Today, Explained - Michael Jackson, allegedly

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

Two men accuse Michael Jackson of sexually abusing them as children in a new HBO documentary. Sean Rameswaram speaks with the film's director and a lawyer representing the estate of Michael Jackson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's me, Sean, phoning in these ads really quickly. The Quip electric toothbrush. It starts at just $25. If you go to getquip.com slash explained, you get your first refills for free with your purchase of a Quip electric toothbrush. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained. Do you love Michael Jackson? I love Michael Jackson. Explained. The first part of it aired last night, the second part airs tonight, and you already know what it's about.

Leaving Neverland is much more detailed than anything we've ever seen or heard about Michael Jackson abusing kids. The allegations come from two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck. Both of them were really close to Michael Jackson when they were young, and both have defended him against allegations in the past. But now, they're saying they were manipulated and abused by a man they worshipped, a man they loved. The Michael Jackson estate is suing HBO for something like $100 million over the documentary. It's especially mad the film's director, Dan Reed, didn't reach out for comment. I spoke with Dan Reed and a lawyer from the estate of Michael Jackson for today's show, which features graphic details of sexual abuse. We're going to start with Dan Reed talking about Wade and James, and we're going to give you So Wade Robson is now 36.

He was a very talented little boy from Brisbane, Australia. First up is the eight-year-old Brisbane dancer who has impressed everyone from Michael Jackson on down, Wade Robson! He won a dance contest and got to meet Michael when he was five. And Wade dances on stage with Michael at the end of this, you know, one of the concerts on the Bad Tour. And then he doesn't see Michael again for another couple of years. So he's seven by the time he goes to Neverland to visit Michael with his grandma, with his grandpa, his mom and dad and his sister.

And they all stay at Neverland. And then Michael invites Wade to stay alone with him at Neverland while the family go on to like the Grand Canyon and do some tourism. And it's while Michael and Wade are alone that the sexual relationship begins. And who is James Safechuck? James Safechuck was an eight-year-old from Simi Valley in California when he first met Michael on the set of a Pepsi commercial. Michael? Mr. Jackson?

Jimmy was playing the wide-eyed little boy who knocks on Michael's dressing room door and walks in and then starts, like, trying on his sunglasses, and Michael then enters the room and says, Looking for me? And it's this moment of connection between the two of them. And then Jimmy went on tour with Michael Jackson. And that's where their sexual relationship began, which lasted for four or five years. According to Wade and James, how do these relationships eventually turn sexual? In James' case, this is 1987, Michael is in Australia and then kind of corresponds with him a little bit.

And then when Michael gets back from the Australian leg of his tour, Michael's getting to know the mom as well as the little boy. He gives you focused attention. And I think at that age, you want to be important and you want to be noticed and loved. So there's powerful attraction. And slowly, slowly, the deep attachment forms between the mother and Jackson,

and the mother thinks that Jackson's wonderful and considers him as a son. And it's not until June 1988 when Jackson has invited them to go on tour with him and is like you know showing them a great time and and that's when the sexual stuff begins and you know it took quite a long time with wade on the other hand the grooming is much quicker he starts having sex with wade who is seven compared to James, you know, Michael kind of jumps on Wade and has his way with him very quickly,

which suggests that he's had a lot of practice by this time. Once the abuse started, within that first week, you know, every night that I was with him, there was abuse while my mother was, you know, next door. How did people see Michael Jackson spending so much time with kids and not think it was troubling? Did it not look weird at the time? Well, I think it did, but people just swallowed the line that Michael, you know, he didn't have a childhood

and, you know, he was just kind of reenacting his childhood by spending all of his time with little boys, including his bedtime. People wonder why I always have children around because I find the thing that I never had through them, you know, including his bedtime. People wonder why I always have children around because I find the thing that I never had through them. You know, Disneyland, amusement parks, arcade games. I adore all that stuff because when I was little, it was always work, work, work, from one concert to the next.

If it wasn't concert, it was the recording studio. If it wasn't that, it was TV shows or interviews. There was always something to do. You know, a lot of people work very hard to entrench that fantasy in the media and in the minds of people who enjoyed Michael's music. Once you look at it through the eyes of the allegations that Wade and James are making, his companionship with children seems, you know, much more sinister. In the documentary, you don't spare anyone the details of the sexual abuse.

Why did you make that decision? Well, for so long, Michael portrayed himself as this childlike, innocent lover of children. And this was accompanied by, you know, some physical affection, an arm around the shoulder and, you know, hugging and, you know, kiss on the forehead. And I wanted to make it very clear that what we were talking about in the documentary was nothing like that. That what we are talking about is the type of sex that adults have, except Michael was having it with a seven-year-old. So a graphic description was, in my mind, absolutely necessary so that there was no doubt whatsoever about the kind of thing that was happening.

We couldn't draw a veil over the sexual episodes because that is the core of our story. And what were those details? Jackson's moves go from, you know, a kiss and a cuddle and stroking and stroking over the clothes to stroking under the clothes and direct contact. And then it very quickly progresses to mutual masturbation and oral sex and eventually attempted penetration. How long does it last in the case of Wade and Jimmy?

So the sexual relationship with Wade lasts six or seven years until Wade is 14. And the sexual relationship with Jimmy lasts for four to five years until Jimmy becomes interested in girls. And how does Michael manage to steal all this time from these boys away from their parents? Well, the parents believe that Michael is nurturing the boys and is a great influence on them and is a loving, caring kind of father figure. You know, both Wade's mother and Jimmy's mother

had troubled marriages, and Jackson took advantage of that. He became a close confidant of both of the moms, while at the same time telling their sons not to trust their mothers, that women were evil and trying to drive a wedge between mother and son, which is kind of classic, you know, straight out of the pedophile playbook. And Wade kept denying anything was wrong for years, right? When he was a witness at the trial against Michael, like, I don't know, 15 years ago, he denied that anything bad happened. How does he explain that? Wade explains that he loved Michael.

Michael said that he loved Wade. And that love lasted for many years, many years after the sexual relationship ended at the age of when Wade was 14. You know, he started talking about how much he loves me. What this is, is us, how we show our love for each other. Other people are ignorant and they're stupid. They'd never understand. If they ever found out what we were doing about this sexual stuff, that he and I would be pulled apart

and that we'd never be able to see each other again. So still by the age of 22, when he's asked to bear witness in favor of Michael, he has a very strong attachment to Michael. He has a strong sense of loyalty to this man who is his mentor, his father figure, his former lover, you know, close friend. And he doesn't want Michael to go to jail. So Wade goes up on the witness stand as defense witness number one.

He's a very, very persuasive witness. He says nothing bad ever happened, nothing inappropriate ever happened with Michael. And, you know, he really helped to sway the jury against this little boy who was trying to get his truth out there and trying to get justice for what Michael did to him. And, you know, Wade is distraught when Michael dies.

He had a close relationship with the family. All of this preceded his awakening. You know, that's the thing that people don't understand about child sexual abuse of this type. It is not some guy in a dirty trench coat hanging around the school gates. It's the man you trust. It's the family friend.

It's the close. It's the mentor. It's someone you look up to. And in this case, it was Michael Jackson, who both moms considered to be of close friend and almost like their own son. And then in 2013, Wade files a lawsuit against the Jackson estate.

What changed for him? The fact that Wade decided to come out and begin legal action against the Jackson estate, what changed for him? The fact that Wade decided to come out and begin legal action against the Jackson estate, that happened, in my view, mainly because he had a son. So after all these years of thinking that what happened, the sexual dimension of his relationship with Michael was quite normal and it was a manifestation of their love, and then kind of wondering why he was feeling terribly depressed

and having these nervous breakdowns. Finally, Wade realizes, as he looks at his little boy, that what Michael Jackson did to him when he was a little boy was not normal and not a good thing, because Wade looks at his little son, Koa, and imagines Michael doing to him what he had done to little Wade and becomes very angry. My immediate emotional reaction to having those images is just this rage and disgust and, you know, violent feeling.

Like I would kill anyone who did anything like that to Koa. And then kind of thinks of himself, little Wade, at the age of seven, and feels nothing. So that kind of put a question in his mind, like why do I feel nothing about, you know, what Michael did to me and why, when I imagine Michael doing this stuff to my son, why do I feel so angry? So that's like a turning point. And once James saw Wade on TV and was like, me too, basically, the same thing happened to me. And then he eventually joins in the litigation

and then becomes the second voice in the documentary. So James and Wade are litigating against the Michael Jackson estate. The court case was thrown out by Judge Beckelhoff in California and was thrown out really on a legal technicality. And Beckelhoff, the judge, was at pains to point out that his verdict in throwing out the case was no reflection on the credibility of the guy's allegations. Basically, the judge was saying, this isn't about whether or not the abuse happens. This is just about whether in California law, you can hold a corporation responsible for that kind of thing. And so the case has gone to appeal. People might just be learning about Wade and James now, but even as a kid, I noticed Michael Jackson hanging out with

Macaulay Culkin all the time. Did you consider contacting him for comment on this? This is about sexual acts and a sexual relationship that takes place behind closed doors. At no point did Wade or James say, well, Macaulay was in the bed or Macaulay was sitting in the chair in the corner while Michael was molesting me. So Macaulay was not an eyewitness to anything that happened to Wade or James. And his relationship with Michael really kind of flourished as the relationships between Michael and Wade and Michael and James were on the down. As a witness, he'd be of limited value. And certainly because he's come out on many occasions and made statements that he was never molested and that his relationship with Michael was completely normal. I knew what his position was and, you know, I didn't want to challenge what he'd said.

You feature the moms in the documentary a lot, Wade's mom and James's mom. How much did they know before and how much did they find out over the course of making this film? So Joy Robson knew nothing. And the first she knew of the sexual abuse was when Wade, he asked her to join him at the office of his psychotherapist and he told her. And that was the first she knew and she was devastated. And she hadn't suspected anything. Wade and Michael would stay in the room a lot just playing I presume playing games and they did a lot of that sort of thing watching cartoons he was a big cartoon watcher. James told his mother that Michael had done bad things but he didn't elaborate and he told her this around the time of the 2005 criminal trial but he did not elaborate and Stephanie didn't ask and she felt mortified and james was terrified

that she might tell anyone he still wanted to keep a secret but he kind of blurted out a few words to his mother and it wasn't until much later that she found out some of the details and really i think it's not until she watched the documentary that she became aware of the stark graphic sexual details i mean i I think James prepared her somewhat before she saw the film, but I think it still was terribly shocking for her. Joy Robson chose to have me fast forward through the graphic sexual descriptions because she's still not in a place where she can face that she could not bear to watch. I don't want to have that discussion with him because that would give me nightmares.

So I have not really had a discussion about the sexual side of it. I don't know what else I could have done, but whatever it is, I wish I had. Up next, the estate of Michael Jackson. This is Today Explained. Okay, a few quick facts about a toothbrush before we get back to the show. Does your electric toothbrush have a clunky charger? The Quip electric toothbrush does not have a clunky charger.

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your first refill pack for free at getquip.com slash explained. Jonathan Stein-Sapir, you're an attorney representing the Michael Jackson estate. How exactly does the Michael Jackson estate work? How big is it? Who does it benefit? An estate is literally just a collection of properties and assets. So Michael Jackson's estate is the property that he owned at the time of his death, and then money continues to come in. And the people that ultimately benefit from the estate, the people who will get the money in the end are Michael's three children, along with some charities. And how much is the estate worth at this point?

I've read public reports, and you know, you take it with a grain of salt that it's worth about $2 billion. Have you seen the documentary, Leaving Neverland? I've seen the movie. It's a very powerful film. But let's be honest that it relies solely on the credibility of these two guys. Now, anyone can make a very powerful documentary. But let's be honest that it relies solely on the credibility of these two guys. Now, anyone can make a very powerful documentary. But when you scratch below the surface of the credibility of these two, you're going to see some issues. There was no effort made at all to reach out to anyone, anyone who would have a different point of view. I've never heard, and in fact, I mean, we've looked and we challenged HBO on this. When have you ever

made a documentary with these kinds of allegations without even contacting the subject of the allegations? And you said, well, Michael's dead. Well, that's a cop out. Michael's dead, so he can't sue for defamation. And if he were alive, he would. What would you have said had Dan Reed contacted you? What would we have said is, you know, let's talk about Wade Robson in particular. Look, this rests entirely on his own credibility. Now, Wade, I know they talk about the fact that he testified in 2005, but he was stood in insane cross-examination. I mean, he did not waver. So that would be the first point. But then let's walk through the timeline a little bit. Wade in 2011 comes to John Branca,

the executive of the state, wanting to be the lead choreographer on the Cirque du Soleil One show. And he was not hired for that. And it was after that, that he had his revelation that he had been molested. And now, here's where I think the credibility really comes into question. He came into court saying, look, I lied in 2005, and he had a story about why. And he said, this is a line in the film, given that I had been lying before, I want to speak the truth as loudly as I lied before.

Well, in the litigation, and in fact, in that very declaration, he was caught lying through his teeth. To get around the statute of limitations, he had to say he was unaware of the estate. And he declared under penalty of perjury, I am not aware that there was an estate of Michael Jackson until basically 60 days before he filed his lawsuit. Well, as I just told you, he had met with John Branca in 2011. Unless there'd be any doubt that he knew that there was an estate, his talent agent had said, you need to meet with John Branca, the executor of the Michael Jackson estate. The judge said

there was no need for a trial because no rational finder of fact could believe that Wade Robson was telling the truth about when he learned about the estate. So what we would have said was, cross-examine him. Ask know, ask him or let us tell our side, which is these are reasons that we should be questioning Wade's story. So you're saying that Wade Robson lied about his knowledge of the estate in this most recent court case. Why would he lie now? Is there any financial incentive there or something? There's a mention of the lawsuit being dismissed in the documentary, but there's no discussion about the fact that they're appealing that lawsuit. And it just so happens that this documentary is coming out at the time their appeal is being heard. And their lawsuit isn't for,

you know, $1,000 or something. They're asking for hundreds of millions of dollars. But I think the greater issue is, if you are any interest in telling a complete story, why would you limit yourself only to these two people, given the nature of these allegations? This is like the really difficult part about this story, about this documentary, about whether or not you believe Wade and James or not. I mean, you can imagine them being kids. If this happened, they were super destroyed by it. They were repressing all of these feelings. And maybe it took them a long time to come to terms with them. And now they're finally admitting what happened, even though in the past they've denied it. And when you couple that possibility with the fact that Michael

Jackson settled this case out of court in the 90s and then was indicted in the 2000s and that there have been many accusations. Doesn't that raise some doubt about his character here about, you know, the case that the estate is presenting? Well, you say many accusers. That's not really true. You know, Bill Cosby has, you know, 60 accusers. Harvey Weinstein has, I think, like 100. I don't know. With Michael Jackson, during his lifetime, there were two. There was the boy in 1993. Michael Jackson was in between a rock and a hard place. He had to go to a civil trial before a criminal trial. So he made a decision to settle. I think with the hindsight being 2020,

that was probably the worst decision he ever made in his life. The other accuser during his lifetime was the Arvizo child. The jury repudiated it, didn't believe Arvizo. The only other two accusers are Safechuck and Robson. Both have come forward after Michael dies.

And they both have credibility problems. So it's not that much smoke. You're talking about four kids in the entire time. Michael Jackson was around thousands of children. My point isn't that it's problematic that you're making a documentary about these allegations, but if you want to make it, explore them. Explore them. So the estate is now suing HBO for potentially $100 million or more. You're representing it in the suit. Why exactly is it suing HBO for potentially $100 million or more. You're representing it in the suit. Why exactly is it suing HBO for so much money?

They had contractual obligations to Michael Jackson. They told the story of his concert in 1992 and said that they would not disparage that concert or that product. And now they're releasing a documentary which specifically alleges that Michael Jackson was molesting children on the same concert tour. So that's a breach of contract. And the flip side of that is, if Michael Jackson were alive, he would sue for defamation. There's just no question he would sue them for defamation for this. And if Dan had reached out for comment, would the Jackson State still be suing right now? I don't know. That's a hypothetical that I can't answer. I don't know. If we felt that this had explored this fairly and it was not, in our view, a breach of HBO's obligations, because we have not sued Dan, we have no right to sue Dan, we don't have a contractual relationship with him, and defamation dies with the person person so we have no right to sue dan but that said michael never answered allegations that wade robson was molested by him because wade robson

during michael's life was doing everything to praise michael i think dan came in with a story to tell and you know another thing he says is he didn't want to talk to anyone because, you know, they weren't in the room with Michael and Wade. Well, neither was Dan Reed. And the other person in the room is dead. And he never got to respond to these allegations in his life. He just didn't. If Michael didn't do anything wrong ever, if he's totally innocent of all of these allegations, couldn't he have just made his life easier by like not hanging out with so many young boys even after the first set of allegations in the early 90s i mean absolutely i mean michael was guilty of in in my mind of being very naive he was an odd dude i mean in a good way you know he also

slept in a bedroom with a chimpanzee at times. Do you think it's possible they could have abused children? No. I've looked at the evidence of all of this, and when you go through the four specific accusers, it's almost, it's unbelievable. In the realm of, is it possible, is anything possible? Was the moon landing fake? Sure, anything's possible. But based on the evidence, no. After the Michael Jackson estate filed its lawsuit against HBO, the network released a statement. It says, Despite the desperate lengths taken to undermine the film,

our plans remain unchanged. HBO will move forward with the airing of Leaving Neverland, the two-part documentary on March 3rd and 4th. This will allow everyone the opportunity to assess the film and the claims in it for themselves. I'm Sean Ramos for M. This is Today Explained. Thanks to Quip, the electric toothbrush company, for supporting the show today. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained is the place to go to get a Quip electric toothbrush where your first set of refills is free. The brush starts at just $25. That is once more getquip.com slash explained.