To think it's tragic if Michael Jackson was indeed innocent

[pregahes]

It's a real shame for someone who created incredible music to have their legacy at risk. It’s just tragic, considering the impact his music had on so many. It's tragic either way, if he's guilty for the victims and if he's innocent for himself.

I'm a huge fan and at one point t thought he was guilty but kore recently change of heart. I think there would be more victims if he weee in fact guilty. Somethings doesnt add up.

It's tragic

Just reflecting on a good point from upthread: it is very strange that MJ’s paedophilic behaviour was excused by his having had an abusive childhood. There are numerous adults with abusive childhoods as well as adults with other developmental or physical challenges and no one expects them to hang out with prepubescent boys.

Even more strangely, though, it’s become the common narrative for those who explain away MJ’s proclivities. “He’s childlike himself”, “He had arrested development”, “He’s recreating the childhood he didn’t have”. Everyone says the same thing.

It’s too much of a coincidence that everyone independently arrived at the same excuse, especially when the excuse is somehow applicable only to MJ, and not to anyone else who has grown up in difficult circumstances.

So- my question is - who invented and disseminated this narrative on MJ’s behalf? It worked, but how many children were harmed because of it?

That makes me feel sick. I would never listen to his music, or Gary Glitter or Rokd Harris. Disgusting men.

@nolongersurprised I seem to remember reading somewhere that the 'Whacko Jacko' persona cultivated in the 80s was the idea of one of his managers. The picture of him sleeping in an oxygen tent was staged at a time when he wasn't hitting the headlines, for example. I think the 'boy who didn't have a childhood' narrative was all part of the presentation of Jackson as a 'loveable eccentric'. It was a persona to keep him on the front pages, and, looking back now, also a way to keep the public from looking too closely. His interest in kids could easily be hidden among the raft of eccentric behaviour we were being told he had.

As a kid in the 80s, I remember how much everything he did was published as evidence of his eccentricity. He wore a face mask in public because he was a germ-phobe (actually, he had a toothache once and legitimately wore it on dental advice, but continued because he rather liked the privacy), He wore one glove, he slept in an oxygen tent, he had a chimpanzee...it was all so we would still be talking about him between albums, BUT it also meant him being around kids was more easily accepted as part of the whacko narrative.

@Utterbunkum
I think the 'boy who didn't have a childhood' narrative was all part of the presentation of Jackson as a 'loveable eccentric'. It was a persona to keep him on the front pages, and, looking back now, also a way to keep the public from looking too closely

you’re right. The boys were presented as just part of his overall persona - enmeshed in all the other weirdness. I’d forgotten about the chimpanzee.

Some very clever people working behind the scenes to obfuscate what was actually abuse in plain sight.

The public little-boy-lost voice was part of the arrested-development-due-to-trauma narrative. I was so shocked to find out that it wasn't his natural speaking voice in private.

I loved MJ's music when I grew up in the 80s (one of my first albums was Bad) and I still love his music, but would no longer describe myself as a fan. But I completely believe his victims. You cannot watch Leaving Neverland and remain convinced of his innocence. I think he was most likely abused as a child, and while not an excuse, it is definitely a reason. Of course lots of people who are abused don't go on to abuse, but the vast majority who abuse have themselves been abused. I believe MJ was an extremely messed up individual, with a warped understanding of love and control derived from his complex and highly dysfunctional relationship with his father. I also think that some of the high profile actor kids he hung around with and have proclaimed his innocence were groomed so meticulously that they're still in denial. Do I still like his music? Yes, I'm afraid I do. I've had to separate the man from the music.

All the legal scrambling and decisions aside, if the list of things found at Neverland is true it kind of cements in my head what I strongly suspected anyway.

@nolongersurprised he was a cash cow. A lot of people made a lot of money out of him and wanted to protect their income. At all costs. He lived most of his life surrounded by people who saw him as a cash machine, right down to his doctor at the end of his life who gave him medication that was strictly for use in a hospital setting.

The difference between Jackson and Barry down the road is that nobody makes any money out of Barry down the road. It isn't in anyone else's interest that Barry doesn't go to prison.

Anyone who genuinely wants to better understand the very complex responses of children to sexual abuse and grooming might also want to read up on the case of Jerry Sandusky. It shares elements with both Jackson and Savile (big public profile, charity founded to "help children" which he used to meet victims, positively a hero in his community) and his victims of preference were prepubescent boys like Jackson's who he groomed with treats, attention, telling them they were special and he loved them. Some of Sandusky's victims remained deeply ambivalent towards him well into adulthood and flipflopped wildly on the question of whether he'd abused them or not, which unfortunately made them useless as prosecution witnesses even as it's an entirely understandable and not that uncommon response.

I've also never understood why not having abused a specific child is treated as some kind of evidence on the question of whether he abused others. All child abusers select their victims carefully, generally both in terms of having a "victim of preference" in terms of age and sex, and carefully and deliberately selecting vulnerable, exploitable children who don't have good home and family lives, who can be reeled in emotionally and whose credibility can easily be undermined if necessary. I doubt MJ did abuse Macaulay Culkin, because it would have been a fucking dumb thing to do. MC was a star in his own right with profile, press, and money at his disposal, and even if all that happened were some ugly public words, MC had too much power in his own right to be easily brushed off.

I've also never understood why not having abused a specific child is treated as some kind of evidence on the question of whether he abused others

I don’t understand that either. I am a heterosexual woman, yet I have not had sex with every man I have ever known😀. You don’t have to abuse every child you come across to be a nounce

Although of course, people still do claim rapists of adults "couldn't have done it" because "he has a wife/girlfriend, he doesn't need to rape someone!" 😡

For a brief period of time there was a lobby group in Denmark lobbying to legalise pedophilia. Michael Jackson said a lot of the same things they said. I don't think that it is a coincidence.

I completely agree and this makes me VERY angry. It’s not art.

Absolutely. That's how Jimmy Savile got away with it for so long. He was 'eccentric'.

Court is the best therapy of it all. If one is telling the truth, no amount of cross examination would faze them. Yes, it's hard, but only if someone is not telling the truth.

///

I'm pretty sure most tape victims who are lucky (?) enough to see their rapist in court would disagree with this

That comment just epitomises why people like that poster and @DownNative infuriate me - they don’t focus on WHY Jackson is
a nonce (because let’s face it how can one excuse such nonsense behaviour) they focus on why victims aren’t victimy enough. They’re too poor, they’re too successful, they don’t want to go through the absolute hell of a court trial where they are torn to shreds by a very smart legal team. That means the very noncey person whose behaviour cannot be excused or accounted for other than being a nonce, must be innocent. The victims aren’t the right kind of victims.

Evil. People like this are evil

Plus they could not possibly have demonstrated more clearly that they have zero experience of testifying in court, much less as the victim of a sexual crime.

I also agree. It made me angry that all the concerns raised about Bill Henson's nude photos of children were dismissed as pearl-clutching by wowsers who didn't understand Art.

Court is the ‘best therapy of all’ - FM actual L.

Court is completely traumatising for victims of sexual assault, who are re-victimised all over again. Doubted, slandered, and not vindicated, when their tormentor is inevitably found to be ‘not guilty’.

There is a reason so many victims of sexual assault do not prosecute.

You’ve gone very quiet.

You know you don’t have to post the 22 pages, you can just share the link to them?

And ‘childlike’ people can be paedophiles. Yes. Why is this ok?

The whole
thing makes me sick 😢

I remember that!

I remember naked pics of a prepubescent girl, with flowers around her neck, posing naked, arms above her head in an adult pose.

Her simpering parents were, “this is great, this is art” when the pictures were all over the internet. Poor girl.

Yes, he's all "dark" and "edgy" and "meaningful" - like there is no other way to do thought-provoking photography except by taking photos of naked teenagers. Whatever the courts said and whatever the Aaaht World says (which is notorious for defending nonces and other rapists), I still see these pictures as child exploitation and very skeevy.

This is a quote from NSW art director Edmond capon about some of Henson’s images, including one where a naked girl in early puberty looks like she’s being choked by a boy. “There are images that are close to despoliation and abuse, but they're sort of orchestrated with this wonderful sensual baroque exoticism at the same time”.

So - there you go. Arty pics of naked children looking like they’re being abused are actually, for the cultured among us, “sensual baroque exoticism”