Every detail of Michael Jackson’s alleged abuse of two young boys in Leaving Neverland is shocking in its specifics. Every minute of the four-hour, two-part film is confronting.
In the documentary, available now on 10 Play, choreographer Wade Robson, 36, and James “Jimmy” Safechuck, 42, explicitly detail claims about the horrors Michael Jackson allegedly inflicted on them in the mid-to-late 1980s.
With Jackson’s sexual abuse of children long suspected – though never taken as seriously as it is now – it was the emotional manipulation and psychological grooming of these young boys that was so disturbing.
For both of these young boys, the documentary posits that Michael Jackson groomed them, and their families, for months before the sexual abuse, that then went on for years, began.
Befriending the young boys
Michael Jackson, the world’s most famous pop star, was Wade and Jimmy’s hero. At a time when Michael Jackson was at the height of his career, for both of the young aspiring entertainers, meeting the King of Pop was their dream.
For five-year-old Australian boy Wade Robson, he met Michael Jackson when he won a nation-wide dance competition inspired by the pop star’s signature moves. The singer then asked the little boy to go up on stage with him at a concert soon after to dance with him. Not long after, Michael invited Wade and his family up to his hotel suite.
Wade explains that he couldn’t believe that he was actually becoming friends with the star he had seen on TV for so long.
Michael would gift Wade with toys and share with him unreleased music, all in an effort to gain the innocent five-year-old’s trust.
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The thing is, at the time it was almost like society had different norms, or maybe it had different norms for Michael Jackson. I remember in the nineties, when the initial allegations came out, thinking how odd it was that people did not seem to flinch at the idea of a man in his thirties having boys sleep in his bed. I get that the parents didn’t want to be rude to their host, but I actually remember thinking, how did I miss that this is normal now? I mean the dude had a massive house with lots of bedrooms. And then, after the court case, when he was found not guilty, I remember thinking that the world said “move along. Nothing to see here.” I thought, even if he didn’t have sex with those boys, when did it become accepted to take boys to your bed?
I have two boys. I said to my husband the other day, “Imagine you bump into David Beckham, and he invites you and the boys to kick a ball with him. My husband admitted that he would be star struck. But, he said that if David Beckham himself offered for them to spend the night, that he would say no thank you.
Nobody missed this. He was black and it's not politically correct to accuse a black icon, especially when the accusations are true.