MICHAEL JACKSON: Was he a child molester?

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This famous singer, songwriter and dancer was born on August 29, 1958 and died on June 25, 2009 at the age of 51. Jackson was famous as an American singer, songwriter and dancer. He was dubbed the "King of Pop", He was regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the Twentieth Century and one of the greatest entertainers of all time. This man was a global figure in popular culture for over four decades.

The eighth child of the Jackson family, he made his professional debut in 1964 with his elder  brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon as a member of the Jackson Five. He began his solo career in 1971 while at Motown Records. In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. His music videos; including those for "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and his 1982 album Thriller, are credited with breaking racial barriers and transforming the medium into an art form and promotional tool. Their popularity helped bring the television channel MTV to fame. Bad(1987) was the first album to produce five US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles, with "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man in the Mirror", and "Dirty Diana". He continued to innovate throughout the 1990s with videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream", and forged a reputation as a touring artist. Through stage and video performances, Jackson popularized complicated dance techniques such as the robot and the moonwalk, to which he gave the name. His distinctive sound and style has influenced artists of various genres.     Jackson was the third-best-selling music artist of all time (behind the Beatles and Elvis Presley), with estimated sales of over 350 million records worldwide.Jackson won hundreds of awards, more than any other artist in the history of popular music. He is one of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, and is the only dancer from pop and rock to have been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Dance Hall of Fame. His other achievements  Guinness World records including including the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time), 13 Grammy Awards, the Grammy Legend Award, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 26 American Music Awards (more than any other artist), and 13 number-one US singles (more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era). Thriller is the best-selling album of all time, with estimated sales of 66 million copies worldwide. Jackson's other albums, including Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), and HIS  Story (1995), also rank among the world's best-selling albums. Jackson is also remembered for his philanthropy and charitable fundraising.

This extremely talented young man had the world at his finger- tips. Unfortunately, he had a very serious problem to deal with. It was discovered that he was unquestionably a child molester notwithstanding that he denied sexually molesting young boys.

One day, the Chandler’ family met Jackson after the musician’s car broke down in Los Angeles. Soon after, Jackson began calling 12-year-old Jordan Chandler daily who was a dedicated fan of Jackson.  It wasn’t long until Jackson began treating Jordan, his mother, and his 6-year-old stepsister as what the tabloids later called his “secret family,” showering them with gifts and trips abroad.

Jackson eventually invited Jordan to spend a night at Neverland Ranch ( Jackson’s huge property) where the boy slept with Jackson.

Jordan’s father, Evan Chandler, a prominent Beverly Hills dentist and part-time screenwriter, became alarmed after he saw his son fully clothed, in bed with Jackson. He took his son to a child psychiatrist, and Jordan told the psychiatrist that he had been molested by Jackson. The psychiatrist reported the allegation to authorities, and the Los Angeles police and Santa Barbara sheriff’s department launched a joint investigation in August 1993.

Jordan Chandler subsequently told the police that Jackson had sexually abused him.  Jordan's mother on the other hand said that there had been no wrongdoing on Jackson's part. I don’t know why she would say that since she wasn’t in Jackson’s bedroom when he supposedly molested her son. Perhaps she didn’t want it to be known that her son dlept in bed with Jackson.

Jordan Chandler had given the police a description of  Jackson’s intimate parts.  A strip search of Jackson by the police revealed that Jordan had correctly claimed Jackson had patchy-colored buttocks, short pubic hair, and pink and brown marked testicles. He also drew accurate pictures of a dark spot on Jackson's penis only visible when it was lifted upwards Some of the jurors in the grand jury felt that the photos did not match the description,  but the DA and the sheriff's photographer stated that the description was accurate.

In August 1993, police raided Jackson's home and found books and photographs in his bedroom featuring young boys with little or no clothing. The books were legal to purchase and own in the United States, and Jackson was not indicted.  

The boy’s father, Even Chandler demanded payment from Jackson, which he refused. As far as I am concerned, the boy’s father was blackmailing Jackson which is a criminal offence.          

Evan Chandler was recorded discussing his intention to pursue charges and Jackson used the recording to argue that he was the victim of a jealous father trying to extort money from him.  

In January 1994, after an investigation was conducted by the police,  deputy Los Angeles County district attorney Michael Montagna stated that Chandler would not be charged with extortion, due to lack of cooperation from Jackson's organization and its willingness to negotiate with Evan Chandler for several weeks, among other reasons.                         

In 2004 Jackson's defense lawyer said that Jackson had never been criminally indicted and that in his settlement, he didn’t admit to any wrongdoing or admit to evidence of criminal misconduct, and that the 1994 settlement was made without his consent. That is not so. Michael Jackson agreed to pay $25.3 million to settle child molestation charges leveled against him in 1993 by the Chandler boy, according to a confidential legal agreement. 

Jackson began taking painkillers, Valium, Xanax and Ativan to deal with the stress of the allegations. By late 1993, he was addicted to the drugs.  

Jordan went on to be legally emancipated from his parents, and in Jackson’s 2005 trial, his mother said she had not spoken to her son in 11 years.                                                                              

A later disclosure by the FBI of investigation documents compiled over nearly 20 years led Jackson's attorney to suggest that no evidence of molestation or sexual impropriety from Jackson toward minors existed. The Department of Children and Family Services of Los Angeles County investigated Jackson beginning in 1993 with the Chandler allegation and again in 2003. The LAPD and DC’S did not find credible evidence of abuse or sexual misconduct. That didn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t sexually abuse young boys who slept in his bed. Investigators were however convinced that Michael Jackson molested his own nephews and believed that he had silenced them with threats and gifts. Two of Jackson's nephews had been interviewed by police investigating the singer.

A former detective claimed that authorities received a  'credible tip' about Jackson’s nephews  One of the boys was allegedly taken to an island. Detectives say that nephew never gave a 'real denial' when questioned about their uncle sexually molesting them. The nephew told the detectives that he was not willing to ‘talk bad’ about his uncle, according to a source linked to the prosecution. Jackson had 23 nieces and nephews, according to the Post.

Wade Robson and James Safechuck also accused Jackson of sexually molesting them. By then, Jackson had been accused of sexually abusing five boys who slept with him in his bed.  The boys told the police that when they slept in his bed, Jackson always locked his bedroom door from the inside.

Wade Robson, one of the two alleged victims to appear in  the film Leaving Neverland, became publicly associated with the controversy when, as a 10-year-old, he told reporters in 1993 that he had been a part of harmless “slumber parties” in Jackson’s bedroom.

Robson, now 36, was just 5 when he met Jackson after winning a contest to dance onstage with him during a trip to Australia for a 1987 tour. Robson was a devoted fan who dressed like Jackson, and two years after meeting, Jackson invited him and his family to travel to the U.S. for a visit. During that visit and then repeatedly after he and his family moved to Los Angeles when Robson was 9, at Jackson’s urging—Jackson molested him as Robson later alleged.

However in 1993, and again in 2005, Robson insisted on Jackson’s innocence. I don’t understand why he made that statement considering the fact that during the 2005 trial, the mother of Jackson’s second accuser testified that she once saw Jackson and Robson in bed together, under the covers and naked at least from the waist up. She also said she saw the two in a shower together when Robson was 8 or 9, identifiable by his neon-green Spiderman underwear on the floor by the shower. Robson, then 22, took to the stand and refuted each of those claims. Jackson had never touched him sexually.  It is easy to realize why he made that statement. If he admitted that he was subjected to subjected to sexual sex abuse by Jackson and didn’t get out of the bed when Jackson was in bed with him, people might suspect that he wasn’t bothered by the sex he was subjected to. 

When I was eleven years of age, I was living in a group home in which the man who operated it came into the bedrooms of me and the three other boys and anal raped us every night. When we were removed from the home by the Children’s Aid, I was sent to a psychiatrist and when he asked me to tell him what the man had done to me. I denied that he raped me. The reason was that I was too embarrassed to talk about what I had to endure while the man anal raped me every night I was in his home.

In 2013, after two decades of denying any abuse, Robson came forward with the claim that Jackson actually had molested him for seven years, starting when he was 7. At that point he being a successful choreographer who had worked with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake; Robson sued Jackson’s estate, saying he had suffering a nervous breakdown caused by the trauma from the abuse and that his perspective had changed after having a son of his own. Jackson’s supporters accused Robson of trying to make some money off Jackson’s estate. Robson said on the Today show that Jackson had  brainwashed  him into defending him and that he never forgot “one moment of what Michael did to him. He claimed that he was psychologically and emotionally completely unable and unwilling to understand that it was sexual abuse.” A judge later threw out the case because legally, too much time had passed for Jackson’s estate to be held liable.

James Safechuck, the second alleged victim in Leaving Neverland, met Jackson in the 1980s when he was cast in a Pepsi commercial at age ten. Jackson began calling his house every day, and eventually he invited Safechuck to join him on his Bad concert tour.  

In 2014, Safechuck filed a lawsuit, later dismissed for being filed too late, claiming Jackson had abused him hundreds of times between the years 1988 and 1992. He said in his complaint that Jackson kissed his genitals and gave him jewelry as a reward for sexual favors. According to his allegations, their relationship became sexual during a trip to Paris, when he was staying in Jackson’s room and was allegedly introduced to masturbation.

The abuse allegedly escalated to other forms of sexual favors. He said Jackson gave him alcohol before molesting him, and he said in the documentary that Jackson even staged a mock wedding of the two when. Safechuck was just ten at that time. According to Safechuck, who is now 40, the abuse continued until he was 14. Robson and Safechuck say they both have spent years coping with the legacy of Jackson’s abuse. 

Another boy who was the son of a maid at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch—where at the time large numbers of children stayed in what Vanity Fair described as a “mini-Disneyland”—told police during the investigation that the singer had fondled him. But he was a reluctant witness, who at first denying the abuse to police and later saying he was only willing to testify if the first accuser did. When Jordan Chandler declined to participate in the criminal investigation, the second boy also declined to go on the record, saying he was ashamed that Jackson paid the boy a settlement payment.

During Jackson’s 2005 trial, when the second accuser was 24, he testified that Jackson had tickled and then touched him inappropriately on three separate occasions, when he was 7, 8, and 10. He said each time Jackson slipped $100 bills in his shorts after the molestation and told him not to tell his mother.

Jackson’s lawyers called the boy and his family “grifters” and “thieves.” Jackson was acquitted. Through the years, Gavin declined offers to sell his story, instead saying that the truth would be revealed in time.

Gavin Arvizo was a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer when he met Jackson, who learned of the boy’s situation and sent him a basket full of toys in the hospital. When Arvizo had recovered enough to leave the hospital, Jackson invited him to the Neverland Ranch.

Starting in 2000, he began visiting the ranch with his family and having “sleepovers” with Jackson. In the year 2003, the documentary Living With Michael Jackson aired, reigniting the public outcry over Jackson’s tendency to surround himself with children. “I have slept in a bed with many children,” he said in the documentary. “It’s not sexual, we’re going to sleep. I tuck them in. It’s very charming, it’s very sweet.”

In the documentary, Jackson can be seen holding hands with Gavin, then 13, and openly discussing their shared sleeping arrangements. The Santa Barbara district attorney reopened the investigation into the molestation allegations. This time, the investigation led to charges of child molesting, serving alcohol to a minor, conspiracy, and kidnapping.

Gavin and his younger brother testified in the trial, which began in 2005, stated that Jackson had showed them child pornography, plied them with alcohol, which he called “Jesus juice,” and masturbated in front of them. Gavin testified that Jackson had abused him several times in February and March 2003, and his younger brother said he had witnessed the abuse. The defense pointed to inconsistencies in the brothers’ testimony and argued, based on their poverty, their tumultuous and sometimes violent household, and their parents’ criminal history and that the boys had been directed to make false accusations by their parents. That must have been because it was common knowledge that Jackson had paid the Chandlers $25 million as a settlement.

Some jurors found the defence lawyer’s argument convincing. When Gavin was 8, his father instructed him and his brother to shoplift from a J.C. Penney store Their father and mother were both arrested after an ensuing brawl with security guards. Their mother, an erratic witness, was under investigation for welfare fraud. She was convicted after the trial.

On June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson died of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication at his home on North Carolwood Drive in the Holy Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. His personal physician, Conrad Murray, said he found Jackson in his room, not breathing and with a very weak pulse, and Murray administered  CPR on Jackson to no avail. After security called 1911 at 12:21 pm local time, Jackson was treated by paramedics at the scene and pronounced dead at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.                                                                

On August 28, 2009, the Los Angeles County Coroner concluded that Jackson's death was a homicide. Shortly before his death, Jackson had reportedly been administered propofol and two anti-anxiety benzodiazepines, lorazepam and midazolam, in his home. Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011 and served two years of his four-year prison sentence due to an early release for good behavior.

The irony is that Jackson kept pestering the doctor to give him the drugs. The doctor knew that if he refused to keep giving his patient the drugs he would be fired. His desire not to be fired led to his imprisonment and his patient’s death.

According to a report by NBC News, authorities in the early 1990s investigation thought there might have been as many as eight or ten other victims of Jackson. Of course nothing came of that allegation.

It was unfortunate for Jackson that he suffered from pedophilia (prone to sexually abusing children). It put a huge dint in his legacy—a dent in his legacy that will be there forever.