How could I harm a child, he complained, when I love them so much? In that fragile falsetto that became his public speaking voice, Michael decried his haters long before it was cool to have haters, playing his charitable side to an advantage. There’s a familiar echo in the Jackson family’s protest – a strategy Robson and Safechuck remember from being persuaded to defend Michael in court and depositions whenever he felt threatened: In Michael’s world, his enemies live to make up terrible lies so that they can steal his money and ruin his name. The Jacksons have also claimed, in a lawsuit, that HBO has violated a nondisparagement clause in a deal it signed many years ago to air a Michael Jackson concert. The Jacksons object to “Leaving Neverland” as yet another opportunistic grab for Jackson’s considerable fortunes (which skyrocketed once the singer was gone and unable to squander his millions). It’s no different from what we’ve already seen with such powerful boldface names as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Bill Cosby.Ī goose of another sort is, of course, in jeopardy here – the golden one of royalties and publishing rights – which is perhaps why some of Jackson’s siblings and a nephew are giving interviews to defend his stature, noting that Robson already came out with his allegations in 2013 and then unsuccessfully sued Jackson’s estate for damages.
(Indeed, to watch the entire film requires a steeled resolve from the viewer there’s a warning at the beginning about the graphic descriptions and language.) It’s also impossible to watch “Leaving Neverland” and not think that Jackson’s goose – if it were available – is cooked. It’s impossible, therefore, to not view “Leaving Neverland” in the context of the #MeToo movement, which emphasizes extrajudicial respect for what victims tell us about past abuse and its lingering damages. The biggest difference between then and now, of course, is that Jackson is dead, having succumbed to a lethal dose of tranquilizers at age 50.
To say that we’ve all been here before and that many of us suspected this all along is an understatement we simply have not been told this story in quite this way, at this level of frank detail. 22 arrest and charges of 10 counts of alleged criminal sexual abuse of four victims – three of them minors – dating back to 1998.Ī similar heap of past journalistic efforts, to say nothing of Jackson’s acquittal in a prolonged and hotly prosecuted 2005 molestation trial, accompanies the unsettling facts that “Leaving Neverland” presents so unflinchingly. Kelly,” the Lifetime documentary that aired in January and seemed to do what a mountain of previous reporting and victim accounts could not, resulting in Kelly’s Feb. To a certain degree, “Leaving Neverland” is potentially more devastating than even “Surviving R. What we get this time are disturbing, graphic and wholly consistent accounts of the predation, grooming and rape of two children by a man who wielded considerable psychological control over everyone in his environment – including the boys’ parents. What they are talking about is not just the creepy affection, playful roughhousing and tender hand-holding we were once told was the innocent expression of love between a man (Jackson), who sacrificed his own childhood to bring joy to millions, and the star-struck boys he was thus entitled to enjoy as special pals. Even the outrage feels at last like the real deal, instead of the manufactured byproduct of tabloids and TMZ.Īlready the talk of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Leaving Neverland” is the story of two men – noted pop choreographer Wade Robson, 36, and James “Jimmy” Safechuck, 41 – who each tell us, with the resolute certainty that they lacked as younger witnesses deposed and questioned in other cases, that Jackson sexually molested them when they were boys, starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s and continuing into their teenage years. The details are still appalling, but what we see and hear in Dan Reed’s riveting and sharply convincing four-hour documentary, “Leaving Neverland” (airing in two parts Sunday and Monday on HBO), supplies the viewer with an unexpected measure of calm. Remove the usual “King of Pop” soundtrack and all that glitters, and things get so much clearer. It’s remarkable what happens when you take Michael Jackson out of the latest Michael Jackson scandal. "Leaving Neverland" Michael Jackson sexual assault documentary on HBO Close Menu