It’s obvious that I’m confident you would instantly believe your own child if they claimed abuse from someone like MJ; you wouldn’t first insist they provide some immensely difficult to obtain smoking gun before accepting their story. Otherwise there would be little point to be raising the hypothetical. Sorry the gocha ya ness flew over your head
Why do I believe you’d believe your own kids? Because the vast majority of parents are not monsters who would play cold-hearted skeptic when their own kids have been hurt. It’s only easy to play that role when it’s other people’s kids.
The second half of the documentary is just starting on HBO. I notice they have it on at staggered times all evening; clearly this is a ratings winner for them.
I did watch the first half last night. I’m one of those people who had never made up my mind one way or the other—‘he’s definitely guilty’ or ‘he’s definitely innocent’.
This documentary hasn’t changed that, so far. (We’ll see what part 2 does.) Several questions arose for me about both the choices made by the documentary’s director, and about the statements made by the two accusers.
My biggest problem was with a major discrepancy between the story told by Wade and the story told by Jimmy—a discrepancy that was not addressed at all in the documentary (so far). And that is that Jimmy’s story was of a ‘courtship’ of Jimmy’s entire family over months—MJ coming to their home repeatedly, all of them going to Hawaii, etc, with NO physical contact in all that time. When sexual stuff started, it started with ‘here’s how you masturbate’ with no touching. Only gradually was touching introduced, again, over a period of weeks.
With Wade, the story was ‘the first time we were alone he did a multitude of sex acts to me and asked me to do a multitude of sex acts.’
As I understand it, sex offenders have recognizable patterns of conduct. But here, we are asked to believe in an entirely different M.O. coming from the same person. That inconsistency should have been addressed in the documentary.
Another issue for me is that so far, certain problems with the testimony of the two men haven’t been mentioned: that they swore under oath that MJ had never touched them sexually, that there have been attempts to obtain money from MJ or his estate, etc. Perhaps these will be discussed in tonight’s installment.
My general view is that all accusations of sexual misconduct must be heard fully, and that they should be investigated. So far, this documentary is falling short as “investigation.” We’ll see if that picture looks different with tonight’s portion.
Very interesting. I really don’t feel like watching all 4 hours so I will depend on the trustwory Dopers, as well as other reviews if I happen to see them, for opinions on both sides ot the documentary.
Before this post, I was leaning heavily toward guilty. Sleeping with young boys does not prove molestation, neither does 2 men making accusations. nor does having non-pornographic books of young boys as well as gay porn, makng payoff to keep accusers quite. But putting them all together, it is hard for me to say he is innocent.
Why should it be obvious to me that you are confident of that? You took it upon yourself to offer me advice on how to determine whom I should or should not let my kid have a sleepover with. That doesn’t sound like you have confidence in my parenting abilities.
Are you saying I am playing that cold-hearted skeptic? But I’ll leave that as a rhetorical unless you really want to answer, because someone suggested the doc should be the topic now, and I agree.
Of course the discrepancy could be the result of one boy telling the truth about being molested and the other lying about it.
I’m curious, does any know how many men have accused Michael Jackson of molesting them? Is it just the two boys in the documentary or are there more? Because after Jimmy Savile died there were hundreds of accusers coming forward about his behavior. If Michael Jackson was pedophile you think the same thing would have happened to him.
I just watched the first episode. Each man gave pretty extensive details about the alleged sexual molestation, as I had read they would. At times, they sounded believable to me, and at other times not so much. Bottom line, though, is that nothing they said in and of itself would make me change my mind as far as how I would vote in a trial. Details lend credence, but anyone can come up with them. If you have attempted to sue the MJ estate and were not successful, and have any hope of doing so later, you aren’t going to participate in a doc like this unless you have plenty of details at hand. To be clear, none of this means they definitely just made shit up, but it is something to consider.
Do you expect that with every instance of molestation, or criminal accusation, or just Jackson? Because let me tell you, if those are your standards, we’d never convict anyone if those were the standards for a guilty verdict, and a lot of sick predators would be walking the street.
I don’t expect anything. You asked what it would take. That would do it. I really am tired of people putting words into my mouth or making unfounded implications about my posts. Please, can we just talk about the doc from now on?
So you say that an abuser must do the identical things with every single child he abuses over a period of many years, otherwise the stories can’t possibly be true? This is silly.
This is just another creative excuse not to believe what you prefer not to believe.
The abuse with Wade Robson was a several years later than that with James Safechuck. Safechuck was an early victim. My impression is that Jackson simply became more arrogant and blatant about the abuse over time. He began to realize that he could get away with abusing a boy right from the start, rather than going through an extended grooming process.
And, in fact there was a pattern to the abuse itself. It was only the grooming period that was greatly reduced.
I’m curious about this too. If you were on a jury, and listened to and witnessed heart wrenching evidence BUT there was no video, no DNA gathered, and certainly no confession, it sounds like you would be pretty certain to acquit.
Yes, the idea that Jackson was a naive, fragile man-child who loved kids and simply got carried away is no longer tenable.
The final impression is that he was a cold, callous abuser who used boys for his own sexual gratification and entertainment, and dropped them for new boys when he got tired of them. He cared nothing for the boys themselves, or any damage to them, no matter how over-the-top his declarations of love were. And he was well aware of how wrong and criminal his actions were.
It’s On Demand, so I’ll be watching both parts this week.
I would think the whole “he’s so childlike!” actually works against him. A lot of child molestors don’t think what they’re doing is wrong – they think society is wrong. I don’t know if that’s exactly the case with Michael, but it’s definitely not a point in his favor. (His whole, “you’re ignorant!” did give me pause)
One thing I remember from watching “Living With Michael Jackson” years ago was when he was sitting with that one kid, Gavin? They were cuddling together, Gavin had his head on Jackson’s shoulder, and they were holding hands. What teenage boy does that with an older man, even his father? That’s the kind of position you have with a lover, or a spouse. It was seriously creepy.
(And sadly, I still like the guy’s music, at least his earlier stuff. It was part of my childhood.)
I don’t think we can read much into the presence or absence of a pattern. If we review the course of our own romantic histories, are our chosen strategies and behaviors with our objects of desire set in stone? Or is there often variability, largely shaped by the circumstances of the moment, the individual we’re trying to attract, and what is going on our minds at the time?
I’m thinking the latter, based on my own experiences and from what I know about other people. When sex is initiated is probably the most common thing that differs from relationship to relationship. A guy could wait months before putting moves on someone if he thinks he has to do a lot to work his way up to that, or he could wait mere hours if he doesn’t think that.
On the question of staff at Neverland enabling Jackson’s abuse (not covered in the documentary), this article about a maid who cleaned Jackson’s room is interesting.
Nevertheless, she testified against him at the 2005 trial.
Another maid, Blanca Francia, testified at the 2005 trial that she saw Jackson showering naked with Wade Robson, and inappropriately fondling Macaulay Culkin. Her son, Jason, also testified that he was touched sexually by Jackson. Jackson reportedly paid a $2 million settlement over these accusations.
Jackson’s former business adviser Myung-Ho Lee said that many young boys stayed overnight in his room. “Michael is very vindictive if anybody tries to do anything about him … If he has the upper hand, he will destroy you.”
Ralph Chacon, a former security guard of Jackson’s testified during the 2005 trial that he saw Jackson perform oral sex on a young boy, aged 9 or 10.
Philippe and Stella Lemarque, a French couple who cooked at Neverland for nearly a year, witnessed Jackson “taking sexual advantage of young guests, specifically Macaulay Culkin”. During the 2005 trial, Philippe claimed that he witnessed one incident of inappropriate conduct upon delivering French fries to Jackson around 3 A.M. According to The Observer’s description of his testimony, “When he entered Jackson’s bedroom he saw [Jackson] and Culkin playing an arcade game with Jackson’s hand down the young boy’s underpants. ‘I was shocked. I almost dropped the French fries,’ Lemarque told the court.”
I normally don’t comment on warnings, but I think this is a little unfair to single him out. Yes, the constant back and forth was a bit annoying, but other people in this thread were egging him on just as much as he was fighting back.
Anyway, onto the doc, I’ve only seen part 1 (2 is tonight) but here’s my thought:
I’m actually going to go to the opposite of a lot of people in this thread. No, I’m not saying I think he’s any more innocent or guilty than he is before, but I think he really was a completely fucked up man-child who had only vague conceptions that what he was doing was wrong.
It was mentioned upthread and deserves to be said again: Joe Jackson is really the one to blame here.
I don’t think a mincing boy-hungry predator would act towards the kids in-the-moment the way Michael did. I think MJ really thought he was in love with these boys and really thought this is what you do to show your love. I mean, you don’t spend hours and hours on the phone, spend untold millions of dollars in flights and hotels, send hundreds and hundreds of faxes (which also cost money) just because you’re targeting someone solely for sex. MJ felt for these boys.
He quickly fell out of love with the boys and replaced them…but I honestly don’t think he was malicious about it.
As a percentage of his net worth, poor ol’ MIchael Jackson probably actually spent less time and money on his targets than his fellow “Working Man’s” pedophiles (yeah, yeah, that’s right, PEDOS, don’t bother me with semantic nitpickls about “hebephiles” or other such high-falutin’ rott) like the dozens of “Assistant Manager at Outback Steakhouse” types who were featured each week on TV’s “To Catch A Predator” who come around to the FBI sting house sporting a 6 pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonaide, a teener of Sinaloan meth and a 1/2 empty bottle of anal lube.
It was part of my childhood.)