Lies Run Sprints But The Truth Runs Marathons
13th June 2005- the day when ignorance was conquered by wisdom & facts; love had won over hatred and prejudice. The decades of propaganda against an innocent man by the mass media was overthrown by the verdict- ‘WE THE JURY IN THE ABOVE ENTITLED CASE FIND THE DEFENDANT NOT GUILTY’, a total of 14 times.
Fourteen years ago, on this day Michael Jackson was rightfully vindicated in a court of law after being falsely accused of sexually abusing Gavin Arvizo, along with other charges of false imprisonment and intoxicating a minor, all of which were examined by the jury in a court room that lead to a unanimous not guilty verdict on all 14 counts, after a four month trial.
Gavin was introduced to Michael Jackson on June 2000 when the boy was ailing with cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, through comedian Jamie Masada. Jackson, who always made efforts to comfort and help children in distress contacted Gavin and his family to support them during that difficult phase. After a month or two, the Arvizo family visited Neverland Ranch for the first time. It is important to be aware of the fact that Michael never shared a bed with either Gavin or his brother Star. It thus, undermines the ‘bed-sharing’ logic of the detractors. On their very first visit to the ranch, the brothers requested Jackson to let them sleep in his bedroom. According to Frank Cascio, his personal assistant at that time too was present with him and recalled the mother being too insisting and seemed to push his sons onto Michael Jackson. Out of kindness, Jackson allowed the boys to stay in his room despite being reluctant to do so, in the presence of Frank Cascio and his own children, Both men slept on the floor while the kids fell asleep on the bed.
The Arvizos made no assertions of molestation that night in any of their versions. ( They repeatedly changed the timeline of alleged abuse and the details. This is a common trait associated with all of MJ’s accusers, isn’t it?) According to Gavin’s own testimony, Jackson wasn’t in much contact with him or his family during the years, before the shooting of the Bashir documentary in 2002 titled ‘Living With Michael Jackson’. Under direct cross examination of Gavin by Thomas Mesereau during the trial, his main wrath over Jackson was that he didn’t maintain any touch with him, despite the fact that it was Michael Jackson who arranged for the boy blood donation camps and helped him with his battle with cancer.‘There’s no reason he should have stopped calling me”, lamented Gavin on the stand after being asked by Thomas Mesereau what made him angry towards Jackson. You don’t expect this answer from an alleged abuse victim, do you? He was bitter because he didn’t think that Michael Jackson served enough favors to him rather than the abuse that he had allegedly suffered. (Again, a common trait related to MJ’s accusers).
It all started after the documentary ‘Living With Michael Jackson’ that aired in the US and the UK in 2003 where Jackson was seen holding hands with Gavin and the boy resting his head on Jackson’s shoulder which resulted in an array of negative publicity and speculations. However, what’s deliberately ignored is the fact that it was Martin Bashir who had directed Gavin to initiate this stunt and also intentionally manipulated his narration to cast a misleading light on the audience and to paint a gloomy prospect of him and his relationship with Gavin.
On March 2003, Janet Arvizo had already hired a lawyer named William Dickerman who later claimed that Jackson’s associates were harassing the Arvizo family. Dickerman contacted Larry Feldman to represent them, the same attorney who had represented the Chandlers in 1993 and had negotiated the civil settlement of 1994! More surprisingly, Feldman decided to send the Arvizos to Dr. Stanley Katz, again the same psychologist who was involved in the Jordan Chandler case in 1993! Why is it so that even before the family made allegations of sexual abuse, they were referred to the same lawyer and the psychologist who were associated with the 1993 case? Apparently, the Arvizos couldn’t pursue for a civil settlement because DA Tom Sneddon had changed the law that prevented the civil case from going ahead of the criminal trial to satiate his desire to convict Michael Jackson, when in 1993 he was unable to even sought for an indictment.
Gavin made allegations of sexual abuse against Jackson for the first time in June 2003, to Dr. Katz. Till the time, the case made it to trial in 2005 the timeline of the alleged abuse and the details such as the number of times the molestation had allegedly occurred, changed on numerous occasions. The details of the conflicting accounts of abuse can also be observed in the difference of the versions between the prosecution’s initial complaint and that of the indictment. Star also alleged to have been inappropriately touched by Jackson in a golf cart, but Sneddon somehow never charged him for abusing Star.
The Arvizos had claimed that the first incident of molestation took place before the recording of the rebuttal video, in order to deal with the backlash after the Bashir documentary. The problem is- the entire family were still praising Jackson as clearly seen in the video. They however, asserted that they were being forced to take part in the making of the video but the outtakes proved otherwise. They looked more than happy and at one instance the mother surprisingly exclaimed, “Oh! We’re on camera!” The story changed later, altering the claim that Jackson had started molesting Gavin after the video was taped and the family had already given several interviews to the Child Right Services.
The prosecution charged Jackson for allegedly conspiring against the Arvizos, for holding them captive in Neverland against their will. This charge was brought in 2005 after the Grand Jury proceedings so as to come up with an explanation that the family was forced to participate in the rebuttal tape. It was claimed by the prosecution that Michael Jackson abducted the family with the help of other co-conspirators, but none of them except for Jackson was indicted and so none of them could testify for the defense! Janet Arvizo claimed that she had been held hostage at Neveralnd, but receipts proved that during the period of her alleged imprisonment, she had left the ranch and was enjoying shopping sprees and cozy beauty parlor treatments. She was also caught scamming celebrities and journalists in the name of Gavin’s illness, even though his medical bills were already being covered by insurance. She also accused the JC Penny guards of sexually abusing her and reached a financial settlement in 2001. She admitted that the allegations were fabricated and absolutely false.
Why would Michael Jackson be tempted to molest Gavin Arvizo only when the authorities and child protective services had already started their investigation after the airing of Bashir’s documentary? Why would he feel the need to imprison the Arvizos for taking part in the tape when nothing inappropriate had occurred until then and they themselves were willing participants for it?
It was also claimed that Michael Jackson intoxicated Gavin to be able to molest him and made him and his brother drink alcohol. It was however, debunked during the trial that the Arvizo kids themselves were caught in the wine cellar in Jackson’s absence multiple times.
Star Arvizo claimed to have witnessed Jackson molest Gavin in his bedroom while he stood near the stairs and peeped through the room’s door which was left open. The alarm that haters love to use as a plausible argument to prove his guilt cannot explain how come the alarm didn’t save Jackson from being supposedly caught. A test was carried out to disprove Star’s claims and it was being proven that Jackson would have been alerted about his presence and Star’s account of witnessing abuse was simply impossible.
Seeing his case on the verge of being in shambles, Sneddon urged to introduce ‘evidences of prior bad acts’ in an attempt to further prejudice the jury because the credibility of the Arvizos had already been ripped to shreds due to no evidence even after vigorous investigation and extensive searches of Jackson’s property by more than 70 sheriffs in an unannounced raid in 2003. June Chandler, Jason Francia, Blanca Francia and the disgruntled employees of the infamous ‘Neverland 5’ were called in by the prosecution but to no avail as each one of them had immense credibility issues and an obvious financial motive behind the allegations. Hence, Michael Jackson was not only exonerated of the 2005 allegations but also of the 1993 allegations as well and every accusation hurled against him were proven to be absolute lies.
The prosecution failed miserably to prove their arguments. Till date, there exists no evidence that proves Michael Jackson harmed anyone, let alone a child. No accuser of his was devoid of an evident money driven agenda, with full support of the press and the mass media. The district attorney was fully aware of the sheer ridiculousness of the case but nevertheless, took it court just to humiliate Jackson in the most abominable way and to be successful in convicting him;that would have been the most defining achievement of his as a district attorney.
The media made use of every tactic to convict Michael Jackson in the court of public opinion but had incurred a heavy loss as a result of the final verdict. News channels had already started reporting about the cells and the treatment that would have been meted out to Jackson if faced with an conviction, the type of clothes he would have been made to wear in jail or the food they would offer him in prison. See, how they talk about keeping an eye on Jackson 24 x 7. What a sumptuous treat for the media it would have been to broadcast a daily segment of the footage straight away from jail!
It’s conceivable why the salivating media and the tabloids never accepted the verdict. The dream of a billion dollar industry crumbled and came crashing down. There’s hardly anyone who accept their defeat in this world, specially when the efforts to prejudice the jury and the public was carried out with such great intensity with not a shred of decency. The defense case was given little airtime and attention while the prosecution’s claims were treated as ‘gospel’. The media was more interested as to why Jackson arrived at court in pajamas, when he was summoned by the judge to appear for the hearing directly from the hospital after he had injured himself due to a sudden fall. Jackson had bruised his spine and coughed blood. Such was the magnitude of the sufferings that he was made to go through.
A desperate Tom Sneddon didn’t shy away from using the most salacious practices to prosecute Jackson. He went as low as to fabricate false fingerprint evidence of Gavin Arvizo on an adult magazine. It didn’t work well for him as the magazine he argued had Gavin’s fingerprints was published 5 months after the Arvizos had finally left the ranch. It was him who allowed the boy to handle the magazine without making him wear gloves during the Grand Jury proceedings and later sent it for fingerprint analysis!
Faux experts like Jim Clemente, who often uses his connection to the FBI as a card to verify his credibility but in reality possesses no factual knowledge about the case whatsoever. Clemente took to Twitter claiming that Gavin had accurately described Jackson’s genitalia. When challenged with the fact that why the prosecution failed to introduce this bombshell evidence in court, his comeback was a lame response that all evidences cannot be presented before the jury.
As laughable as it sounds, Sneddon had even made a last minute attempt to introduce the description of Jordan Chandler in court even though he was aware that in Jordan’s absence (he had refused to testify in the trial), Judge Melville would never allow it to be used as an evidence. We, by now know that Jordan did not describe Michael’s private parts accurately and is the reason why Sneddon struggled to bring charges against him in 1993. It’s impossible that he would afford to leave out such an important testimony from being used in the trial. Gavin didn’t even know that Jackson had brown patches all over his body when asked under cross examination. He responded saying,” I didn’t know about patches. I thought he was just white”.
There’s no doubt about Michael Jackson’s innocence and the whole case was a travesty of justice. The whole course of the trial had taken a heavy toll on his physical and emotional health. He was fragile and broken. He never really coped up with the trauma of being accused of such a heinous crime of hurting children and the abashed nature of media’s bigotry. Michael Jackson was the victim of the twisted court of the public and the trial by media for which ‘Ignorance is Bliss’.
The vindication day is of more significance than ever before for our community, so as to give a befitting answer to the media and their concentrated efforts to rehearse the debunked allegations against Michael Jackson, in the wake of Leaving Neverland. It is to prove to people like Dan Reed that he’s not to hail himself as the dictator of Jackson’s legacy and that he’s fooling himself with his own delusions and ego. He should have been the first one to investigate the allegations of the two subjects of his film, given that one of the prime accusers of Leaving Neverland is apparently responsible for obscuring justice to Gavin Arvizo and never bothered to reach out to him if Reed sternly believes in his claims. Dan Reed made a recent statement that the 10th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s passing must be recognized as a day to contemplate child abuse. That’s a pretty good suggestion when it’s actually him who with his erotic film has contributed in giving incentives to child predators and the dangerous illusion that children find physical acts with adults as ‘sexually fulfilling’ and doesn’t think twice before referring to child sexual abuse as ‘romantic or ‘period of honeymoon’.
Let’s contemplate the downfall of journalism and the demise of critical thinking among the people instead.
Advocates of social media label anyone who are knowledgeable regarding the absurdity of the cases as apologists or cultists. We refuse to jump on the MeToo bandwagon and follow the footsteps of advocates like Jim Clemente and Dan Reed- fabricating myths and rumours, putting on the lens of perversion and the lust of being relevant,exploiting the emotions of the gullible masses. Who can be a more better example other that Oprah Winfrey or Ava Duvernay who use the MeToo lynchmob or promote the importance of ‘presumption of innocence’ whenever it’s profitable for their image and brand? So, who’s the cultist here? Guess, these people are in dire need of an Oxford dictionary!
But, what they cannot change is the fact that MICHAEL JACKSON WAS AND IS INNOCENT!
It’s not a matter of your opinion. There’s nothing called as ‘MY TRUTH’ or ‘YOUR TRUTH’. It’s only the TRUTH.
