| March 08, 2019 03:38 PM
Any reasonable person will come away from watching HBO’s “Leaving Neverland” certain that Michael Jackson’s relationships with children were completely inappropriate. Far less certain is that Jackson did what his accusers in the documentary allege.
I watched both parts of the special and I don’t believe Wade Robson or James Safechuck, the documentary’s two near-middle-aged male subjects who say after meeting and befriending Jackson in the late 1980s, he sexually abused them in horrific ways for nearly a decade.
Robson and Safechuck, along with their mothers and wives featured in the documentary, do appear distraught — particularly in the second half, when they describe the psychological upset they say they experienced as adults as a result of the abuse.
But so many of their independent stories require the viewer to suspend all critical thinking.
Both Safechuck and Robson describe a calculating Jackson, “grooming” them and their families to trust and rely on him. Both men say Jackson was exceedingly careful when subjecting them to his perversions, installing an alarm that activated when anyone approached his bedroom and running each of them separately through get-dressed-quickly drills to prepare them for if and when the alarm triggered.
And yet Safechuck then describes having “sex” — he doesn’t specify that it’s explicit intercourse — in nearly every area of what was Jackson’s sprawling Neverland Valley Ranch in California.
Robson describes, as a teen, going to visit Jackson in a hotel, and laying with him in bed when Jackson attempted to penetrate him anally. He said that there was too much pain so Jackson stopped but that after returning home the next day, Jackson summoned Robson back to warn him that there may be blood on his underwear, so to return home and quickly collect it before anyone noticed.
So was Jackson a wild pervert bedding children all over his ranch and hotel rooms? Or was he a smooth criminal? Both, if you can believe it. But both can’t be true.
Particularly stupefying is the scene that touched major film reviewers all over the country, wherein Safechuck pulls out a jewelry box to display expensive rings given to him by Jackson.
Safechuck expresses his resentment for the gifts — and yet there they are, preciously placed in a decorative box, still in his possession 30 years after the man, who he says licked his anus as a young boy, gave it to him.
During the 1993 sexual abuse allegations against Jackson brought by the family of Jordan Chandler, both Safechuck and Robson testified that Jackson had never behaved inappropriately with them. That lawsuit was settled out of court.
During the 2005 trial for more child abuse allegations, Jackson again asked Robson and Safechuck to testify that he had never touched them. Robson, then 22, did testify. Safechuck declined to participate.
Tell me something: If you’re Michael Jackson and you know that you had in fact done the things Safechuck and Robson allege, why would you ask them to testify twice on your behalf? This is like robbing two stores and asking the owner of the first one to defend you in the second trial. More accurately, it’s like robbing eight stores, having the nerve to show your face in them again, and then asking the owners to comp your groceries.
They wanted to protect him, goes one reasoning. But why does anyone have to buy that? And why would they come forward with these new accusations only now that Jackson is dead? The questions are endless, and the idea that they should simply “be believed” is to be forced to bury the equally endless anomalies.
Both Robson and Safechuck in “Leaving Neverland” say they knew of several other boys abused by Jackson. Robson specifically identifies Brett Barnes as the boy who “replaced” him, and the documentary displays a photograph of Barnes with Jackson.
Barnes, like Robson, testified as an adult in 2005 that he was never abused by Jackson. Since “Leaving Neverland” aired, he has threatened to sue HBO for what he says is the implication that he was molested.
To give you the extent of how long Robson was friends with Jackson, Robson in the movie describes going with his own wife to visit Jackson and his children in Las Vegas after the 2005 trial. Who is not confused by this?
Both Robson and Safechuck were looking for money in a lawsuit filed against Jackson’s estate in 2013. It was dismissed because the statue of limitations against in California had run out.
Robson, who until about 2007 was a highly successful dance choreographer, claimed in his suit that the abuse was responsible for his no longer being willing to work (or being able to find work) and that he should be compensated for any potential income he had lost as a result.
The 2005 trial speaks for itself. The jury acquitted Jackson of all charges, even as one juror said he believed Jackson had abused children, just not those children.
“Leaving Neverland” breathed new life into the 1993 allegations. In Vanity Fair last week, Maureen Orth wrote that it was “undeniable” that Chandler, the boy who accused Jackson, described Jackson’s genitalia to authorities and that the description “matched.”
This isn’t really true. Chandler, who was unwilling to testify in court, was said by police to have accurately described Jackson’s penis as circumcised. Yet the 2009 autopsy of Jackson’s body found that he was not circumcised.
In “Leaving Neverland,” one of the mothers recalls talking to Jackson about Chandler’s 1993 accusations, and that Jackson told her he wasn’t angry with the boy, but faulted the boy’s father, who Jackson said was pursuing money.
A widely documented phone call recording of Chandler’s father, Evan, features him calling Jackson “evil” and demanding that he “get everything I want,” or else Jackson’s reputation would be “destroyed.” This fact appears nowhere in the documentary.
Evan, reportedly estranged from his son for years, killed himself in 2009. He shot himself four months after Jackson’s death.
Michael Jackson was weird. It would be easier to believe the allegations against him were true if they weren’t so weird, too.
