That kind of stress can and does destroy families. They had to come to grips not only with what happened to them but also with the complicity of those closest to them. Why would anyone put himself through this? Robson and Safechuck are not being paid by HBO. Jackson’s hardcore supporters allege that Robson and Safechuck memorized details from the other boys’ stories in order to get revenge after their own previous attempts to sue Jackson’s estate for damages were thrown out of court (not because the charges had no merit but because the statute of limitations had run out).
Their dismissals followed a similar pattern, too: as puberty approached, Robson and Safechuck say in the documentary, they were abruptly thrown to the curb and replaced with a new, younger kid. So many details of each case were the same: the targeting of boys from troubled families, the skillful grooming, the gifts, the seduction, the Jacuzzis, the way sex was performed, the fear and threats of what would befall them if they ever told anyone what Jackson had done. Another boy, Jason Francia, whose mother worked as a housekeeper for Jackson, testified under oath that he was molested by Jackson, bringing to five the number of young men who’ve sworn that Jackson showed them pornography, masturbated them, or introduced them to sex when they were between the ages of 7 and 12.
MICHAEL JACKSON 3D 2019 TRIAL
What struck me most, as someone who spent more than a decade reporting on allegations against Jackson, was how closely Robson’s and Safechuck’s stories mirrored those of Jordie Chandler and Gavin Arvizo, the 13-year-old whose allegations prompted the 2005 trial in which Jackson was acquitted on 10 felony counts, including four counts of child molestation and one of attempted child molestation. The two-part documentary, which premieres on HBO this Sunday, gives Robson and Safechuck, together with their surviving family members, the opportunity to tell their stories of being first befriended and then seduced, emotionally and-they allege-sexually, by Michael Jackson. Dennis, who had been diagnosed as bipolar shortly before his wife left, never got over losing his family, all because his son, then five, had won a local dance contest, and the first prize was a meeting with his idol, Michael Jackson. I asked him what had prompted this sudden change of heart. He had just gotten through to his wife and now he wanted to change his story and give me a quote praising Jackson. Then, a week later, Dennis Robson called me back. Dennis’s sorrow was compounded by his own dark secret: he himself had been molested as a child, he told me, and had been unable to bring himself to tell anyone for 30 years.
Dennis explained that Joy had taken Wade and his sister to Los Angeles so Wade could be with Jackson, adding that he was afraid that he might lose his son if he said anything against the pop superstar. Wade’s mother, Joy, wasn’t talking, but his father, Dennis, surprised me by returning my call from his home in Australia.
I naturally wanted to know if Jackson had befriended any other young boys, and it wasn’t long before I heard the names Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck.
Back in 1993, when the first charges of sexual abuse were leveled at Michael Jackson by a 13-year-old boy named Jordan “Jordie” Chandler, I was assigned to write about the case for Vanity Fair. The anguished voice of Wade Robson’s father will always haunt me.
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