#Leaving Neverland: Michael Jackson and Me, Channel 4, My4, director Dan Reed.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/leaving-neverland-michael-jackson-and-me/on-demand/63905-001

It’s easy to condemn now that we know that Michael Jackson was a serial paedophile. Money and fame kept him safe. I remember reading something and it went along the lines of one of Michael Jackson’s advisors warned him not to have young boys in his bed. To stop having sex with them. And Michael Jackson said, ‘No’. There’s a line here that rings out. Michael Jackson is on the phone to Jody Robson, the mother of Wade Robson, the seven-year old child he’s sexually abusing, and he’s asking her to let Jody come and stay with him for a year. And she said ‘No.’

The idea seems so outlandish. Why would an Australian mother of a seven-year-old boy let him go and live with Michael Jackson? But the answer is  here. She trusted him. In a way she felt sorry for him. As did the mother of James (Jimmy) Safechuck, who was also sexually abused and appears in the programme. They felt that despite his vast wealth and success he was lonely, vulnerable and childish too. They could mother him. But Michael Jackson warned Jody, Wade’s mother, he always got what he wanted. And he was right – he did.

There’s no need for the usual tools of drama. Re-enactments, using actors, child actors in this case, playing the part of Jimmy Safechuck and Wade Robson. They speak for themselves. Grown men, now, telling you how it worked. Their mother’s appear too, older and wiser.  Pattern recognition is always easier when you know what it is you’re looking at.

You couldn’t get in touch with Michael Jackson is the message they knew. Michael Jackson got in touch with you. He was a sexual predator, looking for cute kids.

December 1986, a neighbour of Jimmy Sandchuck, said how cute he was and how she knew an agent that would get him into adverts and TV. ‘I’ll take him,’ the agent said

Michael Jackson said the same thing. Jimmy Sandchuck appeared in a Pepsi advert with Jackson. Then Jackson got in touch. He’d be on the phone for hours. Buddy up. Part of the schmooze wasn’t just changing Jimmy’s life, it was charming the mothers of the child he wanted to abuse. Promises were kept. Trips on flights and fancy games and whatever the heart desired was laid out and laid on. Neverland was like the island where Pinocchio went and the kids turned to asses and Michael Jackson’s nose never grew bigger. His skin got whiter. He always got what he wanted.

Second stage of buddying up was staying overnight. Michael convinced these kids and their parents there was no harm in it. He was such a lonely man-child. He needed company. They were buddies. And slept in the same bed. That’s when he got physical.

Third stage. Touching on top of the child’s pants. Fondling, inside the pants. Sucking the child’s penis. Then having the child perform oral sex on him. We know this because we have verification from Jimmy and Wade.

Jimmy reminds us, I was seven-year old, for christsake, and I’d a man’s penis in my mouth.

Michael liked them to squat on the bed with their ass cheeks pulled apart. Sometimes he’d rim them, which is too adult a description. Michael liked getting his nipples tweaked. Pattern recognition.

He’d tell Jimmy and Wade to shelf their feelings, like he learned to do. To distrust their mum’s. They wanted to keep them apart. God had brought them together and they were in love. So much in love. They had to practice drills. Get their clothes on, quickly, without any noise, when they thought somebody was coming. Michael had warned them, he’d go to jail if they got caught and so would they. But they’d be together forever.

Fourth stage, the replacement part. Jimmy gets dropped for Wade. Wade gets dropped for the child actor, Macaulay Culkin, who insisted nothing had happened between him and Mr Jackson. Brett Barnes replaced Culkin and Jimmy met him, but by that time he was an older boy and relegated to the kind of rooms his mother was forced to sleep in. Jimmy and Michael still had sex. But he was growing older and wiser and Michael Jackson was going for younger and prettier. Pattern recognition. Barnes denies he had sex with Jackson. Good boy. Watch your nose grow. Part two tonight.