How do you feel about the Leaving Neverland controversy?

30 years too late to help anyone.

1) Jackson was clearly a child abuser when we learned about this ten years ago. He should have been in jail back then.

2) The contemporary film and lawsuit are both just an attempt on both sides to make money. I have no intention of seeing the film.

Bottom line – he was a druggie and a child abuser.

I read an article about it the other day in either The New Yorker or the New York Times.

I remember at the time of the first controversy, thinking what kind of parent lets their child go spend weekends with an adult (no matter what gender either the child or the adult is) and lets the child sleep in the bed of the adult?

I am of the impression that he was acquitted of all charges in 2005.
So I am noticing a disturbing lack of the word “alleged” in this thread.

Old News.

The “controversy” really is: should entertainment organizations use MJ’s music anymore? Not a hard decision for me, I was never a fan of his and never bought any of his music. Even so, the question has been raised, although he being dead means he won’t profit from it.

@ragingloli he was acquitted of a charge, but there were a lot of out of court settlements with NDAs.

@ragingloli, this isn’t journalism or a legal circumstance, it’s equivalent to a casual conversation. Your feeling of disturbance is misplaced.

I believe that Michael Jackson sexually abused children. He said, in the Bashir documentary, that he thought it was perfectly OK for adults to sleep in the same bed with kids, that are not your own children. The way he acted around that boy, who was also in that documentary, was grotesque. He treated him like a lover.

Way back during the height of controversy, one of the boys described Michael Jackson’s private parts to a sketch artist. Jackson suffered from vitiligo, a skin condition that causes the skin to lose pigment in distinctive patterns, all over his body. The resulting sketch was an exact match with police photos of Jackson’s intimate areas.

Even if Jackson didn’t molest this boy, he was naked in his presence, in close proximity and so many times that the child could give a detailed description. Either way, that’s sick and disturbing.

I’ve never been convinced that Jackson sexually abused anyone. I believe the man, at some point, had a break with reality and started trying to recreate the childhood he never got to have. I believe it was all innocent enough, for his part (again, I do not believe he was mentally well at all). It’s just unfortunate that out of all the parasites handing on to his coat tails there was not one person around him looking out for his interest or willing to exercise the better judgment that he could not.

I feel…it’s time to leave all that Neverland stuff behind and for good.

Sincerely not interested.

I think certainly the children involved need closure and too be heard.

I barely paid attention to the controversy when the court case was going, and I’m not interested in a movie either. I hope all the children who spent time with him are ok, I really don’t know the details of whether they felt abused or not.

My boss’s littlest, she was a toddler when I worked there, used to strip down to nude and come into the office and want to play with me. The office was in his house. We just ignored her nudity and carried on like she was dressed. I can’t quite figure out if what Jackson did was way over the line or not. If he was naked in bed with children I think that’s way over the line. If they saw him changing, I’m not so sure. It might make some kids uncomfortable for sure.

As a child I saw other adult women topless or naked all the time at the gym.

As an adult I would err on the side of being clothed around other people’s children when they are in my home.

I do think it’s odd for parents to let their kids spend overnight at Jackson’s place. I’m always suspicious of men who want to be around children like that. It’s oribsnly not fair to men, but my antenna goes up.

I can’t imagine why people are the least bit interested in this stuff, much less willing to spend money for it. The ones who are involved in producing it are out to take advantage of the fools.

@YARNLADY Or victims. The NDA’s are key to my opinion but I also think the victims and MJ’s kids deserve answers, not drama

I think it is of importance, to learn to see the signs that people might want to dismiss as “normal” behavior, when adults behave in certain ways around children. For that reason, alone, it is important to pay attention.

The (now adult) kids in this new documentary can shed a lot of light on how a (seemingly, sweet, childlike, charming) celebrity can pull the wool ovet everyone’s eyes, and be a pedophile, almost out in plain sight. Michael Jackson sat on that couch with that one little boy, from the Bashir, documentary, and cooed to him as if the little boy was his sexual lover, in front of everyone. It made me want to vomit and call CPS, while other people saw it as “sweet”.

I think that because Michael Jackson was a huge celebrity, and everybody liked his music, they were willing to overlook the fact that it is not common, or normal, to allow children to have unsupervised visits or sleepovers with adult men, who are virtual strangers, and not their parents. There was no reason for that to have ever been allowed to happen.

Take Michael Jackson out of the picture. Pretend it was Donald Trump, or Barack Obama, or Bill Cosby, or a school teacher, or a baseball coach, or one of your local firemen, or policeman, or a 7–11 clerk. Why would any parent allow their kid to have an unsupervised stay (alone in their home), or a sleepover with any of them? And why would anyone think it’s OK for any of these men to sleep in the same bed with their kid?

@Kardamom We always adored him, so I am definately going to watch. I want the truth.

@KNOWITALL I had a crush on Michael Jackson when I was a kid, I loved his music that came out when I was in my teens and early 20’s.

When I heard the details of the allegations of child abuse, as many of the details that were made public, including his own statements, and seeing that kid on TV being treated like a sexual partner, and reading all of the details about the description of MJ’s genitalia, that was given by one of the boys, I was pretty sure that he was guilty of sexual molestation.

I know a couple of adults, who were molested as children, and it sounds pretty familiar. The grooming of the kids, and getting the kids alone, and acting like “one of the family” towards the parents, to gain their trust.

@Kardamom But his bff was a monkey. I just know he was in an alternate reality but his childlike innocence COULD have been an act. It just felt very,,, hyped back then, to me at least.

Never understood what all the fuss was about, all he ever did was get in bed with a kid & told him to Beat It…what could possibly go wrong?

Bored.

Ok, so I saw some clips from the movie, and I have to say that I am so glad I was never obsessed with Michael Jackson, and I do think it’s very likely he was sexually abusing children. I have no interest in watching the entire movie.

I do blame the parents for trusting a man with their kids like that. Like I said on another Q, I would let my children spend overnights like these kids did. It’s weird.