Allegations Made Again Jackson in Leaving Neverland

Michael Jackson, leaving the Santa Barbara County courthouse during his 2005 criminal trial. Carlo Allegri/Getty Images hide caption

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Michael Jackson, leaving the Santa Barbara Canton courthouse during his 2005 criminal trial.

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Updated on March 15 at 1 p.m. ET

The ii-part documentary Leaving Neverland, which began airing on HBO on Sunday nighttime, tells the story of two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who accuse Michael Jackson of having sexually abused them for years, commencement when they were respectively near seven and 10 years erstwhile.

Michael Jackson's manor continues to deny all allegations, as the entertainer did in his lifetime. His manor has sued HBO for distributing the Dan Reed-directed documentary, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January; in its filings, the estate called Leaving Neverland a "posthumous character assassination."

Information technology's no secret that, before and even later on his death in 2009, Jackson was the subject of multiple sexual abuse accusations and constabulary investigations too as ceremonious and criminal lawsuits. This timeline lays out key dates, known allegations and the master accusations the artist and his estate have faced, going dorsum more a quarter century.

December 1986: James Safechuck meets Michael Jackson on a Pepsi advertising set

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A ten-yr-old California boy, James (Jimmy) Safechuck, is hired to appear in a Pepsi commercial alongside Michael Jackson. In Leaving Neverland, Safechuck says that Jackson befriended him and his family later on the ad began airing, that the singer was immediately generous to him and allegedly began lavishing him with gifts — including, Safechuck says, his jacket from the "Thriller" video. Safechuck and his family also say that Jackson began flying them for visits and on vacations.

On 1 such trip to Hawaii, Safechuck alleges, Michael Jackson first asked the male child to sleep with him in his bed.

August 1993: Los Angeles police brainstorm investigating Jackson

The Los Angeles Times reports that the LAPD has begun investigating Jackson based on allegations that he mayhap molested iv children, including a thirteen-yr-old boy. (The boy is mentioned by name and in photos in Leaving Neverland.)

The police find no incriminating evidence at Jackson's Neverland ranch, nor at his Los Angeles condominium.

In a lengthy report published the post-obit January, Vanity Fair — calling the boy "Jamie" — publishes the 13-year-quondam and his family'south allegations. The boy'southward lawyer tells the magazine, "Michael was in love with the boy."

The family unit says that Jackson argued with Jamie'south mother about sleeping in the aforementioned bed with him, saying, according to Vanity Off-white, "Why don't yous trust me? If we're a family, you've got to recollect of me every bit a blood brother. Why make me experience and so bad? This is a bond. It's non about sex. This is something special." From that point onwards, the family claims, Jamie slept with Jackson nigh every dark for the next several months.

September 1993: One family files suit confronting Jackson

In the filing, a family unit — whose kid is ostensibly the 13-year-old boy referred to as "Jamie" past Vanity Fair — alleges that Jackson had "repeatedly committed sexual bombardment" on their son.

Jackson'south team maintains that the suit is part of an endeavor to extort the star for $20 million. More than a decade later, nevertheless, Court TV reveals in a 2004 report that Jackson settled the suit for fifty-fifty more than that. Equally part of the settlement, the singer denied any "wrongful acts."

In September 1994, prosecutors announce that they are not filing criminal charges against Jackson involving iii boys — because the "master alleged victim" declined to testify.

In the grade of the investigation and ensuing ceremonious case, Jackson and his team put diverse immature boys on the witness stand and in front of cameras.

One is 10-year-old Wade Robson, an Australian boy who first met the megastar five years earlier, when he won a Michael Jackson dance contest in Brisbane. Inside a few years, Robson had moved with his mother to Los Angeles with Jackson's encouragement.

In 1993, Robson'south mother talked to CNN almost her child'southward "slumber parties" with the vocaliser.

"They play and so difficult, they fall asleep, they're exhausted," she tells the interviewer. "There's nix more to it than that."

In Leaving Neverland, Robson says: "I was excited past the thought of being able to defend him. And beingness able to save him."

December 1993: La Toya Jackson says that abuse allegations are true

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On Dec. 8, at a press conference held while on tour in Tel Aviv, Jackson'southward estranged sister La Toya alleges that the corruption accusations confronting Michael are true.

"This is very difficult for me," she says. "Michael is my blood brother. ... But I cannot, and I will not, be a silent collaborator of his crimes confronting small, innocent children." She claims that their female parent, Katherine Jackson, has shown her checks that Michael allegedly made out to the families of some very young boys, at least one allegedly as young as nine years old. She says that the amounts paid out were substantial, though she doesn't specify whatever sums.

LaToya Jackson also repeats her claim that she and her siblings were driveling, including sexually abused, by their parents. It'southward an exclamation she outset made at least two years earlier in her 1991 autobiography La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family.

Other members of the family unit, including Katherine Jackson, rally to Michael'due south defence. The Washington Post quotes Katherine as saying, "La Toya is lying and I'll tell her to her face she's lying," adding that her girl was "trying to make money off of [Michael's] downfall."

In a follow-up interview with the Today testify's Katie Couric, La Toya Jackson claims that their female parent had shown her such checks as early as "around '84." However, she tells Couric she can't prove that the alleged checks were meant as hush money, nor has she e'er seen him in bed with a boy herself.

In 2011, in a 2d autobiography called Starting Over, La Toya Jackson retracted her allegations against both her brother Michael and her father Joe, saying that she was forced to brand them by her husband at the time, whom she accused of being abusive.

"My family and Michael knew that wasn't really me talking," the Daily Beast quotes her equally proverb in an interview. "I never believed for a minute my brother was guilty of anything like that."

February 2003: Living with Michael Jackson documentary arrogance in the U.Grand. and U.S.

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The documentary, reported past journalist Martin Bashir, includes footage of Jackson holding hands with and cradling a young teenager, then identified as a cancer survivor, and says that they share a bed. Both Jackson and the male child deny that anything untoward is going on. "My greatest inspiration comes from kids," Jackson says to Bashir indignantly, while holding onto the child. "It's all inspired from that level of innocence, that consciousness of purity."

Afterward the documentary airs, Jackson issues a argument denying any wrongdoing, and says that he is "devastated" by Bashir's portrayal of him. However, Living with Michael Jackson sparks a criminal investigation.

November 20, 2003: Police book Jackson on child molestation charges

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office provided this mug shot after he was booked on multiple counts of kid molestation in November 2003. Santa Barbara Canton Sheriff'south Part/Getty Images hibernate caption

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Santa Barbara County Sheriff'due south Office/Getty Images

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office provided this mug shot after he was booked on multiple counts of child molestation in Nov 2003.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Part/Getty Images

Two days afterwards raiding Neverland, Jackson'due south famous ranch in Santa Barbara County, Calif., the sheriff's office arrests Jackson on charges of child molestation, but does not immediately disclose details of the charges or identify the victim.

Jackson's lawyer, Mark Geragos, calls the charges "a big lie." After posting $3 one thousand thousand in bond the same twenty-four hours and surrendering his passport, Jackson is allowed to get free as he awaits trial.

Jackson is somewhen indicted on 10 criminal counts, including child molestation, abduction, fake imprisonment and extortion.

Feb 28, 2005: Jackson's criminal example goes to trial

After being charged in late 2003 and then given boosted charges the post-obit Apr, Jackson is put on trial. The victim is identified as Gavin Arvizo, the young man who appeared in the Bashir documentary; he is among those who bear witness at the trial.

Among those testifying in Jackson'southward defence force are actor Macaulay Culkin and Wade Robson. (By 2005, Robson is a noted choreographer and songwriter, who has created dance routines for the likes of Britney Spears and 'NSYNC, and who has already had his ain show on MTV.)

They are described as "special friends" of Jackson who have slept with the singer in his bed. The men deny that Jackson has touched them or otherwise acted inappropriately. According to The Washington Post, Robson's mother, Joy, says of the vocalizer: "Unless you know him, it's hard to sympathise him. ... He's non the boy next door."

Gavin Arvizo is now anile 14, and says on the stand that Jackson masturbated him; Gavin's blood brother corroborates his claim, and says that Jackson gave them alcohol and showed them pornography. Gavin's mother, Janet Arvizo, besides appears as a witness; the BBC describes her testimony as "combative and rambling." A former member of Jackson's household staff, Blanca Francia, testifies that she saw the singer taking a shower with Robson. Francia's son also alleges that Jackson has molested him.

Years later, Robson claims he lied at the 2005 trial. According to a 2014 Daily Animal commodity, prosecutors wanted to proper noun Safechuck — who had provided a witness statement defending Jackson in the 1993 suit — as i of the singer's alleged victims. Even so, Safechuck declined to participate in the 2005 trial, and the prosecution excluded him equally a potential victim. Safechuck claims later that he had lied in the statement he gave to prosecutors in the 1993 investigation.

June 13, 2005: Jackson is acquitted of all criminal charges

Later on a trial that had a circus-like temper and whose proceedings seemed to sometimes be upstaged past Jackson's antics (including showing up late in pajamas on one occasion), the singer is acquitted of all charges. At least some of the jurors seem to place the onus on the declared victim's mother, Janet Arvizo. according to NPR. Allowing a child to sleep with whatsoever non-family member, i of the female jurors asks, according to NPR, "What mother in her right mind would let that to happen?"

Within months, prosecutors charge Janet Arvizo with fraud and perjury related to statements fabricated at the Jackson trial; she accepts a plea understanding the following yr.

June 25, 2009: Michael Jackson dies, age 50

The vocalist is plant unresponsive at his home in Holmby Hills, Calif. At the time of his expiry, his family unit releases a statement saying that it is believed that he died of cardiac arrest.

On Nov. 11, 2011, a doctor, Conrad Murray, is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's death for having administered a deadly dose of the anesthetic propofol.

During the trial, the New York Times reports that Murray, who had been hired as Jackson'due south personal doc, "had stayed with Jackson at least 6 nights a week and was regularly asked — and sometimes begged — past the insomniac vocalizer to give him drugs powerful enough to put him to sleep."

2013-2014: Wade Robson and James Safechuck file suits against the Jackson estate and his companies

The Daily Beast reports in 2013 that after very publicly and repeatedly defending Jackson, Robson now says that Jackson sexually molested him for seven years.

Two years later, in May 2015, a judge in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Mitchell 50. Beckloff, dismisses Robson'southward suit against the estate, saying that he waited too long to file his claim. In Dec 2017, the same gauge dismisses the residuum of Robson's suit, filed against Jackson's 2 companies, MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures, because the two corporations could not be found liable for Jackson'due south alleged behavior. Notably, neither of these judgments address the brownie of Robson's accusations.

James Safechuck files a similar suit against MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures in 2014, alleging that Jackson abused him on "hundreds" of occasions between 1988 and 1992. Beckloff, who is also the presiding guess in this suit, rejects Safechuck'southward suit in June 2017 on the same grounds he gave Robson.

March 3, 2019: Leaving Neverland begins ambulation on HBO

After debuting at Sundance in late January, the two-part, four-hour documentary begins airing. Jackson's estate has already filed suit confronting the network, challenge that amercement could exceed $100 million. Its petition begins: "Michael Jackson is innocent. Period."

The estate also argues that HBO has violated a non-disparagement understanding that it made with the vocalist in order to air a concert special, Alive in Bucharest: The Unsafe Bout, back in 1992. (That plan was a megahit when it aired, scoring HBO its highest-rated special ever at that time.) In a bid for positive counter-programming, Jackson'due south estate releases the 1992 motion picture on YouTube at the same time as Leaving Neverland'southward circulate premiere.

"In producing this fictional work," the arrange continues, "HBO ignored its contractual obligations to Michael and his companies by disparaging both him and the Dangerous World Bout that HBO had previously profited from immensely." The estate also calls Robson and Safechuck "two admitted perjurers," and accuses them of "practicing their stories and rehearsing their lines ... for years at present."

In an interview on All Things Considered, filmmaker Dan Reed says that two dissimilar threads drew him to telling the ii men's stories.

"Information technology's the complexity that drew me into wanting to really tell the story," Reed says, "which is that in an abusive pedophile human relationship in that location is both love, affection, mentoring, friendship, caring — and there is sexual corruption. Those two things coexist."

March 14, 2019: Louis Vuitton backs off its Michael Jackson-inspired designs

Less than two weeks after Leaving Neverland arrogance on HBO, the luxury fashion business firm Louis Vuitton seeks distance from the tardily popular icon, whose signature looks had helped inspire much of its fall 2019 menswear drove.

The visitor had showcased the drove at a show on Jan. 17, or but over a week before the documentary was screened publicly for the outset time at the Sundance Picture show Festival. In a statement shared exclusively with WWD, the company'south acme executives said they were unaware of the documentary — and its "deeply troubling and disturbing" allegations — at the time of their own show.

"I am enlightened that in low-cal of this documentary the testify has caused emotional reactions," Virgil Abloh, the artistic manager of menswear at the company, said in the argument. "I strictly condemn whatsoever form of child abuse, violence or infringement against any human rights."

The company also told WWD that it would not produce anything that "directly features Michael Jackson elements," and that its final drove will "purely reflect the true values of the brand and of our artistic director."

Additional reporting by NPR'southward Elizabeth Blair and Colin Dwyer.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/699995484/michael-jackson-a-quarter-century-of-sexual-abuse-allegations