Both were subject to multiple child sex allegations. Jerry took showers with little boys and Michael slept with boys in his own bed. Both had interviews, Sandusky with Costas and Jackson with Bashir which didn’t make either look innocent. Neither has been convicted although Jackson paid big bucks to make one charge go away and was acquited on the other.
Sandusky has been villified way way more than Jackson. No one seems to support him.
Jackson is still treated with awe and respect. In general.
If Jackson did all the things he was accused of (none of which were ever proven) he still wouldn’t have hurt as many kids as Sandusky, from what I understand. Plus, with Sandusky, the was a cover up and everything else. And, Jackson spent the whole latter part of his life reviled and mocked. He was only respected after he died.
I think there’s a difference. There was a kind of innocence about Jackson, and he seemed to honestly think he wasn’t harming any of the kids. He tried to bond with them (in his own perverted way) and even nurture them.
Sandusky knew exactly what he was doing and didn’t give a damn who got hurt.
I am NOT excusing Jackson, if the allegations are accurate. Abuse is abuse, period. There’s no excuse for an adult having sex with a kid. But I think there were substantial differences between the two men and how they related to the kids they abused.
I don’t know how you reach these conclusions about either of them. I imagine most pedophiles have what they consider “good intentions” toward their victims, Sandusky included.
If Jackson was a pedophile, and Sandusky is proven to be one, then the only difference is that Jackson was the more talented and wealthier pedophile. And he likely used part of his wealth to pay off his victims.
Jackson earned his respect by his achievements, and kept it by beating the pedophile raps. I think Sandusky will deserve the same, should he be found not guilty as well.
I was never totally convinced Michael Jackson was guilty. Not that I’d be surprised if he was, I just wasn’t convinced. If I recall correctly, some of the kids the prosecutors used as witnesses even denied they were ever abused. I’d have acquitted him had I been on the jury, if everything about the case was as I remember hearing about it. I don’t think the actual jury wanted to acquit him, but obviously they didn’t believe the prosecution proved its case.
Did impartial witnesses personally observe and report Michael Jackson performing oral sex on a child and anally raping a child? If not, there’s your answer.
After there’s been a decade-long investigation into Sandusky’s life with not one actual purportedly abused person coming forward on their own behalf, then we can talk again… oh, wait. Missed that boat already.
I think there’s also a duality of repect that surrounds both of them. Diehard music and sports fans seem to line up support with their rose colored glasses.
Just based on interviews I’d say there was something seriously wrong with both of these people. I can’t use the word “man” in MJ’s case because he seemed to be mentally arrested in a child-like state of mind. He was a playmate with a wallet to his children. Sandusky has compartmentalized his behavior in attempt to justify it. Both used money and positions of authority to create a system that lured children to them.
I think maybe you and I are the only people that remember this, sometimes. Jackson was HATED by most people, including the media, from the years between *Bad *until his death. It started out as just, “woah, wtf happened to his face?” and the allegations of child abuse really fomented a lot of anger and his increasingly bizarre behavior earned him the tabloid moniker of “Wacko Jacko”. Of course, the media started his pop culture beatification before the body was cold.
Still, the lack of evidence in Jackson’s case and graphic witness statements in Sandusky’s do make them very different. I don’t think Sandusky’s image will ever recover from this, not even postmortem. (But honestly, I would have said the same about Jackson’s 10 years ago, so what do I know?)
They aren’t even in the same ballpark. Jackson was seriously investigated and nothing was ever turned up. He was guilty of being weird and creepy, but not molesting children sexually. It is almost a certainty that Sandusky did exactly what he is accused of and more. There allegations of continued systemic abuse, from multiple people, reporting the same type of behaviour, from many, many years.
The only difference I see is that Jackson had the fame and money to get out of it. Sandusky will most likely die in prison. Jackson was taken care of by his Dr.
I agree with those who think that Jackson’s death changed people’s perceptions of him a lot.
During the time between when the accusations came out and when he died, it wasn’t really all that cool to like his music and it seemed like the only time people talked about him was to make fun of him as a weirdo pedophile. Do the rest of you really NOT remember that? If not, I am pretty shocked at how short the public’s memory of this stuff really is.
It was only after he died that I noticed people starting to talk about how great his music was again and saying the “Aw, he was just misunderstood” type stuff about him.