As fans have just celebrated the 4th anniversary (something not quite right here -Ed) of his death last week, some nasty stories about Michael Jackson have once again surfaced. May be I have paid more attention than I should to all this because I have made a connection between the trial going on and my week of jury duty, I don’t know but I stumbled on this article published by the British tabloid The Mirror.
They say that secret FBI files ‘exclusively seen by the Sunday People’ do exist and reveal that Jackson paid £23 million to buy the silence of at least two dozen young boys he abused over 15 years. They even give the case numbers, CADCE MJ-02463 and CR 01046, and these secret files include private investigators’ reports, phone transcripts and hours of audio tapes…
So what’s new there? Not much, we knew people had received money, but these £23 million ($35 million) is a huge sum, like the number of children who were presumably molested, …2 dozens! However the rest is no-news, of course the FBI is gonna have files about Jackson, but I doubt anyone has seen them beside FBI agents… incredibly these files were never offered to prosecutors during the trial against Jackson in 2005
We have heard the stories a thousand times before, children were invited to the Neverland ranch, they were molested even when the parents were around, they have denied accusations because Jackson had paid them off. Suddenly some are talking, like this choreographer Wade Robson, whereas they were his defenders in the 2005 child-abuse trial.
Reading about all this again, I was wondering, how does this still matter now that he has been dead for 4 years? It is very strange, if you are a fan of Michael Jackson, and have been denying all the accusations since the beginning, I have a tendency to laugh at your face,… come on, how naïve can you be? On the opposite side, if you are still trying to find a way to prove that Jackson molested all these children when hours and hours of witnesses talking during the trial haven’t been successful at putting him in jail when he was alive, I have a tendency to find you a bit pathetic and pointless,… he is dead!
Nevertheless, I totally understand stubbornness, what I am trying to do with the Elliott Smith story is not that different. When someone is dead, his or her social status changes, they become untouchable and their image is frozen forever in people’s minds. Jackson is a child molester or an innocent victim, depending on the person you are talking to, but he still get a pass no matter how many people think he did something wrong. He made $1 billion with a b, since he died for god’s sake! And that’s huge.
What would happen if an undeniable solid proof was brought to the case, what would happen to his image if it was proven he was indeed a child predator? I bet many people would still be in denial, after all there are still some flat earth people, but this isn’t a good reason to stop searching for the truth. Knowing the truth about an artist is important, anyone will separate the art from the artist’s private life afterwards, if they can, but the truth will always prevail. Unfortunately, in the king of pop’s case, who knows where is the truth?