Depending upon the preconceptions about Michael Jackson’s guilt or innocence you bring with you to HBO’s Leaving Neverland, you’ll find it either a harrowing how-to guide on the grooming of children, or a show-case of the acting skills of two very cynical and greedy con-men.
Wade Robson and James Safechuck claim to have suffered years of abuse at the hands – and various other body parts – of Michael Jackson, a campaign that went hand-in-glove with a relentless charm blitzkrieg that saw the boys and their families showered with gifts, money, love and attention.
Because the documentary offers no physical evidence or conclusive ‘proof’ of Jackson’s alleged crimes, it was natural for viewers to slip into the roles of arm-chair detectives and amateur psychologists: scrutinising Robson and Safechuck’s every motivation, facial twitch, hand gesture and intonation, hoping to discover the truth somewhere in that web of cues.
Do Safechuck and Robson seem upset enough? Do they seem too upset? Is their tone too lively? Too flat? What are they doing with their eyes? Are they being too emotional, or too clinical?
It’s a very human impulse: to seek; to search; to pull apart; to judge. We like nothing better than to impose and transpose our ideas and ideals about the world and human interactions on friends and strangers alike. We know people, right? We’re great judges of character. Aren’t we?
Most of the time, though, our moment-to-moment ‘instincts’ or knee-jerk reactions are wrong, or only ‘right’ within the narrow parameters we set for ourselves based upon the limited information to which we have access; all filtered, of course, through our biases. It’s too easy to imagine certainty in the shadows when you’re busy being blinded by the light of your own self-righteousness.
Wade Robson
Cautionary examples of micro-scrutiny and projection abound, in fiction as in real life, the most striking example of which can be found in Albert Camus’ exemplary work ‘The Stranger’. The story’s narrator is condemned to death for a crime of self-defence; judged guilty almost entirely on the basis of his muted reaction to his mother’s unrelated death a few weeks previously. He didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral. This perceived lack of feeling was witnessed by the townsfolk, twelve of whom went on to serve on his jury. A man who doesn’t weep for his dear, departed mother, they reasoned, must be a man capable of limitless evil. He’s guilty, they proclaimed. He’s a liar.
Case in point: I found myself occasionally sceptical of Robson’s testimony, particularly the uncomfortable level of detail he delivered unflinchingly to the camera, but then found myself softening towards him when a) I discovered he was married and, b) he cried in the second part of the documentary. That’s when it hit me. I don’t know what a typical abuse victim sounds like, or how they typically feel or behave. Who am I to pick apart every micro-gesture, or judge this man based upon his tears or lack thereof?
[And so fucking what if any of them are after ‘Jackson’s’ money? If I’d been offered fame and fortune, and found out too late that the price for achieving this was serial sexual abuse and the disintegration of my self-esteem and trust, damn right I’d try to take every single fucking penny of that bastard’s money. And don’t forget this – it’s all about money for those feeding from the Jackson estate, too. It’s not only the victims who have a ‘vested interested’ in safeguarding that ‘fortune’]
In the end I found it best simply to listen to the two men and their families; let their stories wash over me in their entirety, and then try to place them in their proper context: that context being Jackson’s supreme power and status; and the myriad public allegations that have been made against him since the early 1990s.
Looking back at Whacko Jacko
It seems as though the wider public’s greatest sympathies have always lain with Michael Jackson. His fans and supporters have always held him up as the proto-typical abuse victim, an almost Christ-like figure. Having been brutalised and beaten by his mean drunk of a Dad, and forced to perform in the public spotlight like a cross between a circus monkey and a cash cow, Jackson then arose – free from bondage, free from suffering – to usher the world into a new era of love and peace. Jackson was meek and mild. He’d known pain, he’d known terror, he’d known subjugation, he’d known powerlessness, and he was here to tell the world, ‘From now on, I will demonstrate my ethos of kindness and happiness, and I will do it by surrounding myself with hordes of pre-pubescent children, and sleeping with them in my bed.’
Erm… sorry, what? This has always been the snagging point, and the point around which Jackson’s legal and PR teams have spun the hardest. There can be few parents whose alarm bells fail to ring upon learning of this aspect of Jackson’s behaviour, and the fact that many of the parents of the boys who went on to claim abuse at Jackson’s hands found themselves fooled or dismissed around this point is a testament to the toxic power of money, success, and worship. Jackson seems to be above and beyond the scope of the #metoo movement. He’s like a pope; a prophet; a holy man. Jackson isn’t a mere Kevin Spacey: he’s the Catholic Church itself.
The abused often become abusers. Often, but not always, those who have been hit, hit; those who have been subjected to anger and intolerance go on to subject their nearest and dearest to anger and intolerance; those who have been touched, touch; those who have been brutalised, sexually or otherwise, go on to brutalise others in turn, or else allow themselves to be brutalised again and again and again, in a horrible escalation of the original pattern. Or both.
There’s a reason Dexter’s titular serial-killer-in-disguise brings in a tray of donuts for his cop-station co-workers every morning; there’s a reason real-life monster Jimmy Savile ran so many marathons and donated so much money to charity. It’s over-compensation, misdirection. Smoke, mirrors. Schmoozing.
Grooming.
We Brits tend to be a bit more cynical about these things given our recent experiences not just with Jimmy Savile, but with seemingly every male celebrity who ever graced a stage or set between the 1960s and the 1990s. We know that abusers can hide in plain sight, skipping over fields of whispers to shake hands with pop stars and princes alike.
I know men and women are capable of lying about rape; I know kids can lie about abuse, for all sorts of reasons. But more and more these days (excluding the TV and film industry) it seems as though our sympathies lie more with the abusers – the rich, the powerful, the savage – than they do with the victims. The poor and disenfranchised of America cheer for Donald Trump – ‘He’s just like us!’ – as all the while his unfeeling foot moves to crush them. The working-classes of the UK pour platitudes upon the Queen, a woman who likely wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.
And when a weak and spindly Michael Jackson celebrates a Not Guilty verdict by clambering on top of a parked car like a vampiric Willy Wonka, or a mutated Mister Burns, his fans erupt in a chorus of cheers, whistles and applause. That VT footage is in the documentary. It’s sickening. Jackson raises his arms aloft and makes himself into a lightning rod with which to absorb the explosive adulation of the crowd, a happy smile plastered across his plastic face.
You were accused of child molestation, Michael. And it’s not the first time. You’re not on stage. It reminded me of when Rolf Harris started singing excerpts from his greatest hits while testifying in court. Not just wildly inappropriate, but callously inconsiderate and narcissistic.
Won’t somebody please think of the children…
I’ve heard a lot of people ask, in response to this documentary, ‘Why didn’t the accusers say something sooner? Why did one of them actively lie in support of Jackson and then change his story? Kids blabber and talk, about everything and anything – why didn’t they?
This ignores the role that shame and fear play in our lives. It ignores the work that an abuser does to normalise abuse and/or to isolate their victim from their friends, family, and even reality itself. It ignores the conflicting feelings of love and loyalty a child may have towards their abuser. It ignores the fear a child may have of not being believed, or of hurting their family, even of hurting their abuser. It ignores the fear a child may have of losing that connection to their abuser that on some level they’ve been conditioned to need – a feeling of being loved, of being special – not to mention the material gains it affords them: the bribes, the promises, the luxuries. It’s a horrible, sickening process that makes children feel complicit in their own debasement.
The answer to those three questions posed at the turn of this sub-section lie in our own lives and relationships. We all come through power structures when we’re children: family, foster homes, care institutions. Even without the spectre of abuse, it can be hard to assert yourself within those dynamics. Maybe there’s an old uncle whose views you find repellent, whom you nevertheless tolerate as an adult because those hierarchical cues keep working to constrain your responses.
Maybe a single look or stray tone from either or both of your parents can seal your lips in silence or get your heart pumping like a drug-addled disco-dancer. I know grown adults in their forties and fifties who still won’t spark up a cigarette in front of their elderly parents for fear of reproach.
Look at Tony Soprano, pop fiction’s most iconic and well-rounded mob boss, a man of ferocious and absolute power who still nevertheless finds himself at the mercy of his mother’s narcissistic machinations and infanticidal fury.
Wade Robson, James Safechuck and director Dan Reed
Think about the working world. School and higher education, despite their lofty claims to unlock the unique power of the individual, serve largely as tools to mould kids into the workforce of tomorrow. What little vestiges of non-conformity still exist in a person by the time they join the job market are usually chipped away quickly by the iron hand of the corporatocracy (the only place where creativity is encouraged is in the banking system, and even then its greatest artists usually end up either in jail or in the government). We have no loyalty to our workplaces beyond our wallets. There are no childhood entanglements to complicate our relationship. But, still, most of us toe the line, and work hard not to rock the boat.
In our workplaces we’re forced to accept things and people that under different circumstances we wouldn’t have the inner-reserves of self-control to bear. Workers imagine that Human resources departments function like unions, looking out for the little guy, helping to keep bosses in check, but in reality they exist to preserve the status quo and minimise a company’s risk of haemorrhaging money to lawyers. Ditto appraisals, which are promoted as a boon for the worker, the equivalent of a wish-list to Santa sent up the chimney-spout. To your employer, though, your appraisal is simply a stored record of either your compliance or your mistakes, ultimately a form of insurance against any future legal action. ‘But what grounds do you have for this tribunal? We have three years’ worth of testimony here as to your happiness? You never spoke up before.’
Now imagine that instead of being at home or at work you’re in the orbit of one of the most iconic, powerful and adored human beings who ever lived.
Systems trap us. Our homes and possessions and families make us slaves. Most of the time, most of us take the path of least resistance. Battles are draining, and the reality is: most of them we won’t win. Even if we’re right. Even if we’ve been wronged.
That’s why we admire rebels: James Dean, John Wayne, Larry David. They blaze the trails we can’t. We’re weak. Abusers and psychopaths know this. Especially the rich and influential ones.
That’s why they invariably win, time after time. And will doubtless continue to do so. In a sense, we’re all victims; and few of us even realise we’re being abused.
We’ve now left Neverland
By the end of those four harrowing hours of interviews, interspersed with archival news and home footage, it becomes finally, painfully clear that Neverland wasn’t a waking dream for these kids, but a living nightmare; a factory disguised as a gang hut; where hungry serfs found themselves ferried along rainbow-coloured conveyor belts, on which their childhoods were plucked from them like rhino horns.
Michael Jackson’s power, fortune and legacy are all waning now, which is another reason why the bubble he tried to seal himself inside is ready to be popped once and for all.
He’s still the King of Pop with a capital P. But the ‘aedophillia’ isn’t silent anymore.
