You've Been Struck By, A Smooth Criminal

an odd meal for an odd story - egg over pizza slice and leftover chicken soup

After the 1993 accusations and the 2005 trial against Michael Jackson and all that we now know if you are super absorbed in the minutia as I am, this is the one circumstance that I feel we should NOT just believe the victims of sexual abuse again without thorough investigation.  I am livid how this situation is going down and quickly spreading like wildfire.

I am leaving out well documented facts as to not regurgitate what is already out there written better  for you to read.  But understand, there was nothing more important to me this week then researching the new Leaving Neverland documentary.  In order to speak on the subject I refreshed myself with hundreds of videos, interviews, articles, opinion pages, friends of friends, polls, posts and the like. Finally I had to tell myself, 'Girl, you will never know the absolute truth'.

I don't have cable so I couldn't watch Leaving Neverland so I watched 4 1/2 hours of people watching Leaving Neverland, mainly so I could listen to it in it's entirety, with headphones, catching every word  That turned out to be a blessing because I wasn't swayed by lighting and dramatic pauses.  I had my own, then read multiple reactions.   In some ways listening to these two seemed like a betrayal of my own trust.  However, my openness for the truth got the best of me at some point.  I believe all alleged victims should be heard and especially in his case, as we've all taken part in some way, allowing this most unusual way of life to go on.  We trusted this one man that was open about his love of just sleeping with children in his bed.  I at least, allowed myself that one person could actually be capable of doing this innocently albeit still wrong and also stupid.  It left a giant opportunity for people to take advantage of him.  I remember being mad at Diane Sawyer for asking him in her 1995 interview 'will you stop now, having boys sleep in your bed?' as if pleading with him for everyone's sake.  Secretly I wished he would have stopped too just because you knew the flood gates were open and someone was going to see this as a giant paycheck for life.

Unlike the Ryan Adams controversy, Michael Jackson's persona and odd behavior is actually directly related to my affection for him.  We don't have enough interesting people in the world, taking different paths, living oddly with their bad selves like he did.  I saw him as a real person that existed in the world, separate to his music.  Separate entities but definitely linked as I can barely remember a time when Michael's music wasn't in my life.  Growing up in Indiana hearing the Jackson 5 on the radio constantly followed shortly by their introduction on television when I was around 5 or 6 years old. I owned 45 records and we tried to dance in unison like them in our backyard.  For a Mexican American kid in the Midwest, the Jacksons were also important because they were the closest role models to 'us' that we could get at that time.  Something to relate to and celebrate, like James Brown but this was a kid like me, also poor and from my state!  Millions witnessed him grow up before our eyes, this beautiful bright sad child.  Many of us still followed after his oddities set in and were not swayed.  Many started to care for him, fear for him, be protective of him.

For the last two weeks, I ran my own court case with as much information as I could absorb. Everything I know from the past I mixed with the present allegations and brought myself up to date with events I missed and there is a lot out there for those who seek more information.  As you go further down the rabbit hole, you really see that many little bits of information really change normal sounding factors.   Just like MJ himself and Neverland, all the fine points are distorted like Through the Looking Glass.  So many times, things aren't what they seem.  What makes sense is turned upside down and certainty is elusive. 

The actual truth might be harder for so-called normal people to comprehend.  That he was simply an eccentric pedophile is a nicely wrapped package.  What we do know is true is certainly more difficult to absorb and far more messy.  My gut and much of my hard research still points to not guilty.  Michael Jackson as we knew him was hard enough to believe.  If you look at his whole existence, he's like a character out of the very best Tim Burton movie imaginable.

I was thinking how sad it is that most people can't even imagine  one man alive that would be weird or innocent enough to sleep with children and not have sex with them.  Makes you wonder how sick we are as a society in 2019.

I've had one theory through time that has stuck with me.  Michael could have suffered from multiple personalities, split alters that took over as needed throughout different times of his life.  One dominant alter possibly was regressed back to 5 to 7 years old.  In this way his time spent with young boys his age was very normal and could explain his 'preference' for boys over girls.  It would explain his invention of Neverland, not as a lair for catching his prey but to exercise his childhood fantasies in a context people could believe. His other split, the savvy businessman that people claim existed and must have, could have come out of necessity. That is also feasible because he saw much of the grown up negotiations and dealings at an early age and could have lifted a personality from that batch or even formed one out of several people he knew in order to sever the controlling strings of his father. The fact that he did have adult sexual relations with women also applies.  It shows possibly another alter, not as prominent but there was no disputing that it existed.   He was able to form a real relationship with Lisa Marie Presley.  He charmed and courted her, showed genuine affection.  He may have wanted her babies more than he loved her, but because he desperately wanted children.  So far, I don't see he wanted to breed in order to molest them.
And to further my case, I ask you, what makes people split?  Intense traumatic events that's what.  Who had more trauma than this exceptionally talented meek, poor, African-American  boy pushed out into a grown up world that we can't even grasp.  No one could relate to everything that was thrown in his basket, not other child stars, no one.  He was entirely unique.

To see people so uneducated on child sexual abuse makes me realize how little most know about Dissociative Identity Disorder, or split personality.  Extreme movies like Sybil and The 3 Faces of Eve gave a Hollywood glimpse.  But in actuality, it's a real condition and not so uncommon.  Everyone has it to a very lesser extent. It's just far more pronounced in folks with the mental disorder.  Everything we know about the small child that was Michael leads me straight to this condition when explaining his way of handling his growth and changes physically and mentally.  He could have abused boys as part of one of his egos and that's why we could never say 100 percent that nothing happened.  But it sounds like it was even more out of the ordinary. It points to an inappropriate fascination with children yes but with their beauty and innocence.  Maybe needed to stay in a childlike, pure state as a way to unsee much of the adult world he was forced into that frightened him so much.  This kept him safe from those visions to be with these boys, feeding off of their traits, running and playing until so tired they fall off to sleep. It also explains never wanting them to leave because maybe that state could not exist without them.  It doesn't imply any sexual conduct, in fact, that is projected from our minds. 

Something that struck me that I don't think would be normal for a pedophile was when he was basically confronted for sleeping with boys in the Bashir documentary as well as several interviews afterwards, he never cowered away ashamed or tried to cover it.  He said it was the most loving thing you could do and that sticks with me because he seemed to be void of shame.  Shame is a big trait of molesters. Pedophiles don't actually enjoy these childlike things like toys and Disney characters themselves, they are props to lure.  Michael spent many hours climbing trees and doing childlike activities and did enjoy them very much.  We were all witness to that.  And it was constant for years.

Then looking at this barely known film maker Dan Reed who struck gold by hitting the #metoo G spot at just the right moment for the mindless herds to support.  A wolf in sheep's clothing.   I don't know him but am very suspicious of anyone who takes on this icon and says it's not about him.  Who is looking into his motives?  Where are our top journalists on this?   We're just going to swallow this at face value? And what of these accusers, Robson and Safechuck?  With all that history and previous conflicting testimony,  I think those boys should take polygraph tests.  You can't ignore the fact that they both are in major financial debt, that they are coming out so late and after his death and after they both tried to sue the estate as adults.   They had a very long time to corroborate their stories and study up on molestation 101.  They both had access to so much detail that it would be easy to throw allegations into innocent situations set in inappropriate settings, like sleepovers, locations in the private quarters, etc.  I don't believe Robson and I see him as the instigator.  Safechuck looks scared, possibly suckered into this, perhaps a victim of false memory syndrome.  He's much more believable but still too many holes in his story.  Both of their reasoning for waiting to come up needs way more cross examination for me.  At 22 and beyond Robson never felt it was sexual molestation?  I could buy repressed memories but he states he never forgot anything and always just viewed it as 'loving'.  All the while he claims he understood that very same innocent loving was something he could send Jackson to jail for or himself, so that alone is very contradictory. I know a lot about how memories work and you don't have the level of fact detail at the ready like these boys claim in the documentary. You get snippets, bubbles of captured moments, not whole days.  You recall in a way your child-mind would relay these complicated sexual acts as well, so words they used for descriptions are words you don't have yet as a child.  Their big shocking explicit detailed moments in the film were too graphic in the wrong way.  For me, there was something very off and untrue about the way they recalled those specifics.  And that was the only real meat per say in the 4 hours. Grueling questioning and probing by top lawyers did not snap anything out of these boys in the past.  Hours and hours precisely describing sexual abuse did not lodge a question in Robson in either case?  Not to mention for the amount of years Wade is claiming abuse, the affects would show up big time in one's sexual life, in some form.  Fetishes, promiscuity for sure, homosexuality, bisexual at the very least - some type of quirk.  Yet we're to believe they both went on to have normal hetero lives?  That doesn't add up to me.  Depression was the only deviance expressed.  For Wade, the time the breakdowns occurs could be explained by his reckoning that his father committed suicide and his mom moved their entire family away from dad for Wade's career and all those dreams were bottoming out.   As for the mothers and wives, I'm dismissing all of them because there is so many unanswered questions and I got enough on my plate. Grandma too.

And my goodness as if people aren't whacked enough right now, Oprah has to go and role out the red carpet in the most infomercial way for her Q and A session with the filmmaker and accusers.  The Jackson's including Michael must have trusted her like family.  I think it was very wrong of her to take this story for use as a platform to speak on child sexual abuse as it has not been proven.  No evidence was brought forth that would turn a jury, except for their personal accounts that sorely needed serious cross examination.  To even take the risk that these men are confused or lying yet let them speak on their experiences as fact with absolutely no true journalistic questioning was so unfair to him and his family.  This was the first time I feel Oprah ever really screwed up big time.

Don't forget Tom Sneddon wanted Jackson so bad, obviously for the wrong reasons that he even tampered with evidence and reported lies but still TWICE could not prove that MJ was guilty on 14 counts.  Michael Jackson was cleared of all charges and he is dead.  The end of his life was tragic with addiction to pain killers surrounded by leeches and hangers on, like Elvis and Prince and others.  I say this poor man has suffered enough for two lifetimes and although I don't believe it affects him one bit in the afterlife, the way we tell history is important.  I think preserving his legacy is crucial for Black History, for American history, for all he endured as a human being yet still brought forth hundreds of incredible, unmatched to this day, forms of art including his singing, writing, music videos, short films, acting, not to mention live performances.  The inspirational aspect of his life, the mark he left and for this endless list of accomplishments alone, we can't let his work and complicated story be rewritten especially after death without undeniable proof that these allegations are true.