posted
His house is getting raided by the cops, based on allegations made by a twelve-year-old boy. That's all I know so far; heard it on the news on my way to work.
I haven't heard if this is a new case or an older one, but if it's recent, then WHY THE HECK DID SOME PARENT LET THEIR KID ANYWHERE NEAR MICHAEL JACKSON?!
Why did anyone ever? It boggles the mind.
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quote:In a statement issued by Backerman, Jackson is quoted as saying, "These characters always seem to surface with a dreadful allegation just as another project, an album, a video, is being released."
Talk about a self-centered world.
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posted
Is Michael Jackson releasing something? Hm. I think trying to suppress it with an allegation like this would probably be redundant ...
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quote:The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer came under new scrutiny in February, when he admitted during an ABC television documentary that he often sleeps in the same bed with young guests to his ranch.
"When you say bed, you're thinking sexual," the entertainer said at the time. "It's not sexual, we're going to sleep. I tuck them in...it's very charming, it's very sweet."
posted
I am not saying that Micheal Jackson isn't a child molester by a long shot, but he does have a lot of money that parents would love to get hands on using their kids. Of course, he puts himself into these situations.
My point: Jackson is an easy target, and he's innocent until proven guilty (even if found guilty in the past, although not sure if he ever was).
If I had the kind of fame and money he had I would probably be equally self-centered. What millionair actor/musician ISN'T self-centered and egotistacal?
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posted
Michael Jackson is a scary looking man. I hate seeing him on the cover of tabloids as it makes me jump out of my skin with revulsion.
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posted
The ones mentioned in the interview kat cited were primarily inner-city/disadvantaged kids. He brings 'em in groups to Neverland. Which is a great treat for them, perhaps -- but who the heck decided it was a good idea to let the kids SLEEP there?
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posted
They said on the news that a therapist reported abuse when his (or her - I don't remember which) 12-year-old paitent confided in him. That suggests that this is not about money.
Dr.M and I had an interesting conversation about it, though. He asked me if I thought the parents should turn him into the authorities or go for the lawsuit. I immediately said that they should turn him in. We've had discussions in the past about whether crime victims can get more justice from criminal or civil courts (the most prominent example being the Goldman family) and I usually lean toward the civil courts. However, in this case the parents have an obligation to do everything in their power to make sure that the person who hurt their child can never hurt another child and that involves turning him in. If they do not, then they are partly responsible for all the children he hurts afterwards. I personally couldn't live with myself.
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posted
I've been hearing that Michael Jackson had left the country either yesterday or the day before after being in Las Vegas. This might be spurious, or just coincidence, or very suspicious. Anyone know?
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posted
Strangely enough, in the upcoming legal process, he might just use the "I left this planet long ago" defense.
The police have been pretty cagey as to whether Jackson has already left the country or not. He was prepared to the last time and I am wondering if he might have beat them to it this time. Time will tell.
Innocent until proven guilty and all, but there's something about how the DA looked at the press conference that makes me think he smells blood.
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posted
Michael Jackson seems like a pretty darn weird and naive guy. On the one hand I want to feel sorry for him and suspect he did something without realizing how it would be interpreted by the kid. On the other hand, I'd put nothing past him, if just out of sheer weirdness. And he was probably asking for this...
One thing is a given though - he's guilty in the eyes of the public regardless of what happens.
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The first time we hear about kids sleeping with him, one could wonder if it was just odd behavior. I remember one psychologist saying that MJ in all respects appears to have stopped maturing around the age of 10, when a lot of pressure started getting loaded on him by his parents in show business. Sleeping with the boys was just like a sleep over.
There may be some truth to it. There is probably some truth to that state of mind for child molestors too. Some part of them remains like a child, yet they are sexualized.
The second time, he's already been burned by that fire and shouldn't engage in that behavior again, at all. Unless he can't help himself. The temptation is too great.
We want to know that he is naive. We don't want to know that there is a monster there. So many times these predators are the sweetest, nicest guys in all aspects. You don't expect it of them.
He should still have a trial. I can imagine scenarios where he is innocent of perversion. But I doubt it.
If he is guilty, think of those children who've now been molested by him. Both their parents and they have been smeared as liars and money grabbers, and they are outcasts in society.
What can avail us? There is no revenge, no anger, no law, no forgiveness that can keep it out of the world and stop it from happening.
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quote:On the one hand I want to feel sorry for him and suspect he did something without realizing how it would be interpreted by the kid.
Yesterday I heard a commentator read from the original charges and depositions against him ten years ago. They were disturbingly explicit.
Very explicit.
I suppose it's not inconceivable that the multiple accusers are all lying.
But this is definitely not a misunderstanding. The actions described were not open to misinterpretation (like, say, misinterpreting a football-player style slap on the butt for sexual groping); they were pretty unambiguous sexual acts.
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quote:But this is definitely not a misunderstanding. The actions described were not open to misinterpretation (like, say, misinterpreting a football-player style slap on the butt for sexual groping); they were pretty unambiguous sexual acts.
You forget - this is Micheal Jackson, a guy who doesn't seem to realize the potential problems associated with dangling babies over balconies and having young kids over for sleepovers.
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You are putting the very first action he would take to get kids in his control under the category 'naive, doesn't understand what he's doing' things. If he is guilty, he has sleepovers so he can take advantage of these boys.
This happens so much in this kind of crime. It goes on for years because people don't think that such a person could do such a thing. Successful pedophiles are successful because they also gain the trust of the adults.
The pedophile's process is to get the kids to trust them, to have the kids like them and want to be with them. They are seducing children, and so they use the devices that work with children. Let's play. Giving them a toy they really want. Owning an amusement park and zoo. Neverland is a pedophile's dream.
If he is guilty of that, he has a very poor sense of what appropriate behavior is, and dangling a baby over a balcony is an indication of that. If anything, that action proves to me not that he is merely naive, but he is disturbingly out of touch with reality. Not in a sweet wierd artistic way, but in a way that can harm others.
posted
Here's a link at The Smoking Gun to some info on this whole case: The Smoking Gun
What a scary individual. I also wonder about ANY parent that would let their child spend many nights with Jackson. I can only assume that they are either completely clueless and idiotic OR they are basically prostituting their son in hopes of getting a 15 million dollar out of court settlement like the last case against Jackson.
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posted
I don't think I've ever felt so disgusted and so dirty as when I followed that link and saw what had been alleged. I see now why they changed California law after this case was whisked away from the courts.
If he is guilty of the crimes, will the punishments come anywhere close to what should be done?
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posted
Oh my stars. If that is true, he needs to be locked up somewhere very, very tightly. Why on earth?
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posted
I'm all for public castration. Fill a stadium, drop his pants, slice it off, everyone cheers. I see it as a fair solution. That is, of course, if he guilty.
posted
Why is he still walking around? Why would any parents let their child sleep with an adult man? Why is he such a manipulative creep?
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I think it's worth noting that most of the allegations do not involve his own private parts, but those of the boys.
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posted
I wish I could take my brain out and scrub what I read from it. I really do.
In my line of work, I've read depositions from child molestation and child rape cases before. I've sat in courtrooms and heard the testimonies. Each time it has left something in me that I wish I could get rid of. As horrible as those were, this one feels even worse, more abhorrent. Perhaps because of the ease at which you can conjure up a mental image of Michael Jackson, hear his voice, etc. He's made himself so everpresent in our culture over the decades, whether as freak or hero, that you can't get him out of your mind.
And you can't get all of those images of children he was around out of your head. That adulation he's received, the extroverted hermit lifestyle, the transformations again and again.
Sheesh, this is just bothering me to no end. It took time to put all of those prior cases I saw away, to where I could go on without that slightly sick feeling in my stomach always rolling around. Now I wonder, how long will this be a daily struggle? How long will a court case be drawn out? How long will it be forced on our collective psyches? How long will I have to taste bile each time I see his face or hear his name?
Sorry for the rant, just trying to get it out of my system.
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posted
The big question is why adults in these kids' lives allowed this to happen. As others have said.
So my question is this: should DCF hold those adults responsible? It seems like criminal negligence/irresponsibility with a child entrusted to ones care.
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quote: should DCF hold those adults responsible? It seems like criminal negligence/irresponsibility with a child entrusted to ones care.
As much as MJ disgusts me and as stupid as I think the parents of these children are, I think it would be difficult to hold them responsible legally. MJ was cleared of the charges 10 years ago, whether or not this was the right thing to do. There is only suspicion that was never allowed to be proven.
Plus MJ is a manipulator. He has obviously gained the trust of these people over a long period of time. Look at the alligations from the last time. MJ slowly built the trust of the mother in that case. In the new case I would assume a similar situation. A slow building of trust that allowd the parent to say, "well, he is a nice man and so caring. Those past charges must have really been a money thing" or something to that effect. People like MJ are preditors, hunters. They know how to lead their prey.
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posted
The people I’m thinking of aren’t the parents, who may have been fooled/seduced, but Jackson’s staff. There had to be multiple people who knew that something inappropriate was happening and helped to cover it up.
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posted
Well, I might lose this argument, but here goes . . .
DCF has a different standard of proof than a criminal court does. You look at the preponderance of evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Here is a man who has been acused multiple times of hild molestation, and has openly expressed some reasonably unusual views about what is acceptale when dealing with children. None of this means he should be in jail, but I think they are all good signs that one shouldn't let children in ones care spend the night, or be with him unsupervised.
I think you could make a pretty good argument that parents who are foolish/gullible/greedy/stupid enough to have given Michael Jackson unsupervised access to children in their care are not competent to be trusted with children, and share guilt for exposing their children to risk.
If you leave your children with a babysitter who is under thirteen and DCF finds out about it, you could be in hot water. DCF policy says kids under thirteen should not be left alone at home period, let alone in charge of other kids. Which is more irresponsible . . . trusting the ten-year old girl next door with your kids, or letting Michael Jackson be alone with them? To me the answer is pretty clearly the latter. So how come you can get in legal trouble over the former but not the latter?
It's also troubling that many of these kids were already apparently in some sort of government care. I'm not positive, but I have heard many references to the fact that many of the kids he spends time with are "disadvantaged" kids, which gives me a sense that something is systematic enough to identify and bring thee kidds to him . . . like DCF or a childrens' home or something. Shouldn't a child-welfare employee who exposes kids to this risk be fired?
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posted
IMO, Icarus is completely correct and any parents who allowed their children to be put in a situation - where they are alone with someone who has had so many rumors about their behavior with kids, and who has made such questionable statements about behavior with kids - should be charged with child endangerment. The point is not whether or not any of these rumors or accusations are true; the point is, if one cares about one's children, one don't take the chance that they are true. If one does take that chance, and then something untoward happens, some of the blame should fall on those parents. And I don't think that any such parents can claim ignorance of the charges and rumors - anyone who doesn't know about those rumors has been living off-planet for, what, the past ten years or so.
posted
Eeww... If those charges were true, one could hardly chalk it up to naivete.
Having said this, even if he had been found guilty of all that, calls for castration and other cruel or unusual punishment aren't appropriate either. Even murderers don't get that.
------
Oh, yeah, also... the news is beginning to annoy me. I mean, there are OTHER stories going on. Bush in Britain? This isn't even the first time this happen to Jackson.
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posted
Actually, my preferred news sources have not particularly been emphasizing this over other news stories. It's been the third or fourth story down everywhere.
It's on AM radio where this story seems to be all they're covering.
-o-
I'm all for cruel and unusual punishment, actually. I'm just not sure castration will really accomplish anything. But I've been down that road on Hatrack before.
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posted
Don't turn on Fox news, then. He walked into the back of the police station in handcuffs around 3:30 and they've been showing that two-second clip since then, nonstop, in slow motion.
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It's just that, considering the subject of this thread, MJ on a lamb is something we (well, at least I) REALLY don't want to see.
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