Teil 3
In a statement, Howard Weitzman, an attorney representing Jackson’s
estate, called Robson’s accusations “outrageous and pathetic…This
is a young man who has testified at least twice under oath over the
past 20 years and said in numerous interviews that Michael Jackson never
did anything inappropriate to him or with him. Now, nearly 4 years
after Michael has passed this sad and less than credible claim has been
made. We are confident that the court will see this for what it is.“
Jackson’s attorney, Thomas Mesereau, feels Robson’s claims are shamelessly motivated by money, given the timing (a high-stakes trialbetween
Jackson’s mother and concert promoter AEG Live, is currently being
litigated) and the enormous amount of wealth the Jackson estate has
generated since the singer’s death.
Regardless of one’s views of Jackson, Robson’s case raises serious
questions about the nature and validity of decade-delayed allegations,
especially when attached to money.
Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus, a renowned cognitive psychologist and human memory expert from the University of Washington, notes that these memories
can often be triggered by therapist suggestion. “Some contemporary
therapists have been known to tell patients, merely on the basis of a
suggestive history or symptom profile, that they definitely had a
traumatic experience…Once the ‘diagnosis’ is made, the therapist urges
the patient to pursue the recalcitrant memories.”
Wade Robson, then, could very well believe he was abused even if it never happened.
In any case, objectivity and fairness should compel at least some
burden of proof. Robson’s own family members have repeatedly defended
Jackson over a period of twenty years. Were all of them completely
oblivious to what happened until just months ago?
Numerous other individuals who were close to Jackson as children
continue to defend him with no apparent incentive for doing so. Since
the latest allegations, several people who visited Jackson’s Neverland
Ranch as children, have once again spoken out in support of the artist,
including Alfonso Ribeiro, Frank Cascio, Brett Barnes, and Jackson’s
nephews, Taryll, T.J. and Taj Jackson.
In defense of his uncle, Taj Jackson wrote movingly on Twitter:
Zitat
I will not sit back and let someone flat out lie about my
uncle. PERIOD. I am writing these words knowing that the minute I press
send, my life will never be the same afterwards…I was sexually
abuse[d]. By an uncle on my mom’s side of the family when I was a kid.
My uncle [Michael Jackson] was a support system for me and my mom. He
wrote a letter to her that many have seen already, u just didn’t know
what it was about. That is how I KNOW Wade is lying. Because I AM a
survivor. My hands are still trembling. Don’t forget I was living at
Neverland when Wade testified during my uncle’s case. I sat there and
ate dinner with him and his family. I will not let them smear my Uncle’s
legacy. I don’t want to go on TV. I don’t want publicity, I just want
the truth. I hate that Wade made me do this, this way. But since my
uncle Michael is no longer here to defend himself. I will.
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The letter Taj Jackson referred to was written by Jackson some time in the 1980s. It reads:
Zitat
Dee Dee Please read this article about child molestation
and please read it to Taj, T.J., and Taryll, it brings out how even your
own relatives can be molesters of children, or even uncles or aunts
molesting nephews or nieces, please read. Love MJ.
Later faced with the public perception that he himself was a child
molester, Jackson wrote these lyrics to an unreleased song, called “An
Innocent Man”:
Zitat
If I sail to Acapulco
Or Cancun, Mexico
There the law is waiting
And God knows that I’m innocent
If they won’t take me in Cairo
Then Lord where will I go?
I’ll die a man without a country
And only God knew I was innocent now.
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As an eccentric, wealthy man who opened his home to thousands of
people, including disadvantaged and ill children, Jackson was an
undeniably easy target. But is it conceivable that of the hundreds of
children who spent time with him, only a handful were abused? Is it
possible that after two unannounced, scouring searches of his homes, in
1993 and again in 2003, resulting in no child pornography or other
corroborating evidence, that the artist was nonetheless masterfully
hiding criminal behavior?
Or have we, as a society, conflated Jackson’s difference and
eccentricity with criminality? In 2005, infotainment pundit Nancy Grace
infamously deduced Jackson’s guilt from his strange appearance and
childlike sensibility. It was inconceivable to her that a grown man
would want to spend so much time with children without wanting to have
sex with them.
No doubt, after hearing these latest accusations, some will likewise conclude that “where there is smoke there is fire.”
Jackson, of course, is no longer here to defend himself. The
unacknowledged tragedy the fair-minded person must at least consider is
this: the life and career of one of the most talented and creative
artists of the past century was derailed and ultimately destroyed by
allegations, innuendo, sensationalism and speculation, but no concrete evidence and no witnesses or accusers who didn’t want money.
The term “witch hunt” is often used to describe the moral panic and
hysteria caused by individuals who threaten our sense of normalcy, order
and social assumptions. They must be disciplined or punished to allow
people to feel safe, regardless of actual guilt or innocence. So, for
example, in the Salem witch trials, women were profiled, accused and
sentenced to death for a range of perceived “suspicious” behaviors or
traits. Or, historically, African American men have been unfairly
targeted and lynched because of myths and culturally-ingrained hysteria
about their “predatory” intentions with white women (see D.W. Griffith’s
The Birth of a Nation).
Over his lifetime (and now in death), Michael Jackson faced more
frivolous lawsuits than any individual in American history. During the Thriller era, dozens of women claimed he was the father of their children. As recently as 2010, a woman named Billie Jean filed a $600 million paternity lawsuit against Jackson’s estate.
In 2010, part of Jackson’s FBI file was released under the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) at the request of media, including British
journalist Charles Thomson. “A lengthy report,” writes Thomson,
“shows that when Jackson’s Neverland Ranch was raided in 2003, the FBI
went over every computer seized from the property with a fine tooth comb
looking for any incriminating files or internet activity. Jackson’s
file contained individual summaries of the FBI’s findings for each of
the 16 computers. Scrawled in capital letters across each of those 16
reports – ‘NOTHING’.”
Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi, an incisive cultural critic
with no investment whatsoever in Jackson’s legacy, described the 2005
court case against Jackson like this:
Zitat
Ostensibly a story about bringing a child molester to
justice, the Michael Jackson trial would instead be a kind of homecoming
parade of insipid American types: grifters, suckers and no-talent
schemers, mired in either outright unemployment…or the bogus non-careers
of the information age, looking to cash in any way they can. The MC of
the proceedings was District Attorney Tom Sneddon, whose metaphorical
role in this American reality show was to represent the mean gray heart
of the Nixonian Silent Majority – the bitter mediocrity itching to stick
it to anyone who’d ever taken a vacation to Paris. The first month or
so of the trial featured perhaps the most compromised collection of
prosecution witnesses ever assembled in an American criminal case –
almost to a man a group of convicted liars, paid gossip hawkers or
worse…
In the next six weeks, virtually every piece of his case imploded in
open court, and the chief drama of the trial quickly turned into a race
to see if the DA could manage to put all of his witnesses on the stand
without getting any of them removed from the courthouse in manacles.
Sneddon’s hard-on for Jackson was a faith-based vengeance grab every bit
as blind and desperate as George Bush’s “case” against Saddam Hussein…
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Jackson, of course, was acquitted of all charges in 2005 after two
grueling years of investigations, testimony and proceedings. Four years
later, in 2009, after years of living as a cultural pariah, a vagabond
drifting from country to country, he died at the age of fifty in Los
Angeles. The silver lining, one assumed, was that at least his many
troubles would end and the focus could return to his rich artistic
legacy. But as long as big money is involved, it seems, the relentless
stream of grifters will continue.
And in the court of public opinion, the Michael Jackson witch trial goes on.