Here’s the full section from yesterday’s Times.
^“I’m more interested in her views on Michael Jackson. As one of the few humans to have burnt as brightly as Jackson, what does she make of the recent documentary Leaving Neverland, in which Wade Robson and James Safechuck alleged that he sexually abused them as children? Does she believe them?
“Oh absolutely,” she says. “That was too painful.” Jackson once asked Streisand to duet with him on I Just Can’t Stop Loving You, but she said no. She remembers meeting him a couple of times. “He was very sweet, very childlike.” How does she reconcile that with the man described in the documentary? She’s surprisingly sympathetic. “His sexual needs were his sexual needs, coming from whatever childhood he has or whatever DNA he has. You can say ‘molested’, but those children, as you heard say [the grown-up Robson and Safechuck], they were thrilled to be there. They both married and they both have children, so it didn’t kill them.” Isn’t she angry with Jackson? “It’s a combination of feelings. I feel bad for the children. I feel bad for him. I blame, I guess, the parents, who would allow their children to sleep with him. Why would Michael need these little children dressed like him and in the shoes and the dancing and the hats?”^