And given the heckling of the woman who asked the question, it seems it wasn’t just just the stage that was slipping into paedophilia apologia.
What delightful people
Many people are easily groomed, unable or unwilling to consider the prevelence of child sex abuse.
cf recent Guardian article by Dan Reed:
'I’m shocked by those who still won’t accept Michael Jackson as abuser
The director of Leaving Neverland on the polarised reaction to his landmark film'
(extract)
I had only a foggy idea about all this before starting work on the film. The complex, counter-intuitive and repugnant truths of child sexual abuse that Wade Robson, James Safechuck and their families have courageously unravelled on camera came as a shock to me.
In particular, the repellent but undeniable fact that a powerful attachment often forms between the predator and the child, who experiences the adult’s sexual advances not as abuse, but quite the opposite: as love. Equally disturbing to any parent is the child’s subsequent urge to shelter the abuser from parents or police. This misplaced loyalty often persists into adulthood, even though the adult knows by now that child sexual abuse is a crime. “I felt anointed,” as Wade puts it.
And then there’s the fear of consequences. “Michael told me we’d go to jail for the rest of our lives,” said Wade, describing a conversation that he had at Neverland when he was seven, but was repeated many times. The combined weight of love, shame and fear can lead to a lifetime of silence. The psychological strain of keeping the secret corrodes the soul, resulting in depression, feelings of worthlessness, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts. And the victim doesn’t connect these symptoms with the childhood sexual relationship. I am no psychotherapist but this all started to make a dreadful kind of sense to me. As James observed poignantly in a recent interview: “Your whole childhood is a lie.” (continues)
concludes:
The most extraordinary thing in all this is that no one denies that Jackson took little boys to his bed, night after night, for many, many years. What did his family and business associates think he was doing with these little boys behind a locked door? Did they believe he was actually a child in the body of a man and therefore somehow needed to sleep with little boys? That makes no sense if you think about it for more than a second
Why has it taken 30 years for Jackson to be unmasked? Here in the UK we were all asking the same question after Jimmy Savile.
The answer has something to do of course with the dazzling glare of celebrity and our instinctive deference to talent and wealth. But it also has a lot to do with collective ignorance. Joe Public – that includes me before making this film – has no idea what grooming by a predatory paedophile looks like. Why didn’t the kid go running to mummy as soon as he was groped? This is partly why so many victims take their shameful secret to their graves.
Leaving Neverland is a humble attempt to change that, and light a beacon for those who, when the time is right, may wish to break their silence and confront their abuser, alive or dead."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/10/dan-reed-shocked-those-wont-accept-michael-jackson-abuser?CMP=share_btn_tw