I really wanted to believe that Michael Jackson was just a harmless eccentric.
I really did.
But I started doubting it after I read the declaration that was provided by the 13-year-old (J. Chandler) that alleged Jackson molested him 10 years ago. At the time, it seemed like the father was just trying to extort money from Jackson to make the accusation go away. Money changed hands (estimated at $20 million, although the exact figure is not known). The case didn’t go to trial ultimately because the boy refused to testify.
The Smoking Gun has a copy of the Chandler boy’s statement, which I have read. The tone of the declaration, the details presented, combined with my evaluation of Jackson’s psychology, make me believe the accusations were true.
California law has changed since then (largely because of that specific case), and kids can now essentially be forced to take the stand. Michael’s money can’t protect him this time.
A lot of the rumors about him are, indeed, false. But it is apparent that he was abused as a child by his father, definitely physically (his own father, Joe, stated as much in an interview, and split hairs as well: “I never beat him. I whipped him with a switch and a belt. I never beat him. You beat someone with a stick”), probably emotionally. I do not think it was sexual abuse. But obviously as a boy, Michael was under a lot of pressure and stress with his brothers to get rich and famous with their talent. Joe Jackson was determined to make those kids into his meal ticket.
Of the kids, only Michael and Janet turned out to have any real talent. Janet’s is significant, but is eclipsed by the extraordinary gift that Michael has for song and dance. I like his music, and I do believe he is one of the premier musical talents of our time.
He has always expressed an intense interest in the welfare of children, donating large amounts of money to humanitarian causes that help kids all over the world, and inviting terminally ill kids (and others) to his sprawling theme park home at Neverland Ranch. He has a childlike quality of his own, an innocence and naivete that is at times difficult to believe.
I think Michael has spent his life in search of the childhood he was denied. This could be both a symptom and a cause of his extreme gullibility and self-indulgence. He is reportedly quite intelligent, and capable of some shrewd self-marketing. But as time went on, he grew to rely more and more on people around him to handle things (such as his money). These people were not always honest, and thieves and con men gravitated to him like sharks scenting blood.
He became wealthy at an early age, and likely got used to just pointing at something he wanted and being accustomed to getting it. People who have been close to him say that he doesn’t accept being told he can’t have or can’t do something. So he surrounds himself with yes-men, who steal from him even as they hide his dwindling fortune and his overextended credit.
He also has an obsession with his physical appearance. Regardless of his various claims, it is obvious that he has had numerous plastic surgeries to alter the shape of his face (not just his nose). The distinctively “black” facial features he had as a child (dark skin, full lips, broad nose) are gone, replaced by a thin, pointy nose, thinned, wide lips, a dimpled chin, sharp cheekbones, and very light skin.
Some people accuse him of “trying to be white”. Michael himself says he is pursuing a personal ideal of beauty. Both could certainly be true. He has said before that he has vitiligo, a rare skin disorder that causes melanin production to be erratic, resulting in blotchy white patches on his otherwise dark skin. That may be true. It may not. But presumably he has a choice of whether to use light or dark makeup to conceal this.
Concomitant with this concern over his appearance is a marked tendency toward extremely gaudy, flashy, or just plain odd clothes. He often wears gloves, and usually wears a mask of some kind over his face in public. At times it is a surgical mask-type thing, other times it’s a silken veil or some other fashionable material. I don’t know what the motive for this is, but he also goes to great lengths to avoid being photographed except when HE decides to be photographed. He is very secretive and reclusive, in ways that go far beyond the prudence of someone extremely famous.
Because Michael has been able to exist into his adult years (he is 45 this year) in such an isolated, controlled environment, he has maintained a pathological immaturity. His quest for childhood is the driving force that sustains it, and external influencing forces are kept at a minimum.
He seeks out children for peers, rather than adults, and has been so desperate for kids of his own that he now has 3 by two different women. One of these women remains an unknown and unseen surrogate. It’s unclear whether these kids even share any of Michael’s DNA. The one he dangled over a railing in Germany had very light, Caucasian skin. He keeps these kids covered up, too. Their faces have not been seen, to my knowledge.
Someone like this, having normal adult sexual drives, would incorporate that sexuality into the immature psychology. His emotional attachments, his affections, are directed almost exclusively at children. It is, therefore, not unbelievable that his sexual urges would be directed to kids as well.
I think in Michael’s mind this is not harmful or ill-intentioned. He has stated he would never, ever harm a child in any way. I think he means that. But I also think that he is in denial about the harm he does to them with his sexual advances. He genuinely loves children and seeks to form affectionate, loving bonds with them.
He knows on some level, though, that this is not appropriate. He has explicitly denied in interviews that he has ever had any sexual contact with a child. His Neverland Ranch is a private enclave where his own bedroom is concealed and no one is allowed inside. The children’s guest bedroom has only one exit, which goes through Michael’s bedroom before continuing to the rest of the house.
He plies the children (and their families) with lavish gifts of money, cars, and other material goods. Certainly these could be innocent gifts of friendliness from a man with a ton of money, but the fact that the kids are the ones invited for pajama parties — alone with no adult supervision except Michael himself — is obviously suspicious.
Even after the accusations 10 years ago, he did not stop inviting kids to his home for parties, and continued to show an unusually strong interest in interacting with small children. It doesn’t look parental, when you watch video of him.
These are all classic pedophile behaviors; giving children gifts, inventing ways to be alone with them such as having sleepovers and camping trips with no other adults around, trying to be a child’s friend/peer rather than a parental figure such as an uncle. I would guess that Michael has engaged in some of the other typical behaviors, too, such as asking the kids to keep the abuse a secret, even from their parents.
It is also true that pedophiles sometimes view their activities as loving and harmless, as a natural continuation of affection for kids. Some allege that the kids come on to them, rather than the other way around. It will be interesting to see if Michael makes any such claim.
I predict that Michael Jackson will commit suicide at some point during these criminal proceedings, perhaps upon the rendering of a guilty verdict (if such is made). My mother believes he will try but fail. My vote is for a drug overdose.
[Kyle adds]: Me being me, I can’t resist riffing a sociopolitical point off the above. A key aspect of mature adult psychology is a sense of limitations. The adult world is one of limits, trade-offs, opportunity costs and cost-benefit ratios. Adults understand that they can’t have everything they want, and because of that they learn to arrange their values hierarchically and work to achieve them as best they can within the restrictions posed by the resources available to them. Children focus on “I want.” Adults move on to other questions like “How much will it cost me? Is it worth it? What alternatives are precluded by pursuing this?” And so on. If a child gets too many of the things it wants without grasping the true effort needed to obtain them, the adult questions (and corresponding modes of reasoning) play a much less significant role in their psychology. The result is arrested psychological development.
In other words, your parents were right when they said that failure builds character.
Now, the sociopolitical point. One of the things I find striking about many activists on the left is how immature they seem. Their protests often look like temper tantrums writ large. (Thankfully today’s protests in Britain didn’t seem to fall into that category; good for them.) And the left’s political program sounds like a child’s Christmas list — lots of expensive goodies without any consideration of whether Daddy/the taxpayer is capable of working enough to pay the credit card bills when they come due in January.
This probably explains why I often wish I could grab the leftist-du-jour, smack them in the head and say “Oh, grow up.”
(Thomas Sowell wrote more extensively on these issues in his excellent book The Vision of the Anointed, which I recommend to anyone who has ever talked to a leftist and walked away wondering “What they hell are they thinking?”)
November 21st, 2003 at 11:59 pm - Edit
I don’t know about suicide, though I would bet some money he’s gonna try to flee the country, maybe move in with Roman Polanski. Whining the whole way about how he was driven out by persecutors who wouldn’t just leave him alone
November 22nd, 2003 at 3:51 pm - Edit
the mask over his face is cuz half his nose rotted off and he either needs that or a fake nose tip to wear. you can see pictures at http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com
November 22nd, 2003 at 7:05 pm - Edit
read with interest. the only thing i would add is that michael jackson is a RICH pedophile.
November 23rd, 2003 at 9:11 am - Edit
excellent article. His behavior, at best, is disturbing and totally inapprpriate. I’m no bible fanatic but I can’t help recalling this scripture from the great Aposlte Paul. “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Michael is not a child/man, if there is such a thing. He is a grown man with an arrested emotional development and he needs to get some help.
I do hope you’re wrong about the suicide though. That would be a sad ending to a pathetic downward spiral.
November 23rd, 2003 at 9:04 pm - Edit
what i cant understand is why some people still defend this freak, believing he can do no wrong, and has done no wrong. how can they believe he is not a pedophile? all the evidence is in plain view. normal people do not hang out with children and sleep with children. why cant they see this?
November 24th, 2003 at 8:27 am - Edit
Well, just to answer “perplexed” You know, some fans have been, well fans of Michael for decades, and they aboslutely adore the man, so these accusations seem false to them, cuz in their eyes he’s perfect.
I think that this article is good, and I agree with most ppl when I say that it would indeed be very sad if he ended up killing himself, because a legend like him just shouldn’t.
November 24th, 2003 at 10:57 am - Edit
Other than the statement by that kid from a few years ago (which could certainly have been coerced by his folks for money - there’s no way to know one way or the other), there is no EVIDENCE of the actual deed (PUBLIC evidence, I mean). To say that it’s all in plain vew is simply false.
All the evidence is there to strongly SUGGEST he is a pedophile. I would be surpirsed if he isn’t… but that doesn’t mean he actually has abused any children. If he hasn’t sexually abused any children, then, no matter how weird he is (and barring other crimes, of course), then he is innocent.
That said, I would be genuinely shocked if he is truly innocent, and very surprised if he is FOUND innocent if court (though, if he is innocent, I certainly hope he is found to be).
Summary: Unless I have just plain missed something, the “evidence” perplexed mentioned is simply not “in plain view”. (But I would never leave my child with MJ for a second!)
November 24th, 2003 at 11:40 am - Edit
I agree that there is no obvious public evidence of criminal wrongdoing on MJ’s part, and of course I believe in “innocent until proven guilty”.
But like Deoxy, my gut reaction is that the guy is a pedophile in mind if not in fact, and probably is in fact, too.
Anyway, I read in the news today that part of the evidence seized from Neverland ranch is explicit love letters and poems that MJ wrote to the kid who is accusing him.
That doesn’t establish a crime, either, since you’d have to prove that the kid had seen these letters. It’s within the realm of possibility that MJ never showed them to anyone.
But considering that the DA seems to be working hard to follow the rules in prosecuting this case, my guess is that most of the evidence will not be publicly available until after the trial is over (perhaps not even then). I generally reserve judgement on cases like this, because only the jury and the judge really know the whole body of evidence.
November 24th, 2003 at 12:39 pm - Edit
The term “innocent until proven guilty” is a legal concept, not necessarily the moral truth. Even in criminal proceedings we do not declare the accused innocent, but rather “not guilty”, meaning the case has not been proven.
Yes, a jury of one’s peers is one of the foundations of what Americans consider to be justice, but we’re not so stupid or gullible to think that 12 people can’t get it wrong.
I can’t understand two things, one much more serious than the other.
The first is that I can’t understand how anyone can continue be a fan of his music. Sure, he was a talented kid and he made two or three very commercially successful albums, but will those albums stand the test of time? How many of MJ’s songs will end up on oldies stations? Maybe Thriller, Billy Jean and Bad. That’s it. Jackson’s musical significance has always paled besides his success in the marketplace.
The Jackson 5 came on the scene at the tail end of Motown’s run of success. Even with the great Motown songwriters and producers that assisted the Jacksons, the Jackson 5 material seems to be considered by Motown afficianados to be a notch below the real greatest hits.
If you want to check out some real vital music, how about:
The North Mississippi All Stars
Slobberbone
Drive By Truckers
November 24th, 2003 at 12:41 pm - Edit
(Hit post too soon)
The second thing that I don’t understand is that in light of prior accusations and MJ’s demonstrably weird behavior that there are still parents that will let their children anywhere near him.
November 24th, 2003 at 1:21 pm - Edit
“And the left’s political program sounds like a child’s Christmas list — lots of expensive goodies without any consideration of whether Daddy/the taxpayer is capable of working enough to pay the credit card bills when they come due in January.”
Huh? Talk about outdated stereotypes. Did you see this?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8763-2003Nov23.html
The Democrats are amateurs comapared to these guys.
November 24th, 2003 at 7:12 pm - Edit
It’s interesting to see a similar conclusion to my assesment of Michael Jackson, in that he will end his life. I remember turning to my wife at the end of the British documentary that was done on Michael and asked her “How many times did Michael (When faced with the tough questions like ‘What would he do if your children were taken away?’) answer that he would kill himself?”. We were pretty sure Michael mentioned killing himself three times during the interview. Many people would “throw away” that response as a common blanket statement but given his present situation and the fact that if convicted of the charges he now faces he would lose his children forever, those words could prove prophetic.
November 30th, 2003 at 10:04 pm - Edit
Let’s all admit that Michael Jackson is strange and that he must have psychological problems. But to be calling Michael a pedophile is amazing to me because known of your opinions are based on facts. If courts were ran in a similar way to how you people think, there would be no need to collect evidence. Your opinions are only based on his strange behavior and nothing else.
December 2nd, 2003 at 5:57 am - Edit
Pretty Young Thing? Get On The Floor? I Can’t Help It? Beat It? Hmmm…sounds like some guilty titles to me. And if you play the second chorus of Billie Jean backwards at half speed you can hear a male voice (Michaels?) saying “Jordy this is our little secret”. True.
December 4th, 2003 at 6:48 pm - Edit
The comments made Dexter Dogg were stupid and ignorant. Listeb to the lyrics, idiot. He is innocent until proven guilty.
December 4th, 2003 at 6:50 pm - Edit
The comments made by Dexter Dogg were stupid and ignorant. Listen to the lyrics, idiot. He is innocent until proven guilty.
December 4th, 2003 at 6:51 pm - Edit
And why would you play Billie Jean backwards? Are you looking for things like that. You are sick……
December 7th, 2003 at 11:42 am - Edit
If I were on a jury and presented with much more complete evidence, of course my conclusions would be different.
With respect to playing “Billie Jean” backwards (I assume that the ‘Jordy’ being referenced is the J. Chandler of the first accusations in 2000), you do realize that the song was originally published in 1982?
December 17th, 2003 at 10:34 am - Edit
you rite the BILLIE JEAN SONG WAS OUT IN 1982
I AM SICK AND TIRED OF SEEING ON THE NET PEEPS MAKING MIKE LOOK GUILTY
THIS IS SO RIDICULUS OF BEING JUDGEMENTAL TOWARD HIM
CONDENMING HIM ALREADY BEFORE EVEN GOING TO TRIAL
THIS IS SO FREAKY OF YOU GUYS .
I THINK THAT EVERYBODY WHO KNOWS MICHAEL WILL SAY THE SAME THING AS I SAY .
AND ALSO MICHAEL SAID IN THE STATEMENT ON THE MARTIN BASHIR MOTHER FUCKIN DOC
THAT :
” DON T YOU TELL HIM THAT WHEN YOU HAVE BEEN ABUSED IN YOUR CHILDHOOD THAT YOU ALSO ABUSE YOUR CHILDREN ” .
JUST BECAUSE HIS FATHER BEATED HIM UP
THIS DIDN T MAKE HIM A CHILD MOLESTER .
I HAVE BEEN ABUSED MYSELF BUT IT DIDN T MAKE ME A CRIMINAL TOWARD ANYBODY WETHER CHILDREN OR ADULTS .
SO PLEASE STOP AND WAIT TIL THE TRUTH COMES OUT COS WHAT YOU WANT GUYS IS GET MICHAEL S ASS AND HEAD ROASTED ON A GOLDEN PLATE AND SAY LIKE THE PENTAGON SAID FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN .
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN , WE GOT HIM ”
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO SYA IF MICHAEL IS CONVICTED ?
“WE GOT HIS ASS AND HEAD ON THE PLATE ” ?
DON T FORGET THAT MICHAEL CONTROLES THE MEDIA
THE MEDIA CONTROLES YOU
THEY MAKE YOU BELIUEVE WHATEVER THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE .
BUT AS I SAID EARLIER MIKE CONTROLES THE MEDIA
HE DOESN T NEED THEM TO DO ANYTHING HE S GOT TO DO .
THEY ALWAYS FOLLOW HIM LIKE GUARD DOGS .
TO GET A SCOOP A SCANDAL OR SOME SIZZLING STORY
AND YOU KNOW WHY ?
SIMPLY BECOS MIKE IS A BIG MEDIA HIMSELF .
HE MAKE THE MEDIA SELL MORE PAPERS THAN ANY OTHER STARS .
AND THIS IS ALWAYS BE THIS WAY FOR TIMES TO COME .
FROM CENTURY TO CENTURIES .
SO SHOULD HE GO TO JAIL .
THE MEDIA WON T HAVE ANY MORE STORY TO TALK ABOUT .
THEY WILL SELL JUST THE NORMAL AMOUNT OF SHYT PAPERS THEY USE TO SELL WHEN MIKE IS NOT IN THE MIDDLE OF A SCANDAL .
REMEMBER WHEN BUSH WAS IN ENGLAND AND THE BOMBING IN IRAQ THE SAME DAY OF MICHAEL S ARREST WARRANT AND RAID WAS ISSUED .
MICHAEL WAS STILL THE MEDIUA PRIORITY DESPITE
BUSH TRIP TO ENGLAND AND THE BOMBING IN IRAQ .
AND LET ME TELL YOU SOMETING .
WHEN SOMEONE IS GOOD TO HIS SIMBLINGS
GOD NEVER LET HIM IN THE HANDS OF HIS ENNEMIES
AND TO FINISH
EVERYBODY WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THE CASE CONCERNING ACCUSING MIKE AND MAKING MONEY OFF HIS BACK
AND EVERYBODY WHO JOINED THEIR SIDE WILL GO FOR A STAY AT THE ” KARMA HOTEL ”
YOU KNOW WHEN YOU DO WRONG TO SOMEONE
YOU GET YOUR WRONG DOING BACK TO YOU .
SO YOU BETTER STEP OUT AND LET GOD DO HIS JOB .
COS HE IS GOING TO ENTEFERRE INTO THAT CASE .
BELIEVE ME .
I AM PRAYING FOR THIS .
AND BELIEVE ME I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO PRAY GOD TO INTEFERRE AND GIVE EVERYONE WETHER THE ACCUSERS THE D A OR ANYONE WHO SAYS THAT MIKE IS A PEDOPHILE HIS RETRIBUTION .
STOP SPECULATING .
STOP CALLING MIKE A PEDOPHILE .
OR DO NOT WONDER WHY BAD THINGS ARE HAPPENNING TO YOU JUST SAY IT S KARMA COS I ACCUSED MIKE .
December 18th, 2003 at 12:37 pm - Edit
Nice job, Maria. I haven’t seen the English language butchered so badly in quite some time. I sure needed a good laugh!
I heard that Michael Jackson has been spending alot of time in Walmart lately because he heard that little boys’ pants are half off. He’s a FRIGGING PEDOPHILE, no doubt, and they will nail him this time before he nails any more young boys!
December 18th, 2003 at 4:51 pm - Edit
the only reason Michael Jackson is not having nightly gang rectal probes by prison inmates (who know how to show pedophiles a good time)
is because he is a multi-millionair mega-popstar
any common middle-aged pedophile would have provoked a reinactment of the angry villagers with torches from the film frankenstein
if MJ was just a harmless freakshow like most of us thought in the 80’s.. a rich eccentric, there would be no problem..
but this guy is not harmless freak, he is a sicko who fancies little boys, how obvious does it need to get before people get it? hallooo!
he didn’t even have the common sense to stop having pajama orgies after the last time he was accused.. even Ed Wood was more discreet about his perversions
does Jackson have to produce a film like Glen or Glenda before people get that he’s a 5 star wacko?
get a clue
December 19th, 2003 at 3:44 pm - Edit
Actually, Plato, and Socrates both were phedophiles as well. Tells you something, don’t it?
December 19th, 2003 at 3:49 pm - Edit
No, I don’t see the connection. Can you elaborate?
December 19th, 2003 at 4:01 pm - Edit
Okey dokey.
Plato was misunderstood and his beliefs were often shunned by the romans and others who thought that they were paganistic.
Sound familer? Also, he is renowned for broadening the world of education, and is considered a good man, despite his preferences.
Now for Socrates.
1. Socrates died from a self-administered dose of hemlock.
2. Socrates died as a consequence of a gross miscarriage of justice.
3. Socrates died after a court found him guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens.
4. Socrates was forced to drink hemlock because he was found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens.
This could be a case of history repeating itself, folks.
December 19th, 2003 at 4:03 pm - Edit
And if it IS, then there is a good chance that Michael could be on the verge of killing himself (As earlier mentioned in the boards.) if people continue to prosecute him.
December 20th, 2003 at 10:24 am - Edit
I couldn’t care less if socrates or plato were boy-fuckers….it still doesn’t make it right, perdita. Are you a pedophile? What posesses you to justify poking young boys? Or to glorify the antics of those who desire boy butts? Michael Jackson deserves to be man-handled in a prison, where he should have been placed 10 years ago. He’s not even worth the pack of cigarettes that he will be traded for. I hope that they send him away for life so that we won’t have to be tortured by his awful music any more.
Better yet, he should kill himself and save the cash-strapped Californians the trial costs. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
December 20th, 2003 at 10:27 am - Edit
I think Perdita is a pedophile… why else would someone justify this type of behavior? Perditas neighbors need to hide their children!
December 20th, 2003 at 2:24 pm - Edit
with Michael Jackson’s millions.. and high paid attornies, could this become another O.J. Simpson trial?.. it seems innocence can be bought
in california
December 24th, 2003 at 1:10 pm - Edit
Geez…he’ll get off!!!….does anyone doubt that? He can buy his freedom…but I guarantee if any good mannered average joe on the street were accused of molestation, he would have already been locked up and the key would have been thrown away…I just wish that they would take it to trial and get it over with, regardless of the outcome…I’m sick of being bombarded with it on television, the radio, and the internet…whoever pushes this crap on the public to this extreme should also be charged with disturbing my peace…Good Lord, I can’t even believe I contributed to this…
December 27th, 2003 at 7:13 pm - Edit
I hope the freak blows his brains out. God, why would anyone in their right mind like such a freak? I say Good Riddance! One less pervert in America
December 28th, 2003 at 7:16 pm - Edit
I think Michael is addicted to plastic surgery
and is unable to disconnect the child from the
man! He is incapable of detaching himself from this “Peter Pan” fantasy and his disturbing concept of loving relationships with young male children.THIS IS A TRADGEDY, HE REQUIRES IMMEDIATE PSYCHIATRIC HELP! But for heavens sake
don’t let him near anymore children. Everybody seems to be worried about “poor Michael”, but it seems to me that everybody has forgotten all of the children that he may have already damaged permanently!
December 29th, 2003 at 8:39 pm - Edit
The post by Maria (or perhaps “Sean” the quintessential university student with a sense of mirth) was indeed amusing. However, the fact remains that all actions point to a seriously disturbed adult that knows right from wrong, yet has decided upon wrong. Whatever the motives for Michael Jackson’s behaviour, the fact remains they are not in the best interest of the implicated children. That should be the basis upon which you judge him. As for the references to the gallavanting Greeks, Socrates and Plato, it was acceptable behaviour in those days, particularly when the typical life expectancy for a male was in his mid to late 30’s. The very founders of North America were known for their child brides (Samuel de Champlain had a 12 yr old bride). Acceptable behaviours change and children and women are no longer the cheap chattle of men (at least in most parts of the world). Keep things in perspective. I do admit that I look forward to Mr. Jackson’s suicide and would give anything to participate in the autopsy as I have been wagering with some of the pathologists and forensic clerks in the lab as to the extent and magnitude of Mr. Jackson’s alterations.
December 30th, 2003 at 7:11 pm - Edit
MICHAL JACKSON IS A PEDOPHILE, SINCE HE PAID THAT ENOUMOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY, TO THE FIRST BOY HE MOLESTED. HE’S A GREAT ARTIST, I HAVE NO DOUBT IN MY MIND, I PLAY HE’S THRILLER RECORD EVERYDAY. AM SAD, THAT HE HAD TO RESORT TO BOYS, SINCE HE’S GOT THE MONEY TO HAVE GORGEOUS GIRLS, OR BOYS IF HE LIKES, BUT. COME OUTTA THE CLOSET, LIKE GEORGE M. DID. THAT’S IT, HE PROBABLY LIKES YOUNG BOYS, BUT, HE, SHOULD’VE GOT THEM SOMEWHERE ELSE.
BY THE WAY, THE PEDOPHILES, ARE IN EVERY PART OF OOUR COMMUNITY, SPECIALLY IN THE CHURCHES….
December 31st, 2003 at 8:14 am - Edit
1.Jacko was only in the police station for 30 minutes. Another prisoner witnessed the booking and said he was treated like a V.I.P.(pedophile).
2.How can you flap your arms waving your hands
and flashing the peace symbol at the reporters
when you have a dislocated shoulder?
3.Do you think a lawyer like Geragos would let any
potential police abuse to occur in his presence, ie; the “handcuff bruises” or getting locked into
the “shitter” for 45 minutes? I THINK NOT!
4.Why did his spokesman resign?
STAY TUNED, THIS IS HIGH DRAMA, THE TV MOVIE WILL
BE BETTER THAN WHEN J.R. GOT SHOT!!!!!!
December 31st, 2003 at 8:39 pm - Edit
I think that people (especially the ones on this stupid Website) are just being assholes and embarrassing themselves. I love Michael Jackson, he is my idol-and he is no different from anyone else. There must be at least 1,000 of these same exact cases across the whole U.S. and none of them are made national. People forget who Michael Jackson is…and that makes me mad. I will never forget who he is or what he did for the world of music. I look up to him for everything he has done and does. No matter what people think I will know that they are wrong. In this country a man is innocent until proven guilty. What people are doing is just like stoning someone. He didn’t do anything. And I hope that he can get through this big mess knowing that all of his fans including me are behind him all the way and love him and his music. I cry when I listen to his music or see him because there is no greater music or person. And that asshole who did that “Living with Michael Jackson” interview needs to step off and check himself. Michael invited him into his home and everything, and did that fuck care? No, he just wanted what every other hipacrit wanted…to set him up as a joke. How can people think that? It’s pathetic and imature. And isn’t it funny how the mother of that kid sued a basketball player for the same thing. Geez, she knows all the ins and outs of things like this huh?…Michael- If you are reading this I just want you to know that I believe in you and your music. Your my idol. I look up to you for everything that you do. And I really wish you could know that…
December 31st, 2003 at 9:27 pm - Edit
Dart Test…
A young man named Rickey, relates an experience he had in a seminary class, given by hir teacher, Dr. Smith. He says that Dr. Smith was known for his elaborate object lessons. One particular day, Rickey walked into the seminary and knew they were in for a fun day. On the wall was a big target and on a nearby table were many darts. Dr. Smithtold the students to draw a picture of someone that they disliked or someone who had made them angry, and he would allow them to throw darts at the person’s picture. Rickey’s friend drew a picture of who had stolen her boyfriend. Another friend drew a picture of his little brother. Rickey drew a picture of Michael Jackson, putting a great deal of detail into hir drawing, even drawing a loc of hair in frontof his face. Rickey was pleased with the overall effect he had achieved. The class lined up and began throwing darts. Some of the students threw their darts with such force that their targets were ripping apart. Rickey looked forward to his turn, and was filled with disappointment when Dr. Smith, because of time limits, asked the students to return to their seats. As Rickey sat thinking about how angry he was because he didn’t have a
chance to throw any darts at hir target. Dr. Smith began removing the targets from the wall. Underneath the target was pictures of Jesus. A hush fell over the room as each student viewed the mangled pictures of Jesus; holes and jagged marks covered His face and His eyes were pierced. Dr. Smith said only these words… “In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Matthew 25:40. No other words were necessary; the tears filled eyes of the students focused
only on the picture of Christ. This is an easy test; you score 100 or zero. It’s your choice. If you aren’t ashamed to do this, Jesus said, “If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you, before My Father.” Not ashamed … pass this on.
January 1st, 2004 at 11:54 am - Edit
Beep Show,
You say that this child accuser has previously been involved in a similar lawsuit against a basketball player? Can you point me to a source for that information? I wasn’t aware of this and haven’t seen this fact mentioned anywhere.
For the record, I also like Michael Jackson’s music. I own several of his albums and listen to them regularly. He is undoubtedly one of the most gifted entertainers ever.
That, however, is not a valid defense against accusations of criminal behavior. Plenty of talented and likable people have been criminals throughtout history.
It would be a terrible shame if Michael were guilty of the charges against him. As an armchair sociologist, I have to concur that there is a lot of behavioral evidence supporting the idea that he is a pedophile. Even if he is, I do not think he is a cruel man, or intentionally harmful. I’m sure that in his mind, it’s an expression of love.
If it can be proven conclusively that Michael did not molest this kid, that doesn’t necessarily mean he never molested any other kids. But I would be very glad to see him innocent, for many reasons. I mean, I like the guy.
I also must stop you when you say that public criticism is “just like stoning”. This is an all-too-frequent modern equivocation; that words are the same as actions.
Look folks, that just isn’t true. Verbal criticism and expressing opinions and speculation is not the same thing as throwing rocks at somebody. To suggest that they are the same is a vulgar insult to everyone who has ever been the victim of physical violence, and shows a profound lack of understanding of the concept of free speech.
Sure, verbal criticism can be damaging, generally to one’s reputation. And there are cases where slander and libel have resulted in demonstrable economic harm to a person or company. Those are sometimes criminal actions if they can be proven.
But attacking someone’s reputation is not the same as throwing rocks at them. C’mon. Think for a second.
January 1st, 2004 at 2:07 pm - Edit
Anne Haight
Sorry Sweetie but you really have no clue what you are talking about…think before you speak…make up your mind…and please stop trying to sound like you know what you are talking about. Thats ur opinion and that was mine…now u can either learn to except it or fight with everyone who comes along with their -own- opinin….
January 1st, 2004 at 2:13 pm - Edit
Anne Height,
And another thing…clean the shit out of your ears and give me ur opinion not ur mom’s or these fucked up news crews.
January 1st, 2004 at 3:08 pm - Edit
Beep Show,
I asked you a question. You assert that Michael’s accuser has been in a similar lawsuit against a basketball player. I asked you for a source on that information, and/or more details. It’s a relevant question, because otherwise you are merely smearing the boy’s family with no evidence.
Let’s see, you’ve resorted to condescension and personal insults, but you haven’t actually responded to any of the issues I raised. I can only conclude that you have no counter argument, and therefore I consider myself to be the victor in this particular discussion.
Next?
Thats ur opinion and that was mine…now u can either learn to except it or fight with everyone who comes along with their -own- opinin….
So basically you’re saying that if I disagree with you, I’m wrong, since my alternative is to, well, disagree.
A person’s opinion is not necessarily true just because they say it. Not all opinions are equally valid. People have a right to speak, but that doesn’t make them correct.
January 1st, 2004 at 3:57 pm - Edit
Anne Height,
Well, I don’t see how you could have missed it, it was on the news hun. And like I said…If you are ganna state ur opinion…listen to mine too and clean the shit out of your ears. And You can either except that…or you cant sweetie. I didn’t write that statement for you…so get over yourself. I have no choice to believe that you only go on this site to start fights with people you don’t even know. Now that-is what I call low. And please stop trying to sound all perfesional…you don’t come off as a smart person so don’t try to pretend you are. Now, with that stupid “You think my opinion is wrong” thats bullshit. I made a statment and u commented…so please Fuck off
January 2nd, 2004 at 8:12 am - Edit
Dear Beep Show
Your 15 minutes are up, so shut-the-fuck-up!
January 2nd, 2004 at 11:20 am - Edit
Sister of Perpetual Misery, that was the best laugh I’ve had in several days.
January 2nd, 2004 at 11:27 am - Edit
Beep Show,
Well, I don’t see how you could have missed it, it was on the news hun.
Well I did. And if it’s such common knowledge, I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding me a link, now will you?
And like I said…If you are ganna state ur opinion…listen to mine too and clean the shit out of your ears.
I am listening. I just don’t find you persuasive or credible.
And You can either except that…or you cant sweetie.
The word you’re looking for is “accept”.
I didn’t write that statement for you…so get over yourself.
If that statement was not for me, then who were you talking to? That’s another common technique used by people with no argument when they get challenged on something; “Oh, I wasn’t talking about you.”
I have no choice to believe that you only go on this site to start fights with people you don’t even know.
1. This is my site. Or have you been paying so little attention that you don’t realize you are debating one of the two people who owns this blog, and for whom the blog itself is named?
2. Does disagreement = fighting in your mind? So I guess a perfect world would be one where everybody agrees with you?
And please stop trying to sound all perfesional…you don’t come off as a smart person so don’t try to pretend you are.
It’s spelled “professional”, and I don’t need you to tell me whether or not I’m a smart person. I know that I am, and your opinion doesn’t matter a damn to me. Hey, at least I can spell.
Now, with that stupid “You think my opinion is wrong” thats bullshit. I made a statment and u commented…so please Fuck off
This is my blog, so if somebody’s gonna leave, it would have to be you. And you were the one who brought up the whole issue of “I’m just stating my opinion”.
Like I said, the fact that you say it doesn’t make it true, so don’t pretend that it does. I can disagree with you without “fighting”, as you put it. I have been polite throughout this conversation, which is more than I can say for you.
That doesn’t help your credibility, you know.
January 2nd, 2004 at 11:55 am - Edit
Fuck off i dont care anne
January 2nd, 2004 at 12:59 pm - Edit
Anne get a fucking life… i agree with beepshow your opinion is a bunch of meaningless crap put together… Beepshow was stating her feeling if you were smart you would see that that was all she was doing … get a life and stop trying to make yourself sound smart..
January 3rd, 2004 at 11:11 am - Edit
Anne Haight,
I a lso agree with Beep Show and “Me” lol, because you didn’t have one problem with anyone else on this page other than the people who disagree….
Beep Show,
I agree,I love him too and I think he is innocent.
Anne,
Your wrong sorry, and your page sucks
January 3rd, 2004 at 11:18 am - Edit
Yea, I agree to with Sandy, + Beep Show.
I have something to say too-He doesn’t sleep in the same bed as the kids. They sleep in the bed and he sleeps on the floor. Nad that was only ONE kid. All you stupid people just shut the fuck up because you don’t know what you are talking about, which means you Anne. Like Beep Show said, clean the shit out of your ears.
January 3rd, 2004 at 3:11 pm - Edit
Just for entertainment’s sake, let’s take a look at the IP addresses of Beep Show, “Me”, Sandy Costinzo and Gina.
Beep Show: 138.89.94.8
“Me”: 138.89.94.8
Sandy Costinzo: 138.89.94.8
Gina (drum roll): 138.89.94.8
Lemme let you in on something, Beep Show. When you want to make fake posts agreeing with yourself, you need to at least use a different computer each time.
Changing your spelling, punctuation, and narrative tone helps somewhat too, as well as not exactly parroting your own previous remarks.
Just trying to be helpful.
January 5th, 2004 at 9:30 am - Edit
Rock on Anne! Hey kids, watch A&E this evening,
pay strict attention to the announcer…you just
might “learn something”. Otherwise, kids, please
practice your spelling and grammar when conversing
with adults about subjects obviously beyond your
own extremely limited mental capabilities.
January 12th, 2004 at 4:47 pm - Edit
What am I missing? Are we a bunch of attorneys? How does anyone in this room know, for sure, whether he is guilty or innocent? We do not know what the evidence is, we do not know “specifically” what the accusations are. We have no idea how strong the prosecution’s case is! The only people that know these things are the lawyers behind the scenes. As for all this bickering, it is nothing but speculation and frankly a waste of everyone’s time. Let the legal system play itself out, and let the jury, the finders of FACT, designated by law, do their job and make a wise determination between guilt and innocence. Even though Michael Jackson did pay a large sum of money to settle the case ten years ago, that fact will be inadmissible in this case, since settled cases are excluded as evidence for use by the prosecution. So in this case, his previous settlement will in no way, shape, or form, have any bearing whatsoever on the present trial, unless of course, a juror lies during voir dire and carries with him/her what the law deems an “unfair” bias toward the accused, MJ. So, in conclusion, stop fighting about it, cuz there really is no reason. Nobody in this room knows the facts of this case but everyone does know one fact for sure. Be happy it aint YOU defending your life in a courtroom. Until then, dont pass judgments and try to retain faith in our criminal justice system to distinguish between guilt and innocence. Not to say the system is perfect, OJ OJ, but give it a chance because it is much more effective than the general public would like to lend credence to. Im out! Peace!
January 12th, 2004 at 7:10 pm - Edit
Points:
1. He only invites boys to his ranch, no girls.
He’s a gay pedophile.
2. He has enough money to bribe networks to show his “true (B.S.) side” documentaries etc. Remember: he is an actor (Remember Thriller?).
3. Macaulay Culkin. Doesn’t it look like he is keeping his mouth shut? Maybe it’s because of all those bodily fluids Michael has pumped into his mouth.
4. What kind of person loves children (boys) that much that they would sleep (i.e. masterbate with)naked with?
5. Michael doesn’t believe in God. If he did, he’d feel guilty right now.
6. Janet seems intelligent, why isn’t she standing behind her brother this time like the rest of his stupid family?
7. Michael needs to be executed.
January 15th, 2004 at 3:31 pm - Edit
1. For how long of a period of time did you kick it at his ranch? How do you know he only invites “boys” to his ranch. If I remember correctly, he’s surely had girls there as well, but again, how do you know?
2. Networks have more money than Michael Jackson. Sure the media can be shady, but you really think he “bribed” them to go on air and discuss having sleepovers. Come on man. They were probably paying him! He boosted their ratings, not the other way around.
3. Maculay Culkin most likely wasnt molested or sexually assaulted, so he probably just doesnt have anything to say. Silence should not equate to suspicion. The fifth amendment gives us the right to remain silent, and that right should remain free from prejudice.
4. Again, sleepovers with young kids is weird. but it doesnt mean he masturbated with them or waived his dick in their face like, umm, President Clinton to female state workers in Arkansas.
5. Leave God out of it. But if you choose to include him, why would God let MJ take advantage of these children? Just leave God out of it, simple enough. HE has nothing to do with it.
6. Maybe cuz Janet has a creer to worry about and the thought of publicly standing behind someone so publicly scrutinzed probably wouldnt do too much for her future record sales. Sad but true. Sometimes the green takes priority over the fam.
7. Nah. MJ doesnt need to be executed. But if he is indeed guilty, a little cutting procedure a prisonmate named Bubba would work as a great deterrence.
8. And MY point, is the accused (MJ) are INNOCENT until proven guilty and unfortunately the media is trying to sway public opinion. I’ll repeat myself, stop spitting facts of this case you gto from the Fox News Channel and use your own head. Dont rely on everything the media feeds you. They are filters designed to influence the thought process of the public at large. Be strong, be impartial, but most importantly, be REASONABLE and OBJECTIVE. When the trial begins on court tv or what have you, THEN analyze the facts and try to come to your own conclusions. Until then, stop slaving yourself to pop culture and radio and television talk shows, or else yer a sucker just like the majority. Peace! I’m out.
January 15th, 2004 at 3:42 pm - Edit
Anne- Change the subject to something alittle more fruitful. This is nothing but pure specualtion and people using as ammunition the things they hear on radio and tv. Lets debate something of more substance. I think you and I could respectfully debate each other, but lets get off the MJ tip and let Santa Barabara and the DA take care of that mess. Any suggestions for a change of issue? Maybe, the war or the upcoming presidential election, or welfare, or affirmative action, or abortion, SOMETHING! I would almost rather watch that video of Saddam getting a flashlight in his grill over and over again than debate something that really is indebatable.
January 15th, 2004 at 3:47 pm - Edit
Anne! One more thing, alluding to your opening statments on your page and than I’m done. Just because on “The Smoking Gun” you read the declaration and found it to be detailed doesnt mean anything. Detailed pleadings and declarations are a legal strategy used by plaintiff’s attorneys to innoculate to the public that they are indeed telling the truth. It makes you ask yourself, “How could they make this shit up in such detail? This must be true.” Come on Anne. Be objective. Anybody can accuse anybody of anything. What you really need to do is find out if this declaration was ever VERIFIED! Verification makes the declaration more than just words on a piece of paper. It means that the parties attest to the truthfulness of the statements made and are willing to face the penalty of perjury if ANY of the facts are untrue, or even “spun”. Did the plaintiff’s counsel ever verify the declaration? I’m not attacking you at all. I’m just curious because verification can, and normally does, make an initial pleading (complaint) much more valuable to the party asserting the claim. I’m asking out of sheer curiosity is all.
January 15th, 2004 at 4:02 pm - Edit
I just thought of a good issue, especially all y’all NAACP lovers. I heard on the news last night that the NAACP, for their upcoming image awards, has decided to honor one of the most repectable and looked up to African Americans in our country and perhaps the world. R. Kelley will be this year’s recipient of the NAACP Image Award of 2004. Now lets discuss this. Michael Jackson is dealing with ALLEGATIONS of being a pedophile while the whole world has seen video of R. Kelley committing child (statutory) rape, and R. Kelley gets an image award? Discuss amongst yourselves.
January 15th, 2004 at 4:28 pm - Edit
Sactofunk,
This is not a general discussion board. This is the comments section of one blog entry that I made, and back in 11/03, at that.
Plenty of other stuff has been written since, which you are welcome to comment on. You might try navigating the page using the Main and month listings.
As for R. Kelly, I think the main difference is that Michael Jackson is famous the world over and has a long and distinguished career as a musician and a social Odd Duck.
R. Kelly is just a flavor of the week rapper with no talent (like most of them), so nobody really gives a shit.
January 19th, 2004 at 6:48 am - Edit
nice post, anne. i found this randomly while trying to find some hint of where janet stands in all of this.
i know this has all been talked to death, but i wanted to bring up another point:
i think he’s guilty.
the fact that i (and most everyone) thinks he’s guilty makes me sad.
we’ve got these psychological indicators,
these actions and statements coming from michael jackson, and they all seem to point to pediphelia.
don’t you think it’s sad
that our society has become so backwards
that extreme philanthropy (in this case focused on children) becomes a calling card for deviant behavior?
i wish he were innocent.
because his guilt only shortens the gap
between the noblest of intentions and the reality of those intentions.
again, nice post.
January 21st, 2004 at 1:02 pm - Edit
I think hes a goddam pervert, I beat him like I do my muthafuckin kids if I had him, little son of a bitch, I told my fuckin kids if they don’t listen to me there gonna be like that gay muthafucka, and then I beat em some more, little bastards
January 22nd, 2004 at 12:46 am - Edit
anne haight said,
“R. Kelly is just a flavor of the week rapper with no talent (like most of them), so nobody really gives a shit”
. . .
r. kelly is not a rapper.
he is a singer, songwriter and producer.
he does not rap.
most people familiar with r&b music woud take issue with your suggestion that he has no talent.
he has written a few standards, among his many huge hits and his music is loved by millions around the world and is recorded by many artists.
this has nothing to do with his alleged (or apparent) crimes, of course.
i’m just pointing out that you clearly don’ t know what you’re talking about in this case.
to ask why r. kelly gets respect as an artist and more fair press coverage than michael jackson is a legitimate question, and it deserves more scrutiny than your flip and uninformed response suggests.
January 22nd, 2004 at 1:28 am - Edit
I have a few comments I wanted to make.
First, why did Michael Jackson suddenly start molesting boys again just when he was trying to make a comeback? He’s been trying to rekindle his career, the accusations against him seem oddly timed. This would be the worst time for MJ to try to molest a kid.
Second, why were these parents allowing their child to even be with MJ alone? Did they have no doubts at all from the first accusation 10 years ago?
Third, if Michael Jackson was innocent the first time he was accused, why would he settle for some undisclosed amount of money the first time, and then disappear for a decade?
Fourth, isn’t it a little bit odd that Michael Jackson named his compound “Neverland”? It’s peter pan reference, were children never grow up. That is odd.
Fifth, why did Michael Jackson lie about the treatment he received from the police?
What I’m getting at is that I think MJ was guilty the first time, and may be innocent this time.
January 22nd, 2004 at 2:53 am - Edit
Read the declaration by the kid that claimed he was molested in 1993.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/mjdec1.html
January 24th, 2004 at 10:53 am - Edit
quatorzejames,
Congratulations. You have just been banned for comment spamming.
February 1st, 2004 at 1:59 pm - Edit
Fuzzywzhy,
I saw that you asked why Michael paid that family in ‘93 and disappeared for a decade. If anyone actually LISTENS to Michael they would know that on the Primetime Live interview he did with Diane Sawyer a few years back he said his lawyers advised it and that he just wanted to get on with his life(he also stated this on Living With Michael Jackson). And he did not “disappear” for a decade. In 1995 he relased “HIStory: Past, Presnt, and Future Book 1″ and in ‘96 he went on his WORLD TOUR for that album. Then in ‘97 he relased “Blood on the Dancefloor HIStory in the mix” which is the largest selling remix album of all time (though few people know it.)He has been on tv, did interviews, everything, and yet you and alot of others say after ‘93 he disappeared. But I ask this in question about the ‘93 case and i’m sure the question has been raised often. If your child was molested by Michael Jackson, why would you accept MONEY OVER JUSTICE? Wouldn’t you not rest until his ass was in jail? Why would you even accept an agreement to make it all go away? Why wouldn’t you fight? Maybe because the family got what they were after in the first place: MONEY. It’s the root of all evil. The love of it is. Not to metion the fact that Jordy Chandler was given Sodium Amytal by a dentist shortly before giving the allegations. Sodium Amytal is a drug that is used for amnesia patients that can give the reciever false memories.
According to Chandler in this conversation, “This guy [his attorney, Barry Rothman] is going to destroy everybody in sight in any devious, nasty, cruel way that he can do it. And I’ve given him full authority to do that.” Later in the conversation, Chandler added, “If I go through with this, I win big-time. There’s no way I lose. I’ve checked that inside out. I will get everything I want, and they will be destroyed forever… Michael’s career will be over… It will be a massacre if I don’t get what I want.”
Chandler’s plan was to accuse Michael Jackson of child molestation, but unfortunately for Chandler, Jordy refused to implicate Jackson in any way whatsoever. To solve that problem, Chandler took his son to dental anesthesiologist Mark Tobiner. Tobiner injected into Jordy the barbiturate sodium Amytal, under the influence of which a person is highly impressionable; the effect is similar to hypnosis. With sodium Amytal swimming through his system, Jordy said for the first time that Jackson had molested him.
That is a tidbit I derived from http://webpages.charter.net/jasonevines/mj.htm You can read the full story there also. If you all who have such strong opinons have nothing to back them up, they mean nothing. Of course if this does not impress you, I will gladly share more. TA TA!
February 1st, 2004 at 9:59 pm - Edit
Not to metion the fact that Jordy Chandler was given Sodium Amytal by a dentist shortly before giving the allegations. Sodium Amytal is a drug that is used for amnesia patients that can give the reciever false memories.
That’s interesting if true. The dentist in question, a certain Mark Tobiner, appears to be a man of questionable ethics. His apparent reputation is that of drug supplier to celebrities, in which he makes housecalls to provide various prescription drugs that are commonly abused (such as morphine and Demerol).
Sodium Amytal (a brand name for Amobarbital) is primarily used to treat chronic insomnia. It is also used in a psychiatric process known as a therapeutic interview, in which the drug helps to relax psychological inhibitions that may be blocking repressed memories of trauma.
It isn’t a drug typically used by dentists, being psychotropic in nature, and there are plenty of drugs for dentistry that are much safer.
Although “truth serum” is generally misunderstood (it can’t force people to tell the truth under questioning; it merely makes them more suggestible under a controlled interview situation), it would certainly be one possible method of implanting memories in a vulnerable person, such as Jordy Chandler.
February 2nd, 2004 at 6:38 pm - Edit
Here goes some more facts about this whole drama that escolated to what we are dealing with now:
Was Michael Jackson Framed? By Mary A. Fisher GQ Oct. 1994
Before O.J. Simpson, there was Michael Jackson — another beloved black celebrity seemingly brought down by allegations of scandal in his personal life. Those allegations — that Jackson had molested a 13-year-old boy — instigated a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, two grand-jury investigations and a shameless media circus. Jackson, in turn, filed charges of extortion against some of his accusers. Ultimately, the suit was settled out of court for a sum that has been estimated at $20 million; no criminal charges were brought against Jackson by the police or the grand juries. This past August, Jackson was in the news again, when Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s daughter, announced that she and the singer had married.
As the dust settles on one of the nation’s worst episodes of media excess, one thing is clear: The American public has never heard a defense of Michael Jackson. Until now.
It is, of course, impossible to prove a negative — that is, prove that something didn’t happen. But it is possible to take an in-depth look at the people who made the allegations against Jackson and thus gain insight into their character and motives. What emerges from such an examination, based on court documents, business records and scores of interviews, is a persuasive argument that Jackson molested no one and that he himself may have been the victim of a well-conceived plan to extract money from him.
More than that, the story that arises from this previously unexplored territory is radically different from the tale that has been promoted by tabloid and even mainstream journalists. It is a story of greed, ambition, misconceptions on the part of police and prosecutors, a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful, hypnotic drug. It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented.
Neither Michael Jackson nor his current defense attorneys agreed to be interviewed for this article. Had they decided to fight the civil charges and go to trial, what follows might have served as the core of Jackson’s defense — as well as the basis to further the extortion charges against his own accusers, which could well have exonerated the singer.
Jackson’s troubles began when his van broke down on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles in May 1992. Stranded in the middle of the heavily trafficked street, Jackson was spotted by the wife of Mel Green, an employee at Rent-a-Wreck, an offbeat car-rental agency a mile away. Green went to the rescue. When Dave Schwartz, the owner of the car-rental company, heard Green was bringing Jackson to the lot, he called his wife, June, and told her to come over with their 6-year-old daughter and her son from her previous marriage. The boy, then 12, was a big Jackson fan. Upon arriving, June Chandler Schwartz told Jackson about the time her son had sent him a drawing after the singer’s hair caught on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. Then she gave Jackson their home number.
“It was almost like she was forcing [the boy] on him,” Green recalls. “I think Michael thought he owed the boy something, and that’s when it all started.”
Certain facts about the relationship are not in dispute. Jackson began calling the boy, and a friendship developed. After Jackson returned from a promotional tour, three months later, June Chandler Schwartz and her son and daughter became regular guests at Neverland, Jackson’s ranch in Santa Barbara County. During the following year, Jackson showered the boy and his family with attention and gifts, including video games, watches, an after-hours shopping spree at Toys “R” Us and trips around the world — from Las Vegas and Disney World to Monaco and Paris.
By March 1993, Jackson and the boy were together frequently and the sleepovers began. June Chandler Schwartz had also become close to Jackson “and liked him enormously,” one friend says. “He was the kindest man she had ever met.”
Jackson’s personal eccentricities — from his attempts to remake his face through plastic surgery to his preference for the company of children — have been widely reported. And while it may be unusual for a 35-year-old man to have sleepovers with a 13-year-old child, the boy’s mother and others close to Jackson never thought it odd. Jackson’s behavior is better understood once it’s put in the context of his own childhood.
“Contrary to what you might think, Michael’s life hasn’t been a walk in the park,” one of his attorneys says. Jackson’s childhood essentially stopped — and his unorthodox life began — when he was 5 years old and living in Gary, Indiana. Michael spent his youth in rehearsal studios, on stages performing before millions of strangers and sleeping in an endless string of hotel rooms. Except for his eight brothers and sisters, Jackson was surrounded by adults who pushed him relentlessly, particularly his father, Joe Jackson — a strict, unaffectionate man who reportedly beat his children.
Jackson’s early experiences translated into a kind of arrested development, many say, and he became a child in a man’s body. “He never had a childhood,” says Bert Fields, a former attorney of Jackson’s. “He is having one now. His buddies are 12-year-old kids. They have pillow fights and food fights.” Jackson’s interest in children also translated into humanitarian efforts. Over the years, he has given millions to causes benefiting children, including his own Heal The World Foundation.
But there is another context — the one having to do with the times in which we live — in which most observers would evaluate Jackson’s behavior. “Given the current confusion and hysteria over child sexual abuse,” says Dr. Phillip Resnick, a noted Cleveland psychiatrist, “any physical or nurturing contact with a child may be seen as suspicious, and the adult could well be accused of sexual misconduct.”
Jackson’s involvement with the boy was welcomed, at first, by all the adults in the youth’s life — his mother, his stepfather and even his biological father, Evan Chandler (who also declined to be interviewed for this article). Born Evan Robert Charmatz in the Bronx in 1944, Chandler had reluctantly followed in the footsteps of his father and brothers and become a dentist. “He hated being a dentist,” a family friend says. “He always wanted to be a writer.” After moving in 1973 to West Palm Beach to practice dentistry, he changed his last name, believing Charmatz was “too Jewish-sounding,” says a former colleague. Hoping somehow to become a screenwriter, Chandler moved to Los Angeles in the late Seventies with his wife, June Wong, an attractive Eurasian who had worked briefly as a model.
Chandler’s dental career had its precarious moments. In December 1978, while working at the Crenshaw Family Dental Center, a clinic in a low-income area of L.A., Chandler did restoration work on sixteen of a patient’s teeth during a single visit. An examination of the work, the Board of Dental Examiners concluded, revealed “gross ignorance and/or inefficiency” in his profession. The board revoked his license; however, the revocation was stayed, and the board instead suspended him for ninety days and placed him on probation for two and a half years. Devastated, Chandler left town for New York. He wrote a film script but couldn’t sell it.
Months later, Chandler returned to L.A. with his wife and held a series of dentistry jobs. By 1980, when their son was born, the couple’s marriage was in trouble. “One of the reasons June left Evan was because of his temper,” a family friend says. They divorced in 1985. The court awarded sole custody of the boy to his mother and ordered Chandler to pay $500 a month in child support, but a review of documents reveals that in 1993, when the Jackson scandal broke, Chandler owed his ex-wife $68,000 — a debt she ultimately forgave.
A year before Jackson came into his son’s life, Chandler had a second serious professional problem. One of his patients, a model, sued him for dental negligence after he did restoration work on some of her teeth. Chandler claimed that the woman had signed a consent form in which she’d acknowledged the risks involved. But when Edwin Zinman, her attorney, asked to see the original records, Chandler said they had been stolen from the trunk of his Jaguar. He provided a duplicate set. Zinman, suspicious, was unable to verify the authenticity of the records. “What an extraordinary coincidence that they were stolen,” Zinman says now. “That’s like saying ‘The dog ate my homework.’ ” The suit was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Despite such setbacks, Chandler by then had a successful practice in Beverly Hills. And he got his first break in Hollywood in 1992, when he cowrote the Mel Brooks film Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Until Michael Jackson entered his son’s life, Chandler hadn’t shown all that much interest in the boy. “He kept promising to buy him a computer so they could work on scripts together, but he never did,” says Michael Freeman, formerly an attorney for June Chandler Schwartz. Chandler’s dental practice kept him busy, and he had started a new family by then, with two small children by his second wife, a corporate attorney.
At first, Chandler welcomed and encouraged his son’s relationship with Michael Jackson, bragging about it to friends and associates. When Jackson and the boy stayed with Chandler during May 1993, Chandler urged the entertainer to spend more time with his son at his house. According to sources, Chandler even suggested that Jackson build an addition onto the house so the singer could stay there. After calling the zoning department and discovering it couldn’t be done, Chandler made another suggestion — that Jackson just build him a new home.
That same month, the boy, his mother and Jackson flew to Monaco for the World Music Awards. “Evan began to get jealous of the involvement and felt left out,” Freeman says. Upon their return, Jackson and the boy again stayed with Chandler, which pleased him — a five-day visit, during which they slept in a room with the youth’s half brother. Though Chandler has admitted that Jackson and the boy always had their clothes on whenever he saw them in bed together, he claimed that it was during this time that his suspicions of sexual misconduct were triggered. At no time has Chandler claimed to have witnessed any sexual misconduct on Jackson’s part.
Chandler became increasingly volatile, making threats that alienated Jackson, Dave Schwartz and June Chandler Schwartz. In early July 1993, Dave Schwartz, who had been friendly with Chandler, secretly tape-recorded a lengthy telephone conversation he had with him. During the conversation, Chandler talked of his concern for his son and his anger at Jackson and at his ex-wife, whom he described as “cold and heartless.” When Chandler tried to “get her attention” to discuss his suspicions about Jackson, he says on the tape, she told him “Go fuck yourself.”
“I had a good communication with Michael,” Chandler told Schwartz. “We were friends. I liked him and I respected him and everything else for what he is. There was no reason why he had to stop calling me. I sat in the room one day and talked to Michael and told him exactly what I want out of this whole relationship. What I want.”
Admitting to Schwartz that he had “been rehearsed” about what to say and what not to say, Chandler never mentioned money during their conversation. When Schwartz asked what Jackson had done that made Chandler so upset, Chandler alleged only that “he broke up the family. [The boy] has been seduced by this guy’s power and money.” Both men repeatedly berated themselves as poor fathers to the boy.
Elsewhere on the tape, Chandler indicated he was prepared to move against Jackson: “It’s already set,” Chandler told Schwartz. “There are other people involved that are waiting for my phone call that are in certain positions. I’ve paid them to do it. Everything’s going according to a certain plan that isn’t just mine. Once I make that phone call, this guy [his attorney, Barry K. Rothman, presumably] is going to destroy everybody in sight in any devious, nasty, cruel way that he can
do it. And I’ve given him full authority to do that.”
Chandler then predicted what would, in fact, transpire six weeks later: “And if I go through with this, I win big-time. There’s no way I lose. I’ve checked that inside out. I will get everything I want, and they will be destroyed forever. June will lose [custody of the son]…and Michael’s career will be over.”
“Does that help [the boy]?” Schwartz asked.
“That’s irrelevant to me,” Chandler replied. “It’s going to be bigger than all of us put together. The whole thing is going to crash down on everybody and destroy everybody in sight. It will be a massacre if I don’t get what I want.”
Instead of going to the police, seemingly the most appropriate action in a situation involving suspected child molestation, Chandler had turned to a lawyer. And not just any lawyer. He’d turned to Barry Rothman. “This attorney I found, I picked the nastiest son of a bitch I could find,” Chandler said in the recorded conversation with Schwartz. “All he wants to do is get this out in the public as fast as he can, as big as he can, and humiliate as many people as he can. He’s nasty, he’s mean, he’s very smart, and he’s hungry for the publicity.” (Through his attorney, Wylie Aitken, Rothman declined to be interviewed for this article. Aitken agreed to answer general questions limited to the Jackson case, and then only about aspects that did not involve Chandler or the boy.)
To know Rothman, says a former colleague who worked with him during the Jackson case, and who kept a diary of what Rothman and Chandler said and did in Rothman’s office, is to believe that Barry could have “devised this whole plan, period. This [making allegations against Michael Jackson] is within the boundary of his character, to do something like this.” Information supplied by Rothman’s former clients, associates and employees reveals a pattern of manipulation and deceit.
Rothman has a general-law practice in Century City. At one time, he negotiated music and concert deals for Little Richard, the Rolling Stones, the Who, ELO and Ozzy Osbourne. Gold and platinum records commemorating those days still hang on the walls of his office. With his grayish-white beard and perpetual tan — which he maintains in a tanning bed at his house — Rothman reminds a former client of “a leprechaun.” To a former employee, Rothman is “a demon” with “a terrible temper.” His most cherished possession, acquaintances say, is his 1977 Rolls-Royce Corniche, which carries the license plate “BKR 1.”
Over the years, Rothman has made so many enemies that his ex-wife once expressed, to her attorney, surprise that someone “hadn’t done him in.” He has a reputation for stiffing people. “He appears to be a professional deadbeat… He pays almost no one,” investigator Ed Marcus concluded (in a report filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, as part of a lawsuit against Rothman), after reviewing the attorney’s credit profile, which listed more than thirty creditors and judgment holders who were chasing him. In addition, more than twenty civil lawsuits involving Rothman have been filed in Superior Court, several complaints have been made to the Labor Commission and disciplinary actions for three incidents have been taken against him by the state bar of California. In 1992, he was suspended for a year, though that suspension was stayed and he was instead placed on probation for the term.
In 1987, Rothman was $16,800 behind in alimony and child-support payments. Through her attorney, his ex-wife, Joanne Ward, threatened to attach Rothman’s assets, but he agreed to make good on the debt. A year later, after Rothman still hadn’t made the payments, Ward’s attorney tried to put a lien on Rothman’s expensive Sherman Oaks home. To their surprise, Rothman said he no longer owned the house; three years earlier, he’d deeded the property to Tinoa Operations, Inc., a Panamanian shell corporation. According to Ward’s lawyer, Rothman claimed that he’d had $200,000 of Tinoa’s money, in cash, at his house one night when he was robbed at gunpoint. The only way he could make good on the loss was to deed his home to Tinoa, he told them. Ward and her attorney suspected the whole scenario was a ruse, but they could never prove it. It was only after sheriff’s deputies had towed away Rothman’s Rolls Royce that he began paying what he owed.
Documents filed with Los Angeles Superior Court seem to confirm the suspicions of Ward and her attorney. These show that Rothman created an elaborate network of foreign bank accounts and shell companies, seemingly to conceal some of his assets — in particular, his home and much of the $531,000 proceeds from its eventual sale, in 1989. The companies, including Tinoa, can be traced to Rothman. He bought a Panamanian shelf company (an existing but nonoperating firm) and arranged matters so that though his name would not appear on the list of its officers, he would have unconditional power of attorney, in effect leaving him in control of moving money in and out.
Meanwhile, Rothman’s employees didn’t fare much better than his ex-wife. Former employees say they sometimes had to beg for their paychecks. And sometimes the checks that they did get would bounce. He couldn’t keep legal secretaries. “He’d demean and humiliate them,” says one. Temporary workers fared the worst. “He would work them for two weeks,” adds the legal secretary, “then run them off by yelling at them and saying they were stupid. Then he’d tell the agency he was dissatisfied with the temp and wouldn’t pay.” Some agencies finally got wise and made Rothman pay cash up front before they’d do business with him.
The state bar’s 1992 disciplining of Rothman grew out of a conflict-of-interest matter. A year earlier, Rothman had been kicked off a case by a client, Muriel Metcalf, whom he’d been representing in child-support and custody proceedings; Metcalf later accused him of padding her bill. Four months after Metcalf fired him, Rothman, without notifying her, began representing the company of her estranged companion, Bob Brutzman.
The case is revealing for another reason: It shows that Rothman had some experience dealing with child-molestation allegations before the Jackson scandal. Metcalf, while Rothman was still representing her, had accused Brutzman of molesting their child (which Brutzman denied). Rothman’s knowledge of Metcalf’s charges didn’t prevent him from going to work for Brutzman’s company — a move for which he was disciplined.
By 1992, Rothman was running from numerous creditors. Folb Management, a corporate real-estate agency, was one. Rothman owed the company $53,000 in back rent and interest for an office on Sunset Boulevard. Folb sued. Rothman then countersued, claiming that the building’s security was so inadequate that burglars were able to steal more than $6,900 worth of equipment from his office one night. In the course of the proceedings, Folb’s lawyer told the court, “Mr. Rothman is not the kind of person whose word can be taken at face value.”
In November 1992, Rothman had his law firm file for bankruptcy, listing thirteen creditors — including Folb Management — with debts totaling $880,000 and no acknowledged assets. After reviewing the bankruptcy papers, an ex-client whom Rothman was suing for $400,000 in legal fees noticed that Rothman had failed to list a $133,000 asset. The former client threatened to expose Rothman for “defrauding his creditors” — a felony — if he didn’t drop the lawsuit. Cornered, Rothman had the suit dismissed in a matter of hours.
Six months before filing for bankruptcy, Rothman had transferred title on his Rolls-Royce to Majo, a fictitious company he controlled. Three years earlier, Rothman had claimed a different corporate owner for the car — Longridge Estates, a subsidiary of Tinoa Operations, the company that held the deed to his home. On corporation papers filed by Rothman, the addresses listed for Longridge and Tinoa were the same, 1554 Cahuenga Boulevard — which, as it turns out, is that of a Chinese restaurant in Hollywood.
It was with this man, in June 1993, that Evan Chandler began carrying out the “certain plan” to which he referred in his taped conversation with Dave Schwartz. At a graduation that month, Chandler confronted his ex-wife with his suspicions. “She thought the whole thing was baloney,” says her ex-attorney, Michael Freeman. She told Chandler that she planned to take their son out of school in the fall so they could accompany Jackson on his “Dangerous” world tour. Chandler became irate and, say several sources, threatened to go public with the evidence he claimed he had on Jackson. “What parent in his right mind would want to drag his child into the public spotlight?” asks Freeman. “If something like this actually occurred, you’d want to protect your child.”
Jackson asked his then-lawyer, Bert Fields, to intervene. One of the most prominent attorneys in the entertainment industry, Fields has been representing Jackson since 1990 and had negotiated for him, with Sony, the biggest music deal ever — with possible earnings of $700 million. Fields brought in investigator Anthony Pellicano to help sort things out. Pellicano does things Sicilian-style, being fiercely loyal to those he likes but a ruthless hardball player when it comes to his enemies.
On July 9, 1993, Dave Schwartz and June Chandler Schwartz played the taped conversation for Pellicano. “After listening to the tape for ten minutes, I knew it was about extortion,” says Pellicano. That same day, he drove to Jackson’s Century City condominium, where Chandler’s son and the boy’s half-sister were visiting. Without Jackson there, Pellicano “made eye contact” with the boy and asked him, he says, “very pointed questions”: “Has Michael ever touched you? Have you ever seen him naked in bed?” The answer to all the questions was no. The boy repeatedly denied that anything bad had happened. On July 11, after Jackson had declined to meet with Chandler, the boy’s father and Rothman went ahead with another part of the plan — they needed to get custody of the boy. Chandler asked his ex-wife to let the youth stay with him for a “one-week visitation period.” As Bert Fields later said in an affidavit to the court, June Chandler Schwartz allowed the boy to go based on Rothman’s assurance to Fields that her son would come back to her after the specified time, never guessing that Rothman’s word would be worthless and that Chandler would not return their son.
Wylie Aitken, Rothman’s attorney, claims that “at the time [Rothman] gave his word, it was his intention to have the boy returned.” However, once “he learned that the boy would be whisked out of the country [to go on tour with Jackson], I don’t think Mr. Rothman had any other choice.” But the chronology clearly indicates that Chandler had learned in June, at the graduation, that the boy’s mother planned to take her son on the tour. The taped telephone conversation made in early July, before Chandler took custody of his son, also seems to verify that Chandler and Rothman had no intention of abiding by the visitation agreement. “They [the boy and his mother] don’t know it yet,” Chandler told Schwartz, “but they aren’t going anywhere.”
On July 12, one day after Chandler took control of his son, he had his ex-wife sign a document prepared by Rothman that prevented her from taking the youth out of Los Angeles County. This meant the boy would be unable to accompany Jackson on the tour. His mother told the court she signed the document under duress. Chandler, she said in an affidavit, had threatened that”I would not have [the boy] returned to me.” A bitter custody battle ensued, making even murkier any charges Chandler made about wrong-doing on Jackson’s part. (As of this August [1994], the boy was still living with Chandler.) It was during the first few weeks after Chandler took control of his son — who was now isolated from his friends, mother and stepfather — that the boy’s allegations began to take shape.
At the same time, Rothman, seeking an expert’s opinion to help establish the allegations against Jackson, called Dr. Mathis Abrams, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist. Over the telephone, Rothman presented Abrams with a hypothetical situation. In reply and without having met either Chandler or his son, Abrams on July 15 sent Rothman a two-page letter in which he stated that “reasonable suspicion would exist that sexual abuse may have occurred.” Importantly, he also stated that if this were a real and not a hypothetical case, he would be required by law to report the matter to the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services (DCS).
According to a July 27 entry in the diary kept by Rothman’s former colleague, it’s clear that Rothman was guiding Chandler in the plan. “Rothman wrote letter to Chandler advising him how to report child abuse without liability to parent,” the entry reads. At this point, there still had been made no demands or formal accusations, only veiled assertions that had become intertwined with a fierce custody battle. On August 4, 1993, however, things became very clear. Chandler and his son met with Jackson and Pellicano in a suite at the Westwood Marquis Hotel. On seeing Jackson, says Pellicano, Chandler gave the singer an affectionate hug (a gesture, some say, that would seem to belie the dentist’s suspicions that Jackson had molested his son), then reached into his pocket, pulled out Abrams’s letter and began reading passages from it. When Chandler got to the parts about child molestation, the boy, says Pellicano, put his head down and then looked up at Jackson with a surprised expression, as if to say “I didn’t say that.” As the meeting broke up, Chandler pointed his finger at Jackson, says Pellicano, and warned “I’m going to ruin you.”
At a meeting with Pellicano in Rothman’s office later that evening, Chandler and Rothman made their demand - $20 million.
On August 13, there was another meeting in Rothman’s office. Pellicano came back with a counteroffer — a $350,000 screenwriting deal. Pellicano says he made the offer as a way to resolve the custody dispute and give Chandler an opportunity to spend more time with his son by working on a screenplay together. Chandler rejected the offer. Rothman made a counterdemand — a deal for three screenplays or nothing — which was spurned. In the diary of Rothman’s ex-colleague, an August 24 entry reveals Chandler’s disappointment: “I almost had a $20 million deal,” he was overhear telling Rothman.
Before Chandler took control of his son, the only one making allegations against Jackson was Chandler himself — the boy had never accused the singer of any wrongdoing. That changed one day in Chandler’s Beverly Hills dental office.
In the presence of Chandler and Mark Torbiner, a dental anesthesiologist, the boy was administered the controversial drug sodium Amytal — which some mistakenly believe is a truth serum. And it was after this session that the boy first made his charges against Jackson. A newsman at KCBS-TV, in L.A., reported on May 3 of this year that Chandler had used the drug on his son, but the dentist claimed he did so only to pull his son’s tooth and that while under the drug’s influence, the boy came out with allegations. Asked for this article about his use of the drug on the boy, Torbiner replied: “If I used it, it was for dental purposes.”
Given the facts about sodium Amytal and a recent landmark case that involved the drug, the boy’s allegations, say several medical experts, must be viewed as unreliable, if not highly questionable.
“It’s a psychiatric medication that cannot be relied on to produce fact,” says Dr. Resnick, the Cleveland psychiatrist. “People are very suggestible under it. People will say things under sodium Amytal that are blatantly untrue.” Sodium Amytal is a barbiturate, an invasive drug that puts people in a hypnotic state when it’s injected intravenously.
Primarily administered for the treatment of amnesia, it first came into use during World War II, on soldiers traumatized — some into catatonic states — by the horrors of war. Scientific studies done in 1952 debunked the drug as a truth serum and instead demonstrated its risks: False memories can be easily implanted in those under its influence. “It is quite possible to implant an idea through the mere asking of a question,” says Resnick. But its effects are apparently even more insidious: “The idea can become their memory, and studies have shown that even when you tell them the truth, they will swear on a stack of Bibles that it happened,” says Resnick.
Recently, the reliability of the drug became an issue in a high-profile trial in Napa County, California. After undergoing numerous therapy sessions, at least one of which included the use of sodium Amytal, 20-year-old Holly Ramona accused her father of molesting her as a child. Gary Ramona vehemently denied the charge and sued his daughter’s therapist and the psychiatrist who had administered the drug. This past May, jurors sided with Gary Ramona, believing that the therapist and the psychiatrist may have reinforced memories that were false. Gary Ramona’s was the first successful legal challenge to the so-called “repressed memory phenomenon” that has produced thousands of sexual-abuse allegations over the past decade.
As for Chandler’s story about using the drug to sedate his son during a tooth extraction, that too seems dubious, in light of the drug’s customary use. “It’s absolutely a psychiatric drug,” says Dr. Kenneth Gottlieb, a San Francisco psychiatrist who has administered sodium Amytal to amnesia patients. Dr. John Yagiela, the coordinator of the anesthesia and pain control department of UCLA’s school of dentistry, adds, “It’s unusual for it to be used [for pulling a tooth]. It makes no sense when better, safer alternatives are available. It would not be my choice.”
Because of sodium Amytal’s potential side effects, some doctors will administer it only in a hospital. “I would never want to use a drug that tampers with a person’s unconscious unless there was no other drug available,” says Gottlieb. “And I would not use it without resuscitating equipment, in case of allergic reaction, and only with an M.D. anesthesiologist present.”
Chandler, it seems, did not follow these guidelines. He had the procedure performed on his son in his office, and he relied on the dental anesthesiologist Mark Torbiner for expertise. (It was Torbiner who’d introduced Chandler and Rothman in 1991, when Rothman needed dental work.)
The nature of Torbiner’s practice appears to have made it highly successful. “He boasts that he has $100 a month overhead and $40,000 a month income,” says Nylla Jones, a former patient of his. Torbiner doesn’t have an office for seeing patients; rather, he travels to various dental offices around the city, where he administers anesthesia during procedures.
This magazine has learned that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is probing another aspect of Torbiner’s business practices: He makes housecalls to administer drugs — mostly morphine and Demerol — not only postoperatively to his dental patients but also, it seems, to those suffering pain whose source has nothing to do with dental work. He arrives at the homes of his clients — some of them celebrities — carrying a kind of fishing-tackle box that contains drugs and syringes. At one time, the license plate on his Jaguar read “SLPYDOC.” According to Jones, Torbiner charges $350 for a basic ten-to-twenty-minute visit. In what Jones describes as standard practice, when it’s unclear how long Torbiner will need to stay, the client, anticipating the stupor that will soon set in, leaves a blank check for Torbiner to fill in with the appropriate amount.
Torbiner wasn’t always successful. In 1989, he got caught in a lie and was asked to resign from UCLA, where he was an assistant professor at the school of dentistry. Torbiner had asked to take a half-day off so he could observe a religious holiday but was later found to have worked at a dental office instead.
A check of Torbiner’s credentials with the Board of Dental Examiners indicates that he is restricted by law to administering drugs solely for dental-related procedures. But there is clear evidence that he has not abided by those restrictions. In fact, on at least eight occasions, Torbiner has given a general anesthetic to Barry Rothman, during hair-transplant procedures. Though normally a local anesthetic would be injected into the scalp, “Barry is so afraid of the pain,” says Dr. James De Yarman, the San Diego physician who performed Rothman’s transplants, “that [he] wanted to be put out completely.” De Yarman said he was “amazed” to learn that Torbiner is a dentist, having assumed all along that he was an M.D.
In another instance, Torbiner came to the home of Nylla Jones, she says, and injected her with Demerol to help dull the pain that followed her appendectomy.
On August 16, three days after Chandler and Rothman rejected the $350,000 script deal, the situation came to a head. On behalf of June Chandler Schwartz, Michael Freeman notified Rothman that he would be filing papersituation came to a head. On behalf of June Chandler Schwartz, Michael Freeman notified Rothman that he would be filing papers early the next morning that would force Chandler to turn over the boy. Reacting quickly, Chandler took his son to Mathis Abrams, the psychiatrist who’d provided Rothman with his assessment of the hypothetical child-abuse situation. During a three-hour session, the boy alleged that Jackson had engaged in a sexual relationship with him. He talked of masturbation, kissing, fondling of nipples and oral sex.
The next step was inevitable. Abrams, who is required by law to report any such accusation to authorities, called a social worker at the Department of Children’s Services, who in turn contacted the police. The full-scale investigation of Michael Jackson was about to begin.
Five days after Abrams called the authorities, the media got wind of the investigation. On Sunday morning, August 22, Don Ray, a free-lance reporter in Burbank, was asleep when his phone rang. The caller, one of his tipsters, said that warrants had been issued to search Jackson’s ranch and condominium. Ray sold the story to L.A.’s KNBC-TV, which broke the news at 4 P.M. the following day.
After that, Ray “watched this story go away like a freight train,” he says. Within twenty-four hours, Jackson was the lead story on seventy-three TV news broadcasts in the Los Angeles area alone and was on the front page of every British newspaper. The story of Michael Jackson and the 13-year-old boy became a frenzy of hype and unsubstantiated rumor, with the line between tabloid and mainstream media virtually eliminated.
The extent of the allegations against Jackson wasn’t known until August 25. A person inside the DCS illegally leaked a copy of the abuse report to Diane Dimond of Hard Copy. Within hours, the L.A. office of a British news service also got the report and began selling copies to any reporter willing to pay $750. The following day, the world knew about the graphic details in the leaked report. “While laying next to each other in bed, Mr. Jackson put his hand under [the child’s] shorts,” the social worker had written. From there, the coverage soon demonstrated that anything about Jackson would be fair game.
“Competition among news organizations became so fierce,” says KNBC reporter Conan Nolan, that “stories weren’t being checked out. It was very unfortunate.” The National Enquirer put twenty reporters and editors on the story. One team knocked on 500 doors in Brentwood trying to find Evan Chandler and his son. Using property records, they finally did, catching up with Chandler in his black Mercedes. “He was not a happy man. But I was,” said Andy O’Brien, a tabloid photographer.
Next came the accusers — Jackson’s former employees. First, Stella and Philippe Lemarque, Jackson’ ex-housekeepers, tried to sell their story to the tabloids with the help of broker Paul Barresi, a former porn star. They asked for as much as half a million dollars but wound up selling an interview to The Globe of Britain for $15,000. The Quindoys, a Filipino couple who had worked at Neverland, followed. When their asking price was $100,000, they said ” ‘the hand was outside the kid’s pants,’ ” Barresi told a producer of Frontline, a PBS program. “As soon as their price went up to $500,000, the hand went inside the pants. So come on.” The L.A. district attorney’s office eventually concluded that both couples were useless as witnesses.
Next came the bodyguards. Purporting to take the journalistic high road, Hard Copy’s Diane Dimond told Frontline in early November of last year that her program was “pristinely clean on this. We paid no money for this story at all.” But two weeks later, as a Hard Copy contract reveals, the show was negotiating a $100,000 payment to five former Jackson security guards who were planning to file a $10 million lawsuit alleging wrongful termination of their jobs.
On December 1, with the deal in place, two of the guards appeared on the program; they had been fired, Dimond told viewers, because “they knew too much about Michael Jackson’s strange relationship with young boys.” In reality, as their depositions under oath three months later reveal, it was clear they had never actually seen Jackson do anything improper with Chandler’s son or any other child:
“So you don’t know anything about Mr. Jackson and [the boy], do you?” one of Jackson’s attorneys asked former security guard Morris Williams under oath.
“All I know is from the sworn documents that other people have sworn to.”
“But other than what someone else may have said, you have no firsthand knowledge about Mr. Jackson and [the boy], do you?”
“That’s correct.”
“Have you spoken to a child who has ever told you that Mr. Jackson did anything improper with the child?”
“No.”
When asked by Jackson’s attorney where he had gotten his impressions, Williams replied: “Just what I’ve been hearing in the media and what I’ve experienced with my own eyes.”
“Okay. That’s the point. You experienced nothing with your own eyes, did you?”
“That’s right, nothing.”
(The guards’ lawsuit, filed in March 1994, was still pending as this article went to press.)
Note: The case was thrown out of court in July 1995. The Press Reports.
Next came the maid. On December 15, Hard Copy presented “The Bedroom Maid’s Painful Secret.” Blanca Francia told Dimond and other reporters that she had seen a naked Jackson taking showers and Jacuzzi baths with young boys. She also told Dimond that she had witnessed her own son in compromising positions with Jackson — an allegation that the grand juries apparently never found credible.
A copy of Francia’s sworn testimony reveals that Hard Copy paid her $20,000, and had Dimond checked out the woman’s claims, she would have found them to be false. Under deposition by a Jackson attorney, Francia admitted she had never actually see Jackson shower with anyone nor had she seen him naked with boys in his Jacuzzi. They always had their swimming trunks on, she acknowledged.
The coverage, says Michael Levine, a Jackson press representative, “followed a proctologist’s view of the world. Hard Copy was loathsome. The vicious and vile treatment of this man in the media was for selfish reasons. [Even] if you have never bought a Michael Jackson record in your life, you should be very concerned. Society is built on very few pillars. One of them is truth. When you abandon that, it’s a slippery slope.”
The investigation of Jackson, which by October 1993 would grow to involve at least twelve detectives from Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties, was instigated in part by the perceptions of one psychiatrist, Mathis Abrams, who had no particular expertise in child sexual abuse. Abrams, the DCS caseworker’s report noted, “feels the child is telling the truth.” In an era of widespread and often false claims of child molestation, police and prosecutors have come to give great weight to the testimony of psychiatrists, therapists and social workers.
Police seized Jackson’s telephone books during the raid on his residences in August and questioned close to thirty children and their families. Some, such as Brett Barnes and Wade Robson, said they had shared Jackson’s bed, but like all the others, they gave the same response — Jackson had done nothing wrong. “The evidence was very good for us,” says an attorney who worked on Jackson’s defense. “The other side had nothing but a big mouth.”
Despite the scant evidence supporting their belief that Jackson was guilty, the police stepped up their efforts. Two officers flew to the Philippines to try to nail down the Quindoys’ “hand in the pants” story, but apparently decided it lacked credibility. The police also employed aggressive investigative techniques — including allegedly telling lies — to push the children into making accusations against Jackson. According to several parents who complained to Bert Fields, officers told them unequivocally that their children had been molested, even though the children denied to their parents that anything bad had happened. The police, Fields complained in a letter to Los Angeles Police Chief Willie Williams, “have also frightened youngsters with outrageous lies, such as ‘We have nude photos of you.’ There are, of course, no such photos.” One officer, Federico Sicard, told attorney Michael Freeman that he had lied to the children he’d interviewed and told them that he himself had been molested as a child, says Freeman. Sicard did not respond to requests for an interview for this article.
All along, June Chandler Schwartz rejected the charges Chandler was making against Jackson — until a meeting with police in late August 1993. Officers Sicard and Rosibel Ferrufino made a statement that began to change her mind. “[The officers] admitted they only had one boy,” says Freeman, who attended the meeting, “but they said, ‘We’re convinced Michael Jackson molested this boy because he fits the classic profile of a pedophile perfectly.’ ”
“There’s no such thing as a classic profile. They made a completely foolish and illogical error,” says Dr. Ralph Underwager, a Minneapolis psychiatrist who has treated pedophiles and victims of incest since 1953. Jackson, he believes, “got nailed” because of “misconceptions like these that have been allowed to parade as fact in an era of hysteria.” In truth, as a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study shows, many child-abuse allegations — 48 percent of those filed in 1990 — proved to be unfounded.
“It was just a matter of time before someone like Jackson became a target,” says Phillip Resnick. “He’s rich, bizarre, hangs around with kids and there is a fragility to him. The atmosphere is such that an accusation must mean it happened.”
The seeds of settlement were already being sown as the police investigation continued in both counties through the fall of 1993. And a behind-the-scenes battle among Jackson’s lawyers for control of the case, which would ultimately alter the course the defense would take, had begun.
By then, June Chandler Schwartz and Dave Schwartz had united with Evan Chandler against Jackson. The boy’s mother, say several sources, feared what Chandler and Rothman might do if she didn’t side with them. She worried that they would try to advance a charge against her of parental neglect for allowing her son to have sleepovers with Jackson. Her attorney, Michael Freeman, in turn, resigned in disgust, saying later that “the whole thing was such a mess. I felt uncomfortable with Evan.
He isn’t a genuine person, and I sensed he wasn’t playing things
straight.”
Over the months, lawyers for both sides were retained, demoted and ousted as they feuded over the best strategy to take. Rothman ceased being Chandler’s lawyer in late August, when the Jackson camp filed extortion charges against the two. Both then hired high-priced criminal defense attorneys to represent them.. (Rothman retained Robert Shapiro, now O.J. Simpson’s chief lawyer.) According to the diary kept by Rothman’s former colleague, on August 26, before the extortion charges were filed, Chandler was heard to say “It’s my ass that’s on the line and in danger of going to prison.” The investigation into the extortion charges was superficial because, says a source, “the police never took it that seriously. But a whole lot more could have been done.” For example, as they had done with Jackson, the police could have sought warrants to search the homes and offices of Rothman and Chandler. And when both men, through their attorneys, declined to be interviewed by police, a grand jury could have been convened.
In mid-September, Larry Feldman, a civil attorney who’d served as head of the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Association, began representing Chandler’s son and immediately took control of the situation. He filed a $30 million civil lawsuit against Jackson, which would prove to be the beginning of the end.
Once news of the suit spread, the wolves began lining up at the door. According to a member of Jackson’s legal team, “Feldman got dozens of letters from all kinds of people saying they’d been molested by Jackson. They went through all of them trying to find somebody, and they found zero.”
With the possibility of criminal charges against Jackson now looming, Bert Fields brought in Howard Weitzman, a well-known criminal-defense lawyer with a string of high-profile clients — including John DeLorean, whose trail he won, and Kim Basinger, whose Boxing Helena contract
dispute he lost. (Also, for a short time this June, Weitzman was O.J. Simpson’s attorney.) Some predicted a problem between the two lawyers early on. There wasn’t room for two strong attorneys used to running their own show.
From the day Weitzman joined Jackson’s defense team, “he was talking settlement,” says Bonnie Ezkenazi, an attorney who worked for the defense. With Fields and Pellicano still in control of Jackson’s defense, they adopted an aggressive strategy. They believed staunchly in Jackson’s innocence and vowed to fight the charges in court. Pellicano began gathering evidence to use in the trial, which was scheduled for March 21, 1994. “They had a very weak case,” says Fields. “We wanted to fight. Michael wanted to fight and go through a trial. We felt we could win.”
Dissension within the Jackson camp accelerated on November 12, after Jackson’s publicist announced at a press conference that the singer was canceling the remainder of his world tour to go into a drug-rehabilitation program to treat his addiction to painkillers. Fields later told reporters that Jackson was “barely able to function adequately on an intellectual level.” Others in Jackson’s camp felt it was a mistake to portray the singer as incompetent. “It was important,” Fields says, “to tell the truth. [Larry] Feldman and the press took the position that Michael was trying to hide and that it was all a scam. But it wasn’t.”
On November 23, the friction peaked. Based on information he says he got from Weitzman, Fields told a courtroom full of reporters that a criminal indictmentold a courtroom full of reporters that a criminal indictment against Jackson seemed imminent. Fields had a reason for making the
statement: He was trying to delay the boy’s civil suit by establishing that there was an impending criminal case that should be tried first. Outside the courtroom, reporters asked why Fields had made the announcement, to which Weitzman replied essentially that Fields “misspoke himself.” The comment infuriated Fields, “because it wasn’t true,” he says. “It was just an outrage. I was very upset with Howard.” Fields
“There was this vast group of people all wanting to do a different thing, and it was like moving through molasses to get a decision,” says Fields. “It was a nightmare, and I wanted to get the hell out of it.” Pellicano, who had received his share of flak for his aggressive manner, resigned at the same time.
With Fields and Pellicano gone, Weitzman brought in Johnnie Cochran Jr., a well-known civil attorney who is now helping defend O.J. Simpson. And John Branca, whom Fields had replaced as Jackson’s general counsel in 1990, was back on board. In late 1993, as DAs in both Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties convened grand juries to assess whether criminal charges should be filed against Jackson, the defense strategy changed course and talk of settling the civil case began in earnest, even though his new team also believed in Jackson’s innocence.
Why would Jackson’s side agree to settle out of court, given his claims of innocence and the questionable evidence against him? His attorneys apparently decided there were many factors that argued against taking the case to civil court. Among them was the fact that Jackson’s emotional fragility would be tested by the oppressive media coverage that would likely plague the singer day after day during a trial that could last as long as six months. Politics and racial issues had also
seeped into legal proceedings — particularly in Los Angeles, which was still recovering from the Rodney King ordeal — and the defense feared that a court of law could not be counted on to deliver justice. Then, too, there was the jury mix to consider. As one attorney says, “They figured that Hispanics might resent [Jackson] for his money, blacks might resent him f