Michael Jackson: Leaving Neverland

Clear in a situation like this it isn't just the children who were groomed.

Having read a lot about the estate's suit, I'm not sure a judge would rule in their favour.

They would need to prove that HBO airing the documentary disparaged Jackson's reputation and lower his public image.

Considering:

1. Robson/Safechuck's legal action was already public
2. The film had already been screened at film festivals unrelated to HBO.
3. The film also aired on Channel 4 and would undoubtedly had widespread coverage regardless of the HBO airing.

I'm not sure the estate would be able to prove that HBO's airing in particular had played a part in lowering his public image.

Interestingly the estate's suit openly refers to Robson/Safechuck as "two proven, serial perjurers". Now unless I'm missing something, Safechuck only testified in 1993 and refused to do so in 2005, and while Robson testified both times, it would only be perjury if they were lying at the time (and therefore telling the truth now). Also the statute of limitations on perjury (in California) has long passed.

Both men strenuously defended Jackson, including under oath, for decades, and only decided they’d been molested years after his death, when they were both in financial trouble and filed a lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars. That lawsuit was thrown out of court – twice – but the men are in the middle of an appeal, giving them a gigantic financial motive to lie.

Since filing their lawsuit, both men have repeatedly changed their stories, frequently telling directly contradictory versions of the same supposed events. For example, Wade Robson has told at least four directly contradictory stories about the first time Jackson supposedly abused him.

In the lawsuit, Robson was caught lying under oath so brazenly that the judge threw out his entire witness statement and said no rational juror could ever believe his account.

Between 2012 and 2014, Robson wrote two drafts of an abuse memoir and tried unsuccessfully to sell them to publishers. Meanwhile, he lied under oath and said he’d never discussed his allegations with anyone except his lawyers. When the Jackson estate discovered he’d actually been shopping books, the court ordered him to produce the drafts as evidence. They revealed the story of his abuse had changed significantly from one draft to the next.

Robson was also ordered to release his emails as evidence. He breached the order repeatedly, first by claiming they didn’t exist, then by simply refusing to hand them over. Then he redacted all the emails between himself and his family members and cited ‘attorney-client’ privilege, even though none of his family are attorneys.

When he eventually complied with the court order and released the emails, they revealed that at the time he was constructing his lawsuit and abuse memoir, he was researching and emailing himself links to old tabloid newspaper stories about abuse allegations against Michael Jackson.

The emails showed Robson found one particular story from the early 1990s which specifically named he and his mother. He emailed it to his mother and asked whether it was true. She replied, ‘Wow, none of that is true’. He then included it in his story anyway.

Emails also revealed that throughout 2011/12, Robson was lobbying Jackson’s estate for a job directing and choreographing an official Michael Jackson tribute show in Las Vegas. His campaign to secure this role had included sending emails explaining that his amazing friendship with Jackson meant nobody was better qualified for the role than he was, and he was devoted to doing the best job he possibly could ‘for Michael’. After being told someone else had got the job, he suddenly claimed he’d been abused and filed a creditor’s claim against the estate for millions of dollars.

Months later, according to Jimmy Safechuck, he flipped on the TV and saw Wade Robson being interviewed about his lawsuit. In that moment, Safechuck suddenly remembered that he had been abused by Jackson as well, so decided to join the lawsuit. He didn’t mention that this epiphany coincided exactly with his inheritance circling the drain after a relative died and the surviving siblings started suing each other – including him – for control of the family business.

Robson was also ordered to produce his diaries as evidence. In them, he’d written about how these allegations might rescue his failing career by making him ‘relatable and relevant’. He also wrote, ‘It’s time for me to get mine.’ When questioned under oath about what he’d meant when he wrote that, he refused to answer.

Both men tell stories in the TV show which directly contradict stories told under oath in their lawsuit. In fact, they have continued to change their stories as recently as within the last week.

For example, Jimmy Safechuck claims under oath in the lawsuit that he only remembered Jackson had abused him in 2013 when he turned on the TV and saw Robson. Yet in tonight’s TV show and interviews promoting it, he claims he knew he’d been abused in 2005 and thus, when asked to testify for Jackson’s defence ‘towards the end of the trial’, he refused to do so.

But that’s a provable lie. Safechuck was never asked to testify for Jackson’s defence. The judge ruled long before the trial began that testimony could only be heard about certain children, and Safechuck was not one of them. All testimony about Safechuck was literally banned from the courtroom. So Jackson’s defence cannot have asked him to testify – and certainly not after the trial was already underway.

Robson claimed in a BBC interview last week that Jackson had abused him ‘hundreds of times’. Yet his mother’s sworn testimony is that they went to Neverland roughly 14 times but Jackson was almost never there. She estimates the number of times they visited the ranch and he was actually there was four.

Questioned about their financial motive, the men now say they don’t care about money and are only suing to embolden other abuse victims by holding the Jackson estate accountable. This is a provable lie. The lawsuit was originally filed under seal and Robson tried to extract a settlement from the estate with zero publicity. Only when the estate refused to pay a bean did he go public.