any way. 

Conversely, I really loved Wade Robson during his SYTYCD days. I thought he was a genius, and made modern dance palatable to me in a show that only valued contemporary dance. I missed him when he stopped choreographing there, and wished there was another platform were we could enjoy his work. He kept a much lower profile choreography wise since; when he finally came forward on the today show, I was just surprised and felt badly that he had endured that for so many years.

I can’t understand the staunch supporters that to this day say that his acquittal is somehow proof that he didn’t do anything. To me it only proves the power of his machinery, and the power he had over these boys to get them to testify on his behalf. The supporters seemingly can’t get past the point that the men defended Jackson. I can understand it easily with the concept of identification with the aggressor. It’s a defense mechanism/survival strategy. In those situations, victims develop feelings of admiration, gratitude, and establish an emotional bond with the aggressor. In this case, the length of time of the abuse, the severity of it, the years of grooming, were the perfect breeding ground for this—they were hard-wired from a young age that the only acceptable behavior was to deny and defend MJ. To this day James admits to feeling guilt about disclosing. That is quite a stronghold MJ had on his victims—by him portraying himself as a victim and creating a “world against us” mentality, he got his victims to support him to an unimaginable degree. And now even from his grave, the fact that they defended him is now being used against them. 

I wish there was a way of showing more public support to both men, or even to have a way of letting them know that not everyone is against them and that there are people that believe them. If there is, I am not aware of it.

One last thing—there is also an aspect of identification with the aggressor where some of the victims repeat the behavior and become abusers themselves. I am not suggesting in any way that Wade or James identified to that extent or would ever do so; only in the sense that it explains their defense of Michael.

[MisterBluxom]

On 3/6/2019 at 5:29 PM, icecweem said:

I've watched some of this documentary and I never seen so many red flags in my life. Red flag 1: Michael sleeping in the same bed as the children (weird). Red flag 2: When the parents took Michael to court and settled for money, it makes you wonder if they're parents cared more about money than their kids getting sexually abused. And worst of all is even after all off that, they still allowed their children to see Michael after the fact. Makes no sense whatsoever. All I know is there's believable parts on both sides and we need to face the fact that without proof we'll never know. I feel like you cant go most of you childhood and adulthood claiming Michael never touched you then ALL OF A SUDDEN HBO wants to do a documentary and here you pop up. Timing is weird especially after the surviving R. Kelly documentary. I don't know what to believe.

You never understood why parents who cared more about money than their kids would allow M. to see their kids after receiving a cash settlement? I think the answer is so obvious I would fell silly spelling it out.

[Sharonana]

3 hours ago, TigerLynx said:

And it worked for a while.  Along with his taking gifts to sick children at the hospital, donating money to charity, and having parties for sick children at Neverland, there were Jackson's claims that adults always wanted to make money off of him so he liked spending his free time doing things he didn't get to do as a child because he was working when he was a kid.  So originally, he might have seemed eccentric, but not dangerous.

Little did we all know that he was indeed grooming the world. Things that make ya go hmmm........

[Neko]

I've always heard of MJ being a musical genius, but I think his true genius was manipulation.  He really pulled one over on the whole world.

I never heard anything about Joe Jackson molesting his own daughters, or pimping little Michael out to Hollywood bigwigs, but I don't find either hard to believe.  Given what we've learned about Hollywood in recent years, it's very, very possible that Michael was made familiar with those creepy pedophile rings, and that he just never talked about it, out of shame.  Elijah Wood and Corey Feldman have both said that they aren't as uncommon as people think.

Chemical castration, I don't know.  Honestly, I find that one a bit too far-fetched, even though it would explain the super high voice.  I'm pretty sure a few people talked about Michael speaking with a deeper voice when not so many people were around.  Liza Minnelli had an anecdote about how Michael was talking to her then-husband on the phone one day, and when she picked up, she couldn't even tell it was Michael because his voice was so different.  People said the same thing about Marilyn Monroe and her breathy-baby voice.  IDK.

[Sharonana]

I re-watched the second half of the documentary and came away despising Wade's mother even more. She made his abuse about her when she asked, "How could you not tell me about this?" My question to her would be, "Why weren't you more observant?" "Why didn't you question a grown man sleeping with your son?" "Why didn't you protect your son?" She said she supposed she had to take SOME responsibility? Ugh!!! The entire Robson family is angry with her, and rightly so.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall during his marriage to Lisa Presley. That book would be a best seller!

This is some heavy shit and I'm with some of the posters that feel like this is just too much. My heart breaks for those poor, innocent boys.

I did read yesterday that Neverland is back on the market. It was originally for sale for $100 million dollars. The price has been reduced to $31 million. I've always wondered why he quit living there after his trial in 2005. Guilt maybe??? Did he stop abusing boys after that trial?

Edited March 10, 2019 by Sharonana

[ari333]

How many trials were there? I recall one

Also, I recall that Bashir interview with that young boy sitting beside MJ. It gave me the creeps

[ruby24]

1 hour ago, Sharonana said:

I did read yesterday that Neverland is back on the market. It was originally for sale for $100 million dollars. The price has been reduced to $31 million. I've always wondered why he quit living there after his trial in 2005. Guilt maybe??? Did he stop abusing boys after that trial?

I wonder about this too. Given his compulsion and the way he'd conducted himself after the first one in 1993 (he went right back to doing it, according to Wade), it kinda seems like these kinds of predators don't ever stop. I've read that these sorts of pedophiles have a really high victim count, and you never saw any gaps with MJ between boys. He always starts with another one before a previous boy ages out.

What Wade said about being at Neverland later with all kinds of boys around, and he'd take one and disappear before rejoining the group, and also the fact that with Wade himself, even though he wasn't the "favorite" anymore and only saw him a few times a year, whenever he'd see MJ he'd immediately want to molest him- this makes me think he had a very high victim count, with lots of boys at a time, all the time. I mean, this is the only reason he had boys around him. It's the only reason he had Neverland.

If this is how he lived for years (decades) before the trial, it's really hard to believe he just stopped doing it after that. That's the reason I question it with his own sons.

It's true that his drug problem intensified, so perhaps he was just out of it altogether more often. Maybe that decreased his libido somewhat? 

 

6 hours ago, TigerLynx said:

I'm surprised Culkin's father never tried to extort money from MJ, even though Culkin denies there was any abuse.  Culkin's father was also a nasty piece of work.  Him and Joe Jackson would have got along great.

Yeah, this is another reason I think Culkin would have responded to MJ's love and attention, because of his own father being so awful. He's talked about it in interviews, how terrible it was.

Every time I think it would have been way too risky for MJ to go after a kid as famous as Macaulay Culkin, I remember that his own family would have made him highly susceptible to Michael's kindness in comparison. And his use of all the same grooming techniques, the amount of time he spent with him (a LOT) and then those Neverland staffers who testified to having seen it with him (turns out they were right about Wade), really makes me think that he must have been a victim as well.

Edited March 10, 2019 by ruby24

[methodwriter85]

On 3/7/2019 at 2:37 PM, car54 said:

Also, I looked at Wade's IMDB and unless I'm reading it incorrectly he has no recent work as a choreographer or dancer.      My impression was that one of the reasons he tried to auction off some of his memorabilia was to help pay for the expenses he had.      I have a feeling that while some people in the business may pay lip service to "believing the victims", that it will be hard for him to get that sort of job working for someone else again.    Too much baggage.

I think it's that, but also just that music videos aren't really the same kind of animal they were back during the prime 90's/early 00's pop days. That's not to say that Wade's choreography hasn't evolved (I have not followed his career so I don't know), but it could just be that he simply went passe.

On 3/7/2019 at 2:14 PM, ruby24 said:

He really made him think they were like a couple, you can tell by the way he described it. I felt so awful for him, because you could see how much this whole thing still sits with him. And he said he feels like this is a wound that time only makes worse. I really hope he reconsiders therapy. 

It's just so fucked up to watch, because there are points where Jimmy says, "That was kind of a thrill" or something like that about how they needed to sneak off to "have sex" and make sure they didn't get caught, while James kind of just winces because he knows how messed up it is. And he kept the rings, which wow. I was reading cynical comments about how these rings somehow still fit him even though it's supposed to be from when he was 10 and I thought it was clear that they don't fit his fingers at all.

On 3/7/2019 at 7:45 PM, Mdoc said:

I don't think I'll ever be able to get adult James out of my head. I've never seen a grown man like that. It was like a scared little boy in a man's body. Scared, shameful, just so many things in those eyes. How anyone can question that I'll never believe. Watch the Oprah interview with the sound off and just LOOK at him. It's destroyed me a little bit. I never knew I could feel protective over someone I've never met before... 

I watched the Oprah interview and it's just disturbing because you're right, James/Jimmy does look exactly like a scared little boy in the body of a grown man. The moment where he vigorously shook his head no when asked if he was ready for the on-slaught of criticism from fans? My god, that felt like watching a little boy. It was surreal.

Also, people are fucking disgusting.

I did think Jimmy/James was gay while watching his story and was surprised he ended up with a woman, but wow. Just disgusting.

He's going to haunt me for a bit for sure. I completely believed him when he said that for all intents and purposes, he's a little boy in the body of a man. I hope to God he can fix that. It's weird that I also feel protective of a 40-year old father I'm never going to meet, but yeah. I feel really effected by Jimmy/James.

Edited March 11, 2019 by methodwriter85

[ari333]

At first I thought that the kids' parents wanted MJ's money (if he had any). Then I saw Bashir show and was freaked out

[qtpye]

1 hour ago, Sharonana said:

I re-watched the second half of the documentary and came away despising Wade's mother even more. She made his abuse about her when she asked, "How could you not tell me about this?" My question to her would be, "Why weren't you more observant?" "Why didn't you question a grown man sleeping with your son?" "Why didn't you protect your son?" She said she supposed she had to take SOME responsibility? Ugh!!! The entire Robson family is angry with her, and rightly so.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall during his marriage to Lisa Presley. That book would be a best seller!

This is some heavy shit and I'm with some of the posters that feel like this is just too much. My heart breaks for those poor, innocent boys.

I did read yesterday that Neverland is back on the market. It was originally for sale for $100 million dollars. The price has been reduced to $31 million. I've always wondered why he quit living there after his trial in 2005. Guilt maybe??? Did he stop abusing boys after that trial?

The article I linked to previously talks about how the property was in foreclosure and he could no longer afford to live there after his reputation was ruined. Even the King who put him up ended up suing him (or at least a member of the King’s family). We will never get justice for Wade and Jimmy but Karma was a bitch for MJ around the end of his life.

[TigerLynx]

2 hours ago, Shakma said:

I never heard anything about Joe Jackson molesting his own daughters, or pimping little Michael out to Hollywood bigwigs, but I don't find either hard to believe.  Given what we've learned about Hollywood in recent years, it's very, very possible that Michael was made familiar with those creepy pedophile rings, and that he just never talked about it, out of shame.  Elijah Wood and Corey Feldman have both said that they aren't as uncommon as people think.

I don't think they are uncommon at all.  Despite everything that is now known about MJ, Cosby, Weinstein, Spacey, etc., there are still people who defend Roman Polanski - a guy who was convicted of drugging, raping, and sodomizing a teenage girl.

[ari333]

This is so tragic all the way around. K Jackson seemed  like a religious nut. (imo) And Joe was abusive. None of these are excuses for what MJ did, but it is all tragic.

[Kostgard]

3 hours ago, ari333 said:

How many trials were there? I recall one

Also, I recall that Bashir interview with that young boy sitting beside MJ. It gave me the creeps

There was a suit in 1994 brought by Jordan Chandler (where both Wade and James testified for MJ’s defense). They ended up settling out of court (MJ paid over $20 million). So there was no verdict at that trial and it played out differently than the 2005 case.

That quoted Tweet above speculating that James is gay and therefore he must have been the one leading MJ around shows the absolute delusion of MJ’s supporters. Even if James were gay, he was a 10 year old boy and MJ was an adult. I doubt a child that young tries to seduce an adult, and even if he did, the adult has all the power in the relationship and  can tell the kid to knock it off. 

Wade and James also answer the “gay” question in this piece.

James did say that his relationship caused confusion in him as a kid and he asked himself “Am I gay?” because of what was going on with Michael and how that conflicted with crushes he had on girls. He specifically had a crush on Sheryl Crow during the “Bad” tour (at the time, she was one of MJ’s backup singers), which MJ didn’t like. So he got a picture of Sheryl without makeup and showed it to him to “prove” that she was actually unattractive. James said that as he grew older (and was away from Michael) he stopped questioning his sexuality. 

Wade, who also described himself as “in love” with Michael, said that he was promiscuous with women and threw himself into hyper masculine stuff to prove his heterosexuality to himself (because, like James, the stuff he did with MJ threw things into question for him). And again, once he got some distance from MJ, he was able to stop questioning his sexuality.

But it doesn’t matter if either of them are gay or straight. You can’t compare what happened to them with MJ to an adult relationship. They just aren’t the same thing. Just as I don’t see MJ as gay because his victims were male. He was a pedophile. It’s not the same thing.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Kostgard

[Neko]

29 minutes ago, Kostgard said:

James did say that his relationship caused confusion in him as a kid and he asked himself “Am I gay?” because of what was going on with Michael and how that conflicted with crushes he had on girls. He specifically had a crush on Sheryl Crow during the “Bad” tour (at the time, she was one of MJ’s backup singers), which MJ didn’t like. So he got a picture of Sheryl without makeup and showed it to him to “prove” that she was actually unattractive. James said that as he grew older (and was away from Michael) he stopped questioning his sexuality. 

Damn...that's the move of a catty, jealous high school girl who gets pissed when the guy she likes confesses to liking a different girl.  Unbelievable.

[Growsonwalls]

I rewatched part one again. I had watched them back to back, but rewatching part one on its own knowing what happens in part 2 a couple things stand out:

1) Wade and James WERE very talented precocious kids. If there's another layer of tragedy to this, it's that MJ broke their spirit. The fun kids who were remarkably good dancers are now broken adult men who have admitted they have substance abuse problems and severe trust issues. What a tragedy. Watching Wade happily dancing onstage was heartbreaking. 

2) If I were the moms and Michael was calling me and wanting to talk for 4-6 hours every day, I would have been creeped the fuck out. Even when I've been in relationships I don't need that person to talk to me on the phone for 4-6 hours. The fact that these were grown women with children giddily recalling their marathon phone sessions with MJ ... creepy. And makes me wonder what the fuck they were talking about.

3) Wade;s mother saying "I noticed a pattern. Every year Michael had a new boy" gave me the chills makes me think that she wasn't as delusional as I thought her to be. She did know on some level that MJ was an unhealthy attachment and once the boys aged out he was done with them. The fact that she kept actively trying to reconnect Wade with Michael after Wade had "aged out" makes her IMO unforgivable.

[Melina22]

From watching this show, and Oprah's show, I've learned that, certainly for these boys, the abuse was in the moment enjoyable, even fun at times. It was only in later years that all the damage it had done them gradually became apparent, and then snowballed into a severe problem that almost shattered them. 

This was something that to me, a survivor of many years of non-sexual abuse from a stepparent, was completely new knowledge. When you're physically and/or verbally abused in non-sexual ways there's zero confusion. You just hate it, always, even though as a child you may not hate the person doing it. 

My question, though, is the experience that Wade and James had, as boys, an experience girls would have? I don't recall any of my female friends who were molested as children or teens ever alluding to any feelings of love or enjoyment. Is this awful experience different for girls? Or would they just never dare say the things Wade and James said because of the shame of it? I keep wondering this. 

[sistermagpie]

10 minutes ago, Growsonwalls said:

2) If I were the moms and Michael was calling me and wanting to talk for 4-6 hours every day, I would have been creeped the fuck out. Even when I've been in relationships I don't need that person to talk to me on the phone for 4-6 hours. The fact that these were grown women with children giddily recalling their marathon phone sessions with MJ ... creepy. And makes me wonder what the fuck they were talking about.

God, to me it sounds so damn BORING! Whatever talents MJ had, scintillating conversation never seemed to be one of them. You wonder if they ever called him--probably not. Certainly they couldn't keep him on the phone for hours if he had something else to do. Everything about it says that their time means nothing and the fact they put up with it assured him they were up for that.

[ruby24]

Hearing their stories make me think that James was a "favorite" of Michael's for much longer than Wade was. I think someone had mentioned that even though it might have gone on longer over time with Wade, it seemed less frequent, and I think that's true. 

Adding up the time that James spent with him on tour (24/7 for months) and then when he first got Neverland, plus all that time he spent at their house (that went on for years it seemed like), and it seems to me that MJ was with him a lot more over the 3-4 years he was abusing him (plus the whole year he spent grooming him before he even started abusing him). I think that's the reason it's so much harder still for James in his feelings about him, even now. He was very deeply embedded in that "relationship," which is probably why he still has those rings. Like Oprah said, to do a whole mock wedding with a kid, that's really twisted. 

[Scarlett45]

48 minutes ago, Melina22 said:

From watching this show, and Oprah's show, I've learned that, certainly for these boys, the abuse was in the moment enjoyable, even fun at times. It was only in later years that all the damage it had done them gradually became apparent, and then snowballed into a severe problem that almost shattered them. 

This was something that to me, a survivor of many years of non-sexual abuse from a stepparent, was completely new knowledge. When you're physically and/or verbally abused in non-sexual ways there's zero confusion. You just hate it, always, even though as a child you may not hate the person doing it. 

My question, though, is the experience that Wade and James had, as boys, an experience girls would have? I don't recall any of my female friends who were molested as children or teens ever alluding to any feelings of love or enjoyment. Is this awful experience different for girls? Or would they just never dare say the things Wade and James said because of the shame of it? I keep wondering this. 

First off, I’m very sorry that this happened to you and very sorry for any child that’s been through such a thing. 

I cannot speak from experience- but I have heard my female friends speak of being groomed by an older man and feeling beautiful and powerful and sexy because this older man took an interest in them- not realizing until later that they were abused.

However they were usually older (in their early teens and the man was an adult). Stimulation of one’s erogenous zones can cause the body to respond in pleasurable ways even IF the person has not consented (or could not because of age/mental capacity). I do think female sexuality is more affected by shame and guilt (gotta love the patriarchy). I have heard women in loving committed adult relationships have shame about having sex with their partners, and not being able to enjoy it because of the mental block. 

If the abuser is meeting the child’s emotional needs (whatever those may be) I can see the child not seeing the abuse as a painful thing.

Basically I say all this to say, even as a woman who’s never experienced abuse or sexual assault, I think for a lot of women how we feel emotionally affects our physical enjoyment of the sexual experience in a way it doesn’t for a lot of men/male persons. Of course everyone is an individual. 

[ruby24]

22 minutes ago, Melina22 said:

My question, though, is the experience that Wade and James had, as boys, an experience girls would have? I don't recall any of my female friends who were molested as children or teens ever alluding to any feelings of love or enjoyment. Is this awful experience different for girls? Or would they just never dare say the things Wade and James said because of the shame of it? I keep wondering this. 

This is a really good question. I actually wonder the same thing. I think this has happened with teenage girls and older men, but could that happen to a pre-pubescent girl with an adult man? I suppose it's possible. 

I bet that mothers and parents would be much harder to persuade to give up their daughters to spend the night with an adult man who's a stranger though. No matter how much they were groomed, and how much of a "child" himself the adult seemed. I bet there would be more of a barrier for the parents with a little girl than a boy.

Edited March 11, 2019 by ruby24

[Kostgard]

3 hours ago, ruby24 said:

Hearing their stories make me think that James was a "favorite" of Michael's for much longer than Wade was. I think someone had mentioned that even though it might have gone on longer over time with Wade, it seemed less frequent, and I think that's true. 

Adding up the time that James spent with him on tour (24/7 for months) and then when he first got Neverland, plus all that time he spent at their house (that went on for years it seemed like), and it seems to me that MJ was with him a lot more over the 3-4 years he was abusing him (plus the whole year he spent grooming him before he even started abusing him). I think that's the reason it's so much harder still for James in his feelings about him, even now. He was very deeply embedded in that "relationship," which is probably why he still has those rings. Like Oprah said, to do a whole mock wedding with a kid, that's really twisted. 

Yes, I think with James it was clearly more intense and concentrated, even if it was over a shorter span of time.

It started with Wade when he was seven, but he didn’t move to the US until he was nine, and he said when he got here MJ was already moving on to different boys. So in those first two years the contact was sporadic, then it was almost like he kept Wade around as a back up he could always count on or something. 

James was on tour with MJ for six months. I don’t think there were periods where he went home and lived a normal life for a couple days/weeks in between visits. He was fully immersed in his world and for all intents and purposes they lived together for those six months (what a mindfuck for a little kid). He did say that once he hit puberty at 12 MJ started to lose interest, so that was only two years into the abuse, but it certainly feels like MJ crammed a lot of abuse into those two years.

For those wondering what the experience is like for a female victim, you should check out The Tale if you have HBO GO or NOW for an example. It is based on the film’s writer/director’s experience where she was sexually abused by a coach and his wife when she was about 13. It is a tough watch (they reinact explicit events that happened to her). But she too thought she was in love, that she was special, and that this was a special relationship. It wasn’t until she was an adult and goes back to revisit that time that she realized she was abused.

Edited March 11, 2019 by Kostgard

[ruby24]

12 minutes ago, Kostgard said:

James was on tour with MJ for six months. I don’t think there where periods where he went home and lived a normal life for a couple days/weeks in between visits. He was fully immersed in his world and for all intents and purposes they lived together for those six months (what a mindfuck for a little kid). He did say that once he hit puberty at 12 MJ started to lose interest, so that was only two years into the abuse, but it certainly feels like MJ crammed a lot of abuse into those two years.

Exactly. That's what I picked up from this too. I also wonder at what point the "wedding" happened- James said on Oprah that it was when he was starting to feel a little insecure about his position, so I wonder if it was later. But either way, the fact that he did that with him and James held on to those rings to this day, means it was a big deal to him. You could just see it on his face as he described it, saying it was hard to go back to that moment. That actually seemed like the most painful thing in the film for him to remember.

I wonder if he "married" any other kids. 

[Simon Boccanegra]

1 hour ago, Melina22 said:

This was something that to me, a survivor of many years of non-sexual abuse from a stepparent, was completely new knowledge. When you're physically and/or verbally abused in non-sexual ways there's zero confusion. You just hate it, always, even though as a child you may not hate the person doing it.

However, some people may hate the feelings, but take a long time to realize they did not deserve the abuse, or had done nothing to bring it on. 

Quote

My question, though, is the experience that Wade and James had, as boys, an experience girls would have? I don't recall any of my female friends who were molested as children or teens ever alluding to any feelings of love or enjoyment. Is this awful experience different for girls? Or would they just never dare say the things Wade and James said because of the shame of it? I keep wondering this.

I think that that too varies. This is one of those cases in which I am afraid to "spoil" the plot of a movie that is more than 20 years old, but Atom Egoyan's excellent film The Sweet Hereafter (based on Russell Banks's novel) deals in part, IMO very perceptively, with parent/child sexual abuse. The choices a major female character makes in regard to her parent, the girl's way of hurting the parent in return, suggest very complex feelings. When you think back on all the scenes involving these two characters, you realize you've seen someone who resents something done to her that she knew was not right, and also someone who was "abandoned" and is hurt over that too, because something happens in the film that makes the parent stop looking at her the same way. And the one incident of sexual abuse we actually see onscreen (in a flashback) is very similar to what Robson and Safechuck describe. The abuser has set the scene in a romantic way.  

Edited March 11, 2019 by Simon Boccanegra

[Melina22]

20 minutes ago, Simon Boccanegra said:

However, some people may hate the feelings, but take a long time to realize they did not deserve the abuse, or had done nothing to bring it on. 

This is 100% correct. It's a kind of brainwashing that follows you for years, and this helped me understand and believe Wade and James, even though my experience was, obviously, different in many ways. Plus keeping the family secret is so harmful, as Oprah brought out, regardless of what the secret is. 

[Growsonwalls]

You know, this isn't based on much but just how Wade and James talked, that maybe there are many more victims of MJ, but perhaps they were not as traumatized because James and Wade "aged out" but then were repeatedly brought back into the fold. I think that's what fucked them up SO much. The continual "I love you/get lost" cycle that MJ inflicted on them. Maybe other boys were with Michael for a year or two, puberty hit, and they left Neverland. They might feel embarrassed, traumatized, ashamed, but not to the degree of Wade and James simply because it wasn't this horrible cycle that continued into adulthood. 

[Brattinella]

11 minutes ago, Growsonwalls said:

The continual "I love you/get lost" cycle that MJ inflicted on them.

This is such a horrible (and spot on) description of what he did to them.

[movingtargetgal]

On 3/5/2019 at 10:26 PM, Growsonwalls said:

Does anyone ever think that MJ unconsciously killed himself? I call it a passive suicide. The amount of drugs he demanded the doctor administer ... these were not drugs to get high. These were drugs to knock you out cold. This isn't Phillip Seymour Hoffman or Cory Monteith who overdosed after a long history of heroin abuse. There seems something very fishy about MJ demanding drugs that completely knock you into unconsciousness for so long.

Yes, I feel that he did unconsciously kill himself and that he was also a long term drug addict.  It does not matter if you are addicted to "street" or prescription drugs, addiction is addiction and it is a deadly disease.  

My father sexually abused me when I was a child.  He was a chronic alcoholic who had heart disease, kidney disease and cirrhosis.  My father dropped dead at 48 years old.  I always felt that his death was a passive suicide due to his guilt.  I know it sounds weird but knowing that he felt such guilt and shame for what he did to me is, for lack of a better word, a comfort to me.  I have been able to let go of the anger towards him (but not at his actions).    

[doodlebug]

4 hours ago, ruby24 said:

This is a really good question. I actually wonder the same thing. I think this has happened with teenage girls and older men, but could that happen to a pre-pubescent girl with an adult man? I suppose it's possible. 

I bet that mothers and parents would be much harder to persuade to give up their daughters to spend the night with an adult man who's a stranger though. No matter how much they were groomed, and how much of a "child" himself the adult seemed. I bet there would be more of a barrier for the parents with a little girl than a boy.

Oprah was sexually abused as a child and actually has told a similar story of seduction by her abuser.  She was living with her mother and stepfather at the time and was mostly ignored by her mother and got nothing but negativity  from her stepfather who didn’t want her around.  She has relayed how unloved and vulnerable she was and how, when her abuser started paying attention to her, giving her little gifts and lavishing praise on her; she felt nothing but love and was delighted to spend time with him. She also said that while people refer to it as child sexual abuse, it is more correctly child sexual seduction which is how the abuser ensnares the child and gets such total loyalty from them.

i think the common denominator for this situation is a kid that lacks positive parental attention.  It is pretty obvious that both Wade and Jimmy’s mothers put their own desires far ahead of their childrens’ needs.  Wade’s father was mentally ill and thousands of miles away.  Since Jimmy’s father have a deposition on MJ’s behalf in the civil suit, I suspect he was also more interested in what MJ could do for him than in what MJ was doing to his son.  

[Irlandesa]

4 hours ago, Kostgard said:

For those wondering what the experience is like for a female victim, you should check out The Tale if you have HBO GO or NOW for an example. It is based on the film’s writer/director’s experience where she was sexually abused by a coach and his wife when she was about 13. It is a tough watch (they reinact explicit events that happened to her). But she too thought she was in love, that she was special, and that this was a special relationship. It wasn’t until she was an adult and goes back to revisit that time that she realized she was abused.

Netflix's Abducted In Plain Sight also tells the story from a female victim's POV.  What her abuser did is a bit different than a seduction but it delves into how she slowly was brainwashed into being actively angry at her parents for keeping her from her abuser.

5 hours ago, ruby24 said:

Hearing their stories make me think that James was a "favorite" of Michael's for much longer than Wade was. I think someone had mentioned that even though it might have gone on longer over time with Wade, it seemed less frequent, and I think that's true.

I think Wade's story would have been similar to the intense two years that James went through had Wade's mother agreed to leave Wade with Michael for a year as Michael had asked.  That was the one time when she put her foot down and said "no."

[movingtargetgal]

Years ago I did an internship working in a sexual offenders program in the state prison.  One of the inmates claimed he had molested over 300 children.  He said he had never "gotten caught" until his last victim. He could not believe the child "told" because non of the others said a word.  Another inmate talked about how he picked his victims.  He said he could watch a large group of children and instinctively "know which children were sad, lonely and insecure".  These were the children he would approach.  Each of these inmates/offenders said these things during group meetings and what stay with me was how the other inmate/offenders would nod their heads in agreement.   Just thinking about it 25 years later still gets me in the gut.

Michael Jackson had the same instinct that these inmate/offenders have.  He knew which families and children were the most vulnerable.  He also had a paid staff on enablers which shielded him from justice and allowed him to keep destroying children and their families.  Pure evil. 

[methodwriter85]

6 hours ago, ruby24 said:

I also wonder at what point the "wedding" happened- James said on Oprah that it was when he was starting to feel a little insecure about his position, so I wonder if it was later. But either way, the fact that he did that with him and James held on to those rings to this day, means it was a big deal to him. You could just see it on his face as he described it, saying it was hard to go back to that moment. That actually seemed like the most painful thing in the film for him to remember.

I wonder if he "married" any other kids. 

I think it's hard to go back to that moment because at the time it was happening, it made Jimmy happy. I mean, if you go from his childhood perspective, who doesn't want to get a nice ring and make a forever friendship vow with the person you love the most in the world? But James knows that it's really fucked up. I think the fascinating thing about watching the interview as a whole is that you can kind of see Jimmy and James kind of alternating with each other, if you get what I'm saying.

[Sharonana]

The amount of naysayers and those that have such blind faith to still believe that Michael Jackson would never do something like this is incredible. At the very least, the baseline of the entire story is that a grown ass man was sleeping in bed with young boys. That is so wrong on so many levels. No matter how much MJ tried to romanticize it, it was wrong. It's very upsetting reading the negative comments. They shouldn't even get to have an opinion if they haven't watched the documentary but alas, this is America. Even if they did watch it and came away still thinking that Wade and James are lying...well they are some cold, cold hearted people.

Edited March 11, 2019 by Sharonana

[dcubed]

10 hours ago, Melina22 said:

My question, though, is the experience that Wade and James had, as boys, an experience girls would have? I

The R Kelly story tells us that yes, there are young girls that experienced sexual pleasure from abuse, that “love” him and defend him, the same with some girls part of Warren Jeffs cult, David Koresh and others.  What these groomers/abusers have in common is the ability to find the vulnerable and exploit them.  

[Robert Lynch]

Not surprised at this

[Melina22]

That's actually sad. A lot of people went to almost scary lengths to "become" MJ, and suddenly they're about as welcome as Hitler impersonators. I totally understand why people no longer applaud them, but at the same time, I find it rather terrifying nowadays how overnight you can go from celebrated to pariah in front of the entire world. If it's because of evil you perpetrated, you're just reaping what you sowed. But a lot of the time, like with these impersonators, the recipients of all the outrage just seem like collateral damage. It's so extreme. 

(By the way, this is just a general statement about the scary, pile-on climate we're living in. I don't have any particular opinions about celebrity impersonators in general, other than that most are just people trying to make a living.) 

[funky-rat]

On ‎3‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 10:23 AM, Robert Lynch said:

I think you maybe right on that. That’s something l didn’t know.

To return to the topic, I remember all the spoofs on MJ, but color me shocked when I realized all the MJ  jokes dated back to Eddie Murphy’s HBO 1983 special. I find it interesting that the jokes stopped in 2005 when he was announced not guilty, leaving Aries Spiers and Amy Poehler the last comedians to spoof on him. I wondered what the comedians are thinking about this documentary now. If you watch any SNL or Mad TV skit on MJ, they were really savage in attacking MJ himself. 

There was also a skit on SNL in the Joe Piscopo/Eddie Murphy years - it was a spoof on public access shows called "Guy Talk" or something similar, and he interviews Liberace and Michael Jackson, where they talk about how macho they are and how women throw themselves at them.  That was around 1983-ish.  

I never got in to Mad TV, but we watched a lot of In Living Color, and they went after Michael too, but not as harshly as some others did.  It went more to his eccentricities than him being pervy.

Heck, back when I was in 5th/6th grade, when Thriller was in all of it's glory and I had grown weary of MJ, I recall hearing adults telling jokes about him:

"Did you hear about the new Michael Jackson cereal?  The commercial says 'Hey kids!  Eat me!' "

"What does Michael Jackson have in common with K-Mart?  They both have little boys pants half off!"

[AnnieHeights]

22 hours ago, A.Ham said:

I wish there was a way of showing more public support to both men, or even to have a way of letting them know that not everyone is against them and that there are people that believe them. If there is, I am not aware of it.

I have thought about this so many times!  I wish they knew how many people really believe them and I wish Hollywood would speak out in support the way they have with the #MeToo movement.  Shocking how silent they are when it comes to one of their own preying on defenseless children. I understand he was found 'not guily' but that doesn't make him innocent.  I watched a show yesterday on Oxygen (?)  with some of the jurors from the second trial and apparently the prosecution just didn't make a strong enough case and the only forensic evidence they used was quickly discredited.  It didn't help the mother had already hit up Jay Leno and Chris Tucker for help.....       

A couple of other things and on a much lighter note.....

I was jarred by the massive amount of hair Gloria Allred had back in the day.....

The Australian Grandmother was very cute......

[methodwriter85]

13 minutes ago, AnnieHeights said:

A couple of other things and on a much lighter note.....

My fluffy comment- I thought 20-something James was really, really attractive. You can bet the farm that I would've been watching his shows if I had been hanging out in the area.  (Although I wasn't 21 until 2007 which seems slightly past the period he met his wife, but whatever.) He had kind of a similar look to the singer of a local garage band I had a massive crush on back in the late 2000's and that kind of made me smile. 

I can see why his wife fell for him. I also think they were a pretty good example of opposites attract- she came off as very the extroverted chipper type and I can just  see someone like that being into the mysterious shy silent type guitar player with the sad blue eyes. 

It was also really funny to remember Wade's various 2000's fashion choices. I very much remember his spiky blond hair. It's funny he's still rocking the soul patch. I would have figured he'd be rocking a full beard as is trendy these days. I was SUPER into the whole pop boom era which Wade definitely had his place in. He did an episode on a MTV reality prank show where he and Incubus tried to convince Incubus fans that they were going in a dance pop direction and I remember it being pretty hysterical.

[doodlebug]

On 3/10/2019 at 12:37 PM, A.Ham said:

Conversely, I really loved Wade Robson during his SYTYCD days. I thought he was a genius, and made modern dance palatable to me in a show that only valued contemporary dance. I missed him when he stopped choreographing there, and wished there was another platform were we could enjoy his work. He kept a much lower profile choreography wise since; when he finally came forward on the today show, I was just surprised and felt badly that he had endured that for so many years.

Robson has said in other interviews, that, after his second nervous breakdown, when he finally got into serious therapy and began talking with his counselor about the abuse; he was unable to dance or choreograph or do any sort of performing because it triggered him since his dancing career was so completely tied to Michael.  As everyone knows, Wade was a huge MJ fan as a tiny kid, which is what got him into dance in the first place and lead to his first meeting with Michael when he was 5.  Anyway, Robson says he was unable to dance, even privately; let alone work as a dancer or choreographer, for about 5 years; that he could feel Michael in his body, hear his words to him whenever he tried and it was unbearable.  He recently said he only began dancing and working on choreography again in the past year and a half and he's doing ok with it now.

So, it appears that Michael Jackson ultimately was the reason he's not been around much recently.  BTW, Robson had that second nervous breakdown while working on the Cirque du Soleil tribute to Michael Jackson show.  Hmmmm...........  He also says, that despite the Jackson family's assertion that he was fired from the show, that he resigned because he was emotionally unable to work.

 

11 hours ago, Melina22 said:

That's actually sad. A lot of people went to almost scary lengths to "become" MJ, and suddenly they're about as welcome as Hitler impersonators. I totally understand why people no longer applaud them, but at the same time, I find it rather terrifying nowadays how overnight you can go from celebrated to pariah in front of the entire world. If it's because of evil you perpetrated, you're just reaping what you sowed. But a lot of the time, like with these impersonators, the recipients of all the outrage just seem like collateral damage. It's so extreme. 

(By the way, this is just a general statement about the scary, pile-on climate we're living in. I don't have any particular opinions about celebrity impersonators in general, other than that most are just people trying to make a living.) 

I think any Michael Jackson impersonators who are going to clubs these days expecting adulation are not in touch with reality.  Maybe someday, but not anytime soon.  It's too bad if they cannot earn a living doing what they are used to doing, but, anyone who took it upon themselves to imitate MJ in the past 20 years had to know that there was potentially going to be a huge downside to it. 

Edited March 11, 2019 by doodlebug

[cpcathy]

After the show I went back to watch Wade's SYTYCD choreography. He was brilliant. I hope he gets back to it in a big way.