“Am I the Beast You Visualized?”
How Michael Jackson Altered the Sensations of Racism, Part 3
In 1993, two years after the release of Michael Jackson’s Black or White short film — a pointed critique of racism in America that begins and ends by encouraging young white boys to rebel again the worldview of their suburban white fathers — one of those suburban white fathers accused Jackson of sexually abusing his 13-year-old son. Given the prominence of the sexual predator narrative throughout American history (see Part 1) and its role in silencing black men who challenge white privilege, this was a predictable event.
The Chandlers
The accuser, Evan Chandler, was a Hollywood dentist and one of those shadowy medical enablers who help stars gain access to drugs. In her 2011 memoir Shockaholic, Carrie Fisher, who struggled for years with drug addiction, writes that she was “one of those people who would have unnecessary dental work just for the morphine,” and Chandler “was one of those people who could arrange such a welcome service.” So was his colleague, Mark Torbiner, a man Fisher describes as “a mobile anesthesiologist” who, for a price, would deliver “luxury pain relief” in the privacy of her home. Fisher writes, “I would extend my arms, veins akimbo, and say to this man — ‘Send me away, but don’t send me all the way.’” Together, Chandler and Torbiner kept Fisher well supplied with morphine and other drugs.
In All that Glitters: the Crime and the Cover-Up, a book published by his brother Ray, Evan Chandler describes administering drugs to Jackson as well. Jackson was visiting Chandler’s house when he developed a headache. So Chandler called Torbiner, who soon arrived with a delivery of Toradol, a drug Chandler describes as “a non-narcotic equivalent to Demerol.” Chandler injected Jackson with the maximum recommended dose and he had an unexpected reaction — in Chandlers’ words, “acting weird, babbling incoherently, and slurring his speech.” A few hours later, as the drug began to wear off, Chandler says he “decided to take advantage of Michael’s still uninhibited but somewhat coherent condition” by asking him if he was gay. According to Chandler, Jackson “mumbled” a response that he was not.
Chandler’s interactions with his son, Jordan, regarding Jackson followed a somewhat similar pattern. Jordan’s mother, June Chandler, and his step-father, David Schwartz, had arranged for Jordan to meet Jackson and had strongly encouraged the friendship, and Chandler had eagerly promoted the relationship as well. In fact, he even asked Jackson to build an addition onto the Chandlers’ house so Jackson could come live with them. When Chandler discovered the addition would violate local building codes, he suggested that Jackson simply build him a new house instead.
However, as Chandler grew more demanding, Jackson began to distance himself. As Chandler told Schwartz, Jackson broke off communication after “I … told him exactly what I want”:
I had a good communication with Michael. We were friends, you know. I liked him. I respected him and everything else for what he is. There is no reason why he had to stop calling me…. I sat in the room one day, and I talked to Michael and told him exactly what I want out of this whole relationship, what I want.
After he lost contact with Jackson, Chandler became resentful and began to suspect that Jackson and Jordan had a sexual relationship, apparently seeing that as the only possible explanation for why they were avoiding him. As Chandler told Schwartz,
There’s no reason why they would have to cut me out unless they — unless they need me to be away so they can do certain things which I don’t think are good to be doing.
This suggests that the idea of sexual abuse initially arose in Chandler’s mind as a way to explain away feelings of rejection by Jackson, and to some extent Jordan.
(Note: Schwartz began recording his phone conversations with Chandler after Chandler threatened June, Schwartz’s wife and Chandler’s ex-wife. For example, in one of the taped conversations Chandler tells Schwartz, “the only way I want to see June now” is “at the end of a shotgun.” After the allegations against Jackson became public, the tape was released to the media and excerpts were broadcast by CBS News and others. Chandler later sued Schwartz for recording him without his knowledge, and a transcript of their conversations was created as part of the lawsuit. All quotations of these conversations between Schwartz and Chandler are from that transcript.)
In All that Glitters, Chandler says that he first broached the subject with Jordan during a weekend visit on May 29, 1993, when he abruptly asked his son, “Hey Jordie, are you and Michael doin’ it?” According to Chandler, Jordan reacted with surprise, saying, “That’s disgusting! ... I’m not into that” — a reaction that Chandler says brought him “great relief.” However, he had already begun talking to a lawyer and planning a $20 million case against Jackson. He soon convinced himself that his son was lying and decided to continue with the case, despite his son’s denials.
Ten days later, Chandler talked with Schwartz about the lawyer he’d hired to pursue the case, and his words suggest his motivation has very little to do with Jordan:
This attorney I found — I mean, I interviewed several, and I picked the nastiest son of a bitch I could find, and all he wants to do is get this out in the public as fast as he can, as big as he can, and humiliate as many people as he can.…
I mean, it could be a massacre if I don’t get what I want. But I do believe this person will get what he wants.… He is nasty, he is mean, he is very smart, and he’s hungry for the publicity.
Throughout this fairly lengthy conversation, Chandler reveals intense rage and a desire for revenge against June, Jackson, and even Jordan to some extent. He also says he has paid people to help him carry out a “plan that isn’t just mine,” a plan that he says will “destroy everybody”:
I mean, once I make that phone call, this guy’s just going to destroy everybody in site [sic] in any devious, nasty, cruel way that he can do it. And I’ve given him full authority to do that.
Schwartz questions the wisdom of this plan, asking if it’s in Jordan’s best interests. However, Chandler dismisses those concerns:
Chandler: If I go through with this, I win big time. There’s no way that I lose. I’ve checked that inside out. I will get everything I want, and they will be totally — they will be destroyed forever. June is gonna lose Jordy. She will have no right to ever see him again.… Michael’s career will be over.
Schwartz: And does that help Jordy?
Chandler: It’s irrelevant to me.
Chandler’s response suggests that he’s motivated more by anger and jealousy than concern for his son. Importantly, at the time this conversation was recorded, Jordan himself had never indicated there was any inappropriate physical contact by Jackson. In fact, he had expressly denied it.
A week after this conversation, on July 16, 1993, Chandler took his son to his dental office on a day the office was closed. They were joined by Torbiner, who put Jordan under sedation using a drug that has never been identified but may have been sodium amytal. Both Torbiner and Chandler were later asked if Jordan was given sodium amytal, and they both equivocated but didn’t deny it. For example, journalist Mary Fischer interviewed Torbiner for a 1984 GQ article and specifically asked him if he gave Jordan sodium amytal. He replied, “If I used it, it was for dental purposes” — a nonsensical answer since sodium amytal is not appropriate for dentistry.
This is an important issue since, in a number of high-profile cases in the 1980s and 90s, sodium amytal was implicated in producing false memories of childhood sexual abuse. Therapists used the drug to help patients recover what they called “repressed memories,” but in a number of cases it was shown that they had unwittingly planted vividly detailed mental images that felt like memories but were verifiably untrue. As part of her research, Fischer interviewed psychiatrist Phillip Resnick about sodium amytal, and he told her that “People are very suggestible under it,” explaining that “It is quite possible to implant an idea through the mere asking of a question.” And once an idea is suggested to someone under sodium amytal, it can feel like a genuine lived experience. So if Jordan were given the drug before his father questioned him, it would make his memories after that date unreliable.
After Torbiner put Jordan under sedation, Chandler removed one of Jordan’s baby teeth and then asked him about Jackson. It is not clear whether Chandler began this discussion while Jordan was still sedated (as he did with Jackson when he drugged him with Toradol) or whether he waited until Jordan came out of sedation. Chandler himself told the story both ways. In a chronology of events he gave to police, Chandler wrote that, “When Jordie came out of the sedation, I asked him to tell me about Michael and him.” However, in a KCBS-TV report broadcast May 3, 1994, Chandler said the conversation occurred while Jordan was still sedated. If true, this would raise red flags even if sodium amytal weren’t involved, but especially if it were — particularly given the way Chandler conducted the questioning.
In the written chronology Chandler gave to police, he provides a detailed account of this conversation with his son — even recreating some of their dialogue — and it’s notable that he says he began by telling his young son a series of falsehoods. First, he says he told Jordan “that I had bugged his bedroom and I knew everything anyway and that I just wanted to hear it from him.” Chandler then says he told Jordan “I know about the kissing and the jerking off and the blow jobs.” In All that Glitters, Chandler admits that all of these assertions are untrue: he had not wiretapped Jordan’s bedroom, and he “had no direct proof” of a sexual relationship with Jackson, just his own “level of suspicion.” Ray Chandler justifies his brother’s lies to Jordan this way:
In his heart, Evan already knew the truth; he didn’t need Jordie to confirm it. But he believed if his son could just hear himself say it, if he could just spurt it out quickly and painlessly like the tooth, it would release him from the prison of his mind. Without a plan, Evan began babbling away again, saying whatever came to mind in the hope of eventually hitting on something that would push a button in his son and free him.
However, by describing specific sexual acts and insisting that they happened, Chandler runs the risk of planting mental images that Jordan may later come to see as memories. This is especially problematic if Jordan were under sedation at the time.
The conversation that follows is just as troubling. In his written chronology, Chandler says he told Jordan that if he denied the allegations, he would know he was lying and destroy Jackson’s career. As he wrote, “If you lie then I’m going to take him [Jackson] down.” However, Chandler says he promised not to “hurt Michael” if Jordan agreed there was sexual activity. In this way, Chandler pressured his young son to say what he wanted him to say, whether or not it was true — and ironically, he used threats of harming Jackson as leverage. Chandler therefore framed his questions in a very manipulative way, putting Jordan in a bewildering, high-stakes situation where agreeing there was sexual abuse would supposedly protect Jackson, while denying it would supposedly destroy him. The reality, of course, was just the opposite.
Importantly, as Chandler’s own recollections make clear, the allegations against Jackson did not begin with Jordan. Instead, they began with Chandler himself, who insisted his version of events was true despite his son’s denials. It was not until that day at the dental office, after Jordan had been drugged and aggressively questioned, that he reluctantly agreed to his father’s allegations of abuse.
According to Tom Mesereau, the lead defense attorney during Jackson’s 2005 trial, Jordan later disavowed his father’s accusations. In a November 29, 2005, talk at Harvard Law School, Mesereau said, “I had witnesses who were going to come in and say he told them it never happened, and that he would never talk to his parents again for what they made him say.” Mesereau later confirmed this to me in a private telephone conversation. He also gave me contact information for his chief investigator, Scott Ross, who talked with these witnesses, and Ross confirmed this as well.
One of those witnesses was Josephine Zohny, who met Jordan Chandler in August 2001 when they were both students at New York University. In a 2019 documentary, Square One, Zohny described Jordan as “a nice guy … always very polite.” She said the first time they met, she was wearing a “vintage” Jacksons’ Victory tour T-shirt. Jordan approached her and told her he liked it.
Zohny was careful to say that she and Jordan were not close friends. They were simply classmates in NYU’s music business program, but they shared an appreciation for Jackson and his music. In fact, according to Zohny, Jordan seemed drawn to students who liked Jackson. As she said, “When I think about the people in the program that I saw him with, the people that he did surround himself with were … Michael Jackson fans.” Jordan also “carried his guitar with him everywhere he went” and liked to create Jackson-style songs, according to Zohny:
He made his own music. He would describe it as “pop/R&B like Michael Jackson.” I remember that because he said it many times.
In addition, Jordan wore fedoras like Jackson, he could perform Jackson’s dance moves, and his apartment was decorated with Jackson memorabilia. So somewhat unexpectedly given his history, as a young adult Jordan seemed to feel a strong affinity for Jackson and his music, and he sought out other students who liked Jackson as well.
According to Zohny, Jordan occasionally talked about his parents. As she explained, “We were college students. You know, we would have our discussions about our parents and venting and that sort of thing.” In those conversations, Jordan implied he had a distant relationship with his family:
He said that he felt very used by his parents…. He never mentioned siblings, so I don’t know what was going on there. But he did say multiple times that he wasn’t close to his parents and felt used by them.
This is corroborated by court documents. Jordan legally emancipated himself from his parents while he was still a minor, and later filed a restraining order against his father. And when his mother testified in Jackson’s 2005 trial, she said she hadn’t seen or spoken to her son in 11 years. Jordan himself refused to testify against Jackson.
In early 2003, approximately 18 months after Zohny met Jordan, a British documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, was televised in England and the U.S. It “reignited the discussion about whether or not Michael Jackson was a child molester,” according to Zohny, and this became “a huge topic of conversation,” especially among students in NYU’s music business program. And surprisingly, Jordan sometimes weighed in on those discussions. Zohny described the first time this happened:
There was a discussion about whether or not Michael Jackson was a child molester. People were calling him a freak. These were people who did not have any fondness for Michael Jackson. And I chimed in … that I didn’t believe Michael Jackson was a child molester, and that the documentary was misleading and exploited him.
During that conversation, Jordan Chandler chimed in and said that he too believed that Michael Jackson wasn’t capable of the things he was being accused of. And he said that voluntarily.… He wasn’t asked.
Zohny went on to say that Jordan’s defense of Jackson was “shocking” to her. She explained that very few students at NYU seemed to know who Jordan was — that he was the so-called “accuser” in the 1993 allegations. But Zohny knew, and she understood the implications of his words:
I remember that very first time. I remember catching his eye. It was shocking that he would speak up. And it really affirmed my belief that Michael was innocent.
It does seem significant that Jordan would come to Jackson’s defense, and the way he worded his remarks is noteworthy as well. According to Zohny, he didn’t just express a belief that Jackson was innocent of things insinuated about him in 2003, but that Jackson “wasn’t capable” of sexually abusing a child. This suggests that Jordan saw Jackson as innocent of all abuse allegations against him, including those of his own family.
According to Zohny, while this was the first time she heard Jordan express a belief in Jackson’s innocence, it wasn’t the last: “Throughout the semester, there were different occasions like that where he would again sort of reaffirm things that I said in defense of Michael Jackson.” This repeated support for Jackson against suspicions of child abuse, in combination with Jordan’s strained relationship with his parents, led Zohny to conclude that his parents must have coerced him into agreeing to the allegations against Jackson:
Given things that Jordan had said separately — having nothing to do with Michael Jackson — about his home life, it affirmed my belief that he was a victim of his parents’ greed and that he was forced to say certain things. Because I really have a hard time believing that if he had been molested by Michael Jackson, he would be going out of his way to say that he didn’t think he was capable of these things.
It’s important to note that this idea that Jordan “was forced to say certain things” by his parents is only conjecture on Zohny’s part. She simply says that it is “my belief.” She doesn’t claim that Jordan himself ever said that.
However, the coercion that Zohny speculates about in 2019 is described in step-by-step detail by Evan Chandler in the written chronology he gave to police in 1993. According to Chandler himself, he put his son in a dental chair, sedated him, and then pulled out one of his teeth: a coercive situation if ever there was one. There could hardly be a more vivid demonstration of Chandler’s power over Jordan, as well as his ability to inflict pain. And this is the moment, when Jordan was in a position of extreme vulnerability both physically and psychologically, that his father chose to demand answers about whether or not Jackson had sexually abused him.
Or to be more precise, this is the moment when Chandler chose to tell Jordan that he knew Jackson had abused him, that he had wiretapped Jordan's bedroom and had proof that Jackson had abused him — all of which is untrue. This is also when he promised Jordan he wouldn’t “hurt” Jackson if Jordan agreed to the allegations (another falsehood) and threatened to destroy Jackson’s career if Jordan denied it. According to Chandler’s chronology, he pressured his young son to agree to the allegations for more than an hour before “finally he answered in an almost inaudible whisper, ‘Yes.’” From Chandler’s own description of how he misled, manipulated, and bullied his son that day, his tactics were clearly coercive and they put Jordan in a terrible position.
The dental visit in July 1993 was therefore a critical turning point in the Chandler case. Another pivotal moment occurred on December 20, 1993, when the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office conducted what Jackson described as “a dehumanizing and humiliating examination … that allowed them to view and photograph my body, including my penis, my buttocks, my lower torso, thighs, and any other area that they wanted.” The ostensible purpose of this strip search was to see if a detailed description of Jackson’s body provided by the Chandlers was correct, thereby providing corroborating evidence that Jordan had seen Jackson naked. (It should be noted that Evan Chandler had seen some private areas of Jackson’s body since, as he says in All that Glitters, he administered the shot of Toradol “into Michael’s gluteus.”)
A few weeks after the police conducted the strip search, Reuters reported that the “photos of Michael Jackson’s genitalia do not match descriptions given by the boy who accused the singer of sexual misconduct.” Jackson’s former wife, Lisa Marie Presley, confirmed this in a 1995 interview with Diane Sawyer, saying, “There was nothing that concurred. There was nothing.” Additionally, two independent grand juries — in Santa Barbara County and Los Angeles County — reviewed the evidence against Jackson, “including the description of Jackson’s genitalia … that was laid out next to the photographs of Michael’s lower body,” and both juries refused to return an indictment.
This is important. Before a District Attorney can take a criminal case to trial, he or she must first convince a grand jury that there is sufficient evidence to warrant a trial. And grand juries in both Santa Barbara and Los Angeles — the two counties with jurisdiction in the Chandler case — ruled there was not. As journalist Randall Sullivan explained in Untouchable: the Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson, this is especially significant in this case since California has a surprisingly low threshold for granting District Attorneys approval to move forward:
Grand juries are generally a formality in California; nearly all such deliberations end in indictments. Only prosecutors can present evidence, and they are required to demonstrate no more than a “reasonable likelihood” that a crime has been committed. Yet in the summer of 1994, both grand juries refused to indict Michael Jackson. “There was no real evidence,” a police officer involved in the investigation admitted to the Los Angeles Times.
Because the District Attorneys had “no real evidence” to corroborate the Chandlers’ claims, they could not get an indictment against Jackson.
Nevertheless, Jackson agreed to settle the civil case against him, and the Chandlers and their lawyer, Larry Feldman, received millions of dollars as a result. Why would Jackson agree to this, especially when he knew how damaging it would be to his reputation? The answer seems to lie in the strip search — or more precisely, the extremely graphic photographs and videotape of Jackson’s naked body that were now in the hands of the police. Those images could be made public during a civil trial, a mortifying possibility. In addition, copies of those photographs and videotape could be turned over to Feldman and Chandler as they prepared for the civil trial. Because of the public’s obsession with Jackson’s body, those images would be worth millions — perhaps more than the $20 million they were asking from Jackson.
While Chandler was determined to obtain a large payout (as he told Schwartz, “If I go through with this, I win big time”), he also wanted to “humiliate” Jackson, whom he saw as usurping his position in the family. As he told Schwartz, “This man is going to be humiliated beyond belief.… He will not believe what’s going to happen to him. Beyond his worst nightmares.” After this conversation, Chandler set in motion a plan that skillfully used the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office as a tool to achieve these goals. The graphic images they took of Jackson’s genitalia gave Chandler precisely the leverage he needed to obtain a large financial settlement while thoroughly humiliating Jackson.
Importantly, Feldman and the Chandlers clearly understood that those images could be used to pressure Jackson into negotiating a settlement, whether they corroborated their description of Jackson’s body or not. In All that Glitters, Ray Chandler describes the situation this way: “The DA might soon have pictures of Michael’s cajones, but Larry Feldman now held them firmly in his grasp. And it was time to put the squeeze on.” And they did, using those graphic photographs and videotape of Jackson’s genitalia as leverage to force him to negotiate. According to Ray, Feldman began requesting access to “those pictures of Michael’s balls” within weeks of the strip search, petitioning the court in early January to provide him with “copies of the photographs obtained at the strip-search.”
Jackson agreed to settle the civil case soon after, and as Sullivan reports in Untouchable, preventing the release of those images was the central issue during negotiations between Feldman and Jackson’s lawyers, Johnnie Cochran and Howard Weitzman:
Cochran and Weitzman regarded the photographs of Michael Jackson’s genitalia as “the purple gorilla sitting in the room,” recalled [Cochran associate] Carl Douglas, and were desperate to keep them out of Larry Feldman’s hands. Fully aware of this, Feldman negotiated ferociously. “The numbers being discussed seemed fantastic,” remembered Douglas, who believed that the turning point of the settlement conference came when one of the three retired judges [mediating the negotiations] observed that, “It’s not about how much this case is worth. It’s about how much it’s worth to Michael Jackson.”
Jackson ultimately decided it was worth millions to him to prevent Chandler from gaining access to those graphic photographs and video. However, he insisted the settlement be structured so most of the money was held in trust for Jordan until he came of age. June and Evan Chandler reportedly received $1.5 million each, while Jordan received an estimated $15 million. Feldman was well paid as well, bringing the total to around $20 million.
Importantly, Jackson could have prevented the scandal by settling the case six months earlier before it became public, as Ray pointed out in All that Glitters:
Had Michael paid the twenty million dollars demanded of him in August, rather than the following January, he might have spent the next ten years as the world’s most famous entertainer, instead of the world’s most infamous child molester.
But Jackson adamantly refused to settle and continued refusing for months, even though he knew it meant that the allegations would become public and unleash a media firestorm — as they did. And he persisted in refusing the Chandlers’ demands even after the scandal erupted.
For example, in a short speech Jackson gave at the NAACP Image Awards on January 5, 1994, two weeks after the strip search, he seemed defiant and vowed to fight the allegations against him:
Everyone is presumed to be innocent … until they are charged with a crime and then convicted by a jury of their peers. I never really took the time to understand the importance of that ideal until now, until I became the victim of false allegations. … Not only am I presumed to be innocent, but I am innocent. And I know that the truth will be my salvation.
Jackson therefore seemed determined to fight the Chandlers’ allegations and prove his innocence. As he told the NAACP audience,
I have been strengthened in my fight to prove my innocence … by the knowledge that I am not fighting this battle alone. Together, we will see this thing through.
However, he abruptly changed his mind and agreed to settle the Chandlers’ civil suit only a few days later, after it became clear that the photographs and videotape of the strip search could be released to Chandler and Feldman if he continued to fight them.
As soon as the settlement was finalized, Jackson had his lawyers quietly petition the court to obtain those photographs and videotape. They were denied. However, those images continued to weigh on Jackson’s mind apparently because 12 years later, as soon as the 2005 trial was over, he once again had his lawyers petition the court to obtain them. Again they were denied. Unless they have been destroyed since his death, those photographs and videotape remain in legal custody.
The Francias
Settlement of the civil case, especially in light of the large sums paid to the Chandlers, was widely seen as a tacit admission of guilt, leaving a permanent stain on Jackson’s reputation. It also left him exposed as an easy target for similar accusations — and in fact, a second case against Jackson followed soon after the first.
It began when a former Jackson maid, Blanca Francia, was paid $20,000 (a sum equal to her annual salary) to appear on Hard Copy, a celebrity news show. In her Hard Copy interview, Francia told a national television audience that she had seen Jackson naked with young boys in his Jacuzzi. However, she changed her story a month later while giving a deposition under oath, saying everyone had been wearing swim trunks. Of course, very few people heard her deposition, while millions watched her televised interview.
Francia also told Hard Copy that Jackson may have molested her 12-year-old son, Jason. The police vigorously interrogated the boy, pressuring him to say he’d been abused despite his persistent denials that Jackson had done anything wrong. During the interrogations, the police investigators repeatedly called Jackson “a molester” and told the boy “Mr. Jackson has a lot of money.” They also asked leading questions and made speculative statements, such as asking Jason if Jackson rubbed his penis. Jason told them “no.” At one point the investigators told Jason, “This is what happened, right?” and he replied, “Well, I’ll have to work on that,” suggesting the police encouraged him to recall things he didn’t actually remember.
After intense questioning, Jason finally told the investigators, “If he really did touch, it was in the arcade.” Two months later, in an interview with District Attorneys from Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, Jason complained about the interrogation methods used, saying, “They made me come out with a lot more stuff I didn’t want to say. They kept pushing. I wanted to get up and hit them in the head.”
No charges were ever filed against Jackson in response to the Francia allegations, indicating the police did not see it as a strong case. However, Blanca Francia met with Feldman (the Chandlers’ lawyer) and he initiated a multi-million dollar civil suit. Jackson’s insurance company decided it was more cost effective to settle the case than fight it, and they paid the Francias and Feldman $2.4 million. Jackson protested, saying the payments were made without his consent, and he later expressed his frustrations in the lyrics to “Money”:
Insurance
Where do your loyalties lie?
Is that your alibi?
I don’t think so
However, insurance companies have the right to settle third-party claims as they see fit, without their customers’ approval. So the Francias and Feldman received the insurance settlement, regardless of Jackson’s feelings on the matter.
It’s important to note that, as in the Chandler case, the Francia allegations did not begin with the alleged victim. While under oath on the witness stand during Jackson’s 2005 trial, Blanca Francia said that she had not talked with her son about Jackson before going on Hard Copy, and Jason later confirmed this when he was under oath. Instead, she went on national TV and insinuated that Jackson had molested her son without knowing if her accusations had any basis in fact.
So once again, the accusations against Jackson began with a parent, not the child. They then spread to the media, the public, the police, and finally the boy at the center of the controversy. It’s significant that, as with Jordan Chandler, Jason Francia initially disputed the allegations and only agreed to them after extensive and coercive questioning. In fact, in both the Chandler and Francia cases, what the boys themselves had to say was largely ignored.
The Arvizos
A third case followed in 2003, and it is as problematic as the first two. A scandal erupted in early February 2003 after the Living with Michael Jackson documentary aired in the U.K. and U.S. In one scene a 13-year-old cancer survivor, Gavin Arvizo, is shown sitting beside Jackson, and he says, “There was one night I asked him if I could stay in the bedroom.” Jackson clarifies, saying he slept on the floor that night. Gavin agrees, saying Jackson slept on a pile of blankets on the floor while he and his brother, Star, slept on the bed.
In his book, My Friend Michael, Jackson’s assistant, Frank Cascio, wrote that he spent that night on Jackson’s bedroom floor as well — at Jackson’s request. According to Cascio, the two boys begged to stay in Jackson’s room, saying they had the approval of their mother, Janet Ventura-Arvizo. Despite his reluctance, Jackson finally agreed. However, he told Cascio that he needed to spend the night also. As Cascio wrote, “He said to me, Frank, if they’re staying in my room, you’re staying too. I don’t trust this mother.”
After the documentary aired in the U.S. on February 6, 2003, a scandal erupted and investigations were launched by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). The Arvizos were interviewed both individually and together, and they repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Instead, they talked about Jackson in the warmest terms and described how kind he had been to them. They also participated in the creation of a rebuttal video on February 20, 2003, where they praised Jackson and said he was like a father figure to them.
However, they soon changed their story and accused Jackson of extortion, abduction, false imprisonment, conspiracy, and providing alcohol to a minor, as well as child sexual abuse. And they hired Larry Feldman — the same lawyer who had negotiated millions of dollars for the Chandlers and Francias — to represent them. Feldman himself apparently doubted their claims, as he told Larry King in a 2004 lunch meeting. King later described his conversation with Feldman while under oath:
He said that … the woman in this case, the mother, was a wacko, was the term he used, and he thought she was in it for just the money. He had met with her. He didn’t want to represent her. He advised her to see someone else.
Despite his misgivings, Feldman represented the Arvizos off and on for the next two years.
Jackson was put on trial in 2005. However, even journalists who expressed a predisposition to see him as guilty came to see the case against him as deeply flawed. For example, the alleged timeline of events was farfetched, at best. The Arvizos were “so laudatory, so effusive about Michael Jackson” in the rebuttal video and their DCFS interviews, according to Mesereau, that it was difficult for prosecutors to explain how their opinions had changed so completely. They had repeatedly and unequivocally praised Jackson before hiring Feldman, but afterwards they accused him of all manner of abusive behavior.
Prosecutors attempted to resolve this difficulty by claiming that Jackson committed the abuse between February 20 and March 12, 2003, beginning immediately after the Arvizos talked with DCFS and made the rebuttal video. As Mesereau explained, “The dates were carefully chosen to follow those statements. They couldn’t get away from those statements.” But this means that the alleged abuse would have occurred after the documentary aired, at a time when Jackson was under intense scrutiny by the police, the press, and the public.
In other words, the prosecutors tried to convince the jury that Jackson was innocent of any crimes at the time the scandal broke, and then suddenly molested Gavin after the police began investigating him for acts of sexual abuse that he hadn’t committed yet. In addition, prosecutors claimed that Jackson panicked and masterminded a conspiracy to imprison the Arvizo family and cover up his crimes — all before he had committed any crimes. This convoluted chronology defies logic, as Mesereau pointed out in his closing arguments:
Put all this together, what does it say to you about the dates the so-called molestation occurred? It’s absurd. It’s unrealistic. And it makes no sense. Because the whole case makes no sense.
Understandably, the jurors were skeptical of the prosecution’s timeline.
Journalists also noted that the Arvizos appeared untrustworthy on the witness stand. They repeatedly changed their testimony, contradicting themselves and one another, and many of their statements were shown to be untrue. For example, they claimed they had been coerced into making the rebuttal video and were forced to say complimentary things about Jackson that had been scripted for them. However, previously unreleased footage from the filming that day contradicts this. Behind the scenes, the Arvizos appear to be in high spirits and eager to participate, even suggesting ways to make the rebuttal video more emotionally affecting and supportive of Jackson.
The Arvizos also appeared to have a history of making dubious claims of sexual abuse. For example, in 1998, Gavin, Star, and their father, David Arvizo, were accused of shoplifting “armloads” of clothing from a J.C. Penney’s store. They were detained in a busy parking lot by three security guards — two men and a woman — and a scuffle broke out after Janet joined the group. She later filed a $3 million lawsuit against Penney’s, claiming that one of the guards had fondled her breasts and pelvic area for up to seven minutes in front of everyone present. All of the guards denied this, and a psychiatrist hired by Penney’s talked with the Arvizos and concluded that Janet had coached Gavin and Star to support her story. (Of course, the psychiatrist had a vested interest in supporting Penney’s and discrediting her.) To avoid negative publicity and additional legal fees, Penney’s paid the Arvizos $137,000 in 2001 to settle the case.
Soon after the Penney’s incident, Janet filed for divorce from David and requested custody of their three children. As former New York Times writer Margo Jefferson reported in her book On Michael Jackson, their “daughter says she was sexually abused by him. But, pressed in court, she admits she didn’t remember this until she heard her mother say it.” All of this suggests a pattern of Janet Ventura-Arvizo using sexual abuse allegations as leverage to get what she wanted, and then recruiting her children to corroborate her allegations.
After listening to extensive testimony and considering the evidence for more than three months, the twelve-member jury unanimously found Jackson not guilty of all charges. However, despite the jury’s findings, Jackson was nevertheless forced to abandon his home, as Forbes journalist Zack O’Malley Greenburg explained in his book, Michael Jackson, Inc.:
Mesereau offered Jackson one lasting piece of advice: leave Neverland for good. The local authorities had been humiliated, he warned, and would soon be looking for another shot at him.
Mesereau emphasized this point to me in a personal phone conversation, adding that his suspicions were later confirmed by Sullivan. While doing research for Untouchable, Sullivan discovered that the Santa Barbara police department began investigating Jackson for potential drug charges as soon as the 2005 trial ended. Jackson spent the rest of his life in exile and never returned to Neverland. As of this writing, it is up for sale.
Other Children
The police continued to investigate Jackson for child sexual abuse as well, with occasional help from the FBI. In fact, the FBI monitored Jackson off and on for years, beginning in the mid-1990s and continuing into the 2000s, but never found anything incriminating. The Santa Barbara police aggressively investigated Jackson as well, questioning approximately 200 people who had been friends with Jackson when they were children. Importantly, not one alleged any wrongdoing, despite some troubling police tactics and a strong financial incentive to do so.
Their statements to the police are sealed, but in Unmasked: the Final Years of Michael Jackson, a book published soon after Jackson died, Ian Halperin writes that he interviewed 42 people who had stayed at Neverland with Jackson when they were young:
It was a far cry from the 200 that [Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom] Sneddon’s team had identified with their financial resources. But like him, I couldn’t find a single person who even hinted that Jackson had acted improperly.
In fact, person after person said just the opposite: that’s not who Jackson was, and that’s not what the situation was like.
Macaulay Culkin, who remained friends with Jackson into adulthood and is a godparent to Jackson’s children, was the first to talk to Halperin:
I’ve heard all the stories. All the accusations. But you have to know Michael. It’s impossible to understand the situation if you don’t know him. He’s not like anybody else. There’s this expression about how somebody’s a big kid. It’s always just an expression. But with Michael, he is one. Not all the time. He can be talking about his music, what he calls his art, or business and he’s a sophisticated adult. But then he just transforms. It’s remarkable. He’s not pretending. I remember thinking that he’s not like any other adult I ever met. He was just like me.…
We had pillow fights, we goofed around, we rode on the rides. We played the arcade games.… Keep in mind that it wasn’t just me. There were often other kids around too.
… Looking back, I guess it is a bit weird. But at the time, it seemed so harmless, so normal. Michael is just Michael, and if you really knew him, you would know just how stupid the accusations are.
A man named Joseph, who stayed at Neverland as a child, talked with Halperin as well:
Most people assume something perverted went on, no matter how hard I swear it was all innocent. It’s ironic, because at the time I did a lot of bragging about it and all my friends were jealous….
The whole thing was surreal. Here was this mega mega star taking us shopping, having bubble battles, watching movies, and playing video games and all I could think of at the time is how cool it was. I never thought for a second there was anything strange about it. Neither did my mom or dad. Later on, when all this stuff started to come out, my dad kept asking me over and over again if he did anything to me. He even wanted to know if during a tickle fight or something, he might have “accidentally” slipped his hands in my pj’s. There was nothing like that. Michael was just this big oversized goofy kid.
It’s interesting how the allegations and resulting scandal altered perceptions. As Joseph told Halperin, at the time “I never thought for a second there was anything strange about it. Neither did my mom or dad.” But once this new narrative that Jackson is a pedophile takes hold, those pleasant memories take on a sinister cast — as Joseph says, “my dad kept asking me over and over again if he did anything to me.” This shift in public opinion was so powerful it caused Joseph’s father to question his own perceptions, even though he had personally witnessed Jackson’s interactions with his son and other children. It also led him to question Jackson’s motives for spending time with children.
Jackson himself frequently talked about how important children were to him, and how much he enjoyed being with them. For example, when he was only 22 years old — long before the allegations changed public perceptions of him — Jackson tried to explain the importance of children to him in an interview with biographer Randy Taraborrelli:
One of my favorite pastimes is being with children, talking to them and playing with them. Children know a lot of secrets [about the world] and it’s difficult to get them to tell. Children are incredible. They go through a brilliant phase, but then when they reach a certain age, they lose it. My most creative moments have almost always come when I’m with children. When I’m with them, the music comes to me as easily as breathing.
Jackson therefore suggests that being with children was a wellspring of inspiration for him — something that recharged him both emotionally and creatively.
This is an idea that Jackson returned to again and again in interviews, as well as his work. For example, in 1992 he published Dancing the Dream, a book of poetry and essays, and many of them focus on creativity, children, and childhood. Here’s an excerpt from a short essay, “A Child is a Song”:
Do you feel your music?
Children do, but once we grow up, life becomes a burden and a chore, and the music grows fainter….
When I begin to feel tired or burdened, children revive me. I turn to them for new life, new music.
This idea of the innate creativity of children has been touched on in different ways by many artists. For example, Pablo Picasso famously said, “Todo niño es un artista. El problema es cómo seguir siendo artistas al crecer,” which translates as “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist as you grow up.” Jackson appears to have solved that problem by staying closely connected with children and childhood. This doesn’t seem to be a strategy he developed. It’s just something he instinctively felt from a young age.
Jackson also enjoyed being with children because they weren’t as grasping as adults were. He learned through experience that too often adults were trying to get something from him, so over time he learned to be wary. But he trusted children and felt he could relax and let down his guard with them.
But it seems the main reason Jackson enjoyed the company of children is simply because they had a great time together. This is something the people Halperin interviewed said over and over again. For example, Sean Lennon told Halperin, “We used to have a blast.”
Lennon became friends with Jackson when he was around eight years old, so about three years after his famous father was killed. Lennon spent a lot of time with Jackson over the following years, and played the oldest of the three children in Jackson’s Moonwalker film when he was 13. When Halperin asked Lennon about his relationship with Jackson, Lennon defended him without reservation:
People who think Michael’s a diddler always assume that he bought off the families of the kids he molested. You hear it all the time.… But look at me. I was one of the kids he befriended at a young age. I may have spent more time with him than almost anybody else. I’ve seen all kinds of people speculate that he abused me. But I think my family is actually richer than he is. So it would be quite a trick to buy me and my mother off. It’s ridiculous. No way is Mike a child abuser. Take it from me. I knew the kids he knew. I would have known if anything funny was going on.
Lennon went on to say, “It wasn’t just boys, you know. There were girls around too, and not just the sisters.” Halperin writes that, according to Lennon, Jackson was uncomfortable and “very shy” with most girls. But occasionally he would connect with a girl and feel comfortable with her, and he would invite her to join him and other children at Neverland.
Halperin interviewed four women who stayed at Neverland as children, including Allison Smith, whom Halperin identifies as “a world-renowned photographer” and “an heiress to the Neiman Marcus … fortune.” When Halperin talked to Smith, she told him, “During the [2005 Arvizo] trial, they kept talking about all the boys…. The prosecutor must know there were girls around, but he never mentioned it.” Smith went on to say that she had “a lot of fun” hanging out with Jackson.
Halperin interviewed dozens of people who had spent time with Jackson when they were children, some of whom knew him for years. Many people seem to believe Jackson was a serial pedophile based on this fact alone — that he spent so much time with children — and initially Halperin agreed with them. In fact, he started work on Unmasked with the goal of exposing Jackson as a pedophile and bringing him to justice.
However, Halperin came away from these interviews believing just the opposite. All of the people he talked to said that simply wasn’t who Jackson was: that wasn’t his personality or what he cared about. They said he was just having a good time playing and hanging out with them, and they had “a blast” running around with him too.
Robson and Safechuck
Approximately four years after Jackson died, two white men who had known Jackson since they were children — Wade Robson and James Safechuck — changed their story and claimed Jackson had sexually abused them. Both had defended Jackson against these kinds of allegations while he was alive, including answering a series of probing questions under oath, and both had steadfastly affirmed that Jackson had never done anything improper. In fact, Robson was the lead defense witness during Jackson’s 2005 trial, and he gave a statement praising Jackson when he died:
Michael Jackson changed the world and, more personally, my life forever….
He is the reason I dance, the reason I make music, and one of the main reasons I believe in the pure goodness of human kind.
However, Robson and Safechuck now say Jackson sexually abused them while they were children, and they have filed claims against Jackson’s companies and estate that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They describe their alleged abuse in court documents as well as a 2019 documentary, Leaving Neverland, and their graphic descriptions are so disturbing that most mainstream news outlets have been reluctant to question the veracity of their claims, even though some of their statements are verifiably untrue.
For example, Safechuck claims that Jackson began abusing him in 1988 when he was 10 years old, but began to emotionally distance himself and “focus his attention on a younger boy” when Safechuck “started puberty at age 12” — a confusing time that he says left him “inwardly jealous” of the younger boy. The abuse tapered off after that, according to Safechuck, although he says he and Jackson remained friendly for years afterwards.
In one emotionally wrenching scene in the documentary, Safechuck says that Jackson repeatedly abused him in an upstairs room in the iconic train station at Neverland, and he implies that this abuse occurred “every day” soon after their relationship became sexual:
At the train station, there’s a room upstairs. And we would have sex up there too. It would happen every day. It sounds sick, but it’s kinda like when you’re first dating somebody, right, and you do a lot of it. So it was very much like that.
However, British journalist Mike Smallcombe investigated this claim and discovered that the Neverland train station wasn’t built until 1994, when Safechuck was 16 years old. Further investigation revealed that Jackson was living in New York at the time and didn’t return to Neverland until 1995, when Safechuck was 17. Therefore, Safechuck’s claims of daily abuse in the Neverland train station when he was a prepubescent boy simply cannot be true.
Despite this and other discrepancies, Oprah Winfrey said in a 2019 interview with Trevor Noah that she has “never wavered” in her support for Robson and Safechuck. Winfrey has been a leading advocate for victims of childhood sexual abuse, and she explained the incongruities in their stories this way: “When you’re in the midst of trauma, terrible things happening to you, you may not remember the exact time.” In fact, Winfrey described this as a common problem in cases of childhood sexual abuse:
I’ve had girls at my school that were sexually abused, and I have never won a case … because when you put a girl on the witness stand and she can’t remember if it was Thursday or Wednesday, it’s automatically discredited.
However, the discrepancy in Safechuck’s story isn’t between a Wednesday and a Thursday. It’s between alleged abuse when he was 10 or 11 or possibly 12 years old versus 17 years old, a significant difference.
Dan Reed, the director of Leaving Neverland, stands by Safechuck and Robson as well. Reed looked into Smallcombe’s discoveries about the Neverland train station and acknowledged that his reporting was correct. However, he tweeted that, instead of undercutting Safechuck’s credibility, Smallcombe’s findings simply mean that the abuse must have occurred over a longer period of time than Safechuck originally stated:
However, extending the period of alleged abuse by several years, so that it continued until after the train station was built, isn’t merely a matter of shifting dates. It contradicts the central claim of Robson and Safechuck’s allegations as well as Reed’s documentary, which is that Michael Jackson preyed on young boys and then abandoned them as they entered puberty. Repeated abuse of a sexually mature 17-year-old victim doesn’t fit this narrative, especially since Safechuck implies that the alleged abuse in the train station occurred “every day” near the beginning of their relationship — “like when you’re first dating somebody, right, and you do a lot of it” — not when their relationship was ending.
The Narrative of the Black Sexual Predator
Despite significant discrepancies such as these, there is a deep reluctance in the U.S. to question Safechuck and Robson’s allegations against Jackson. I believe the reason is similar to what Ida Wells described more than a century ago, when thousands of black men were lynched following false accusations of sexual assault, and her words bear repeating. As she wrote in Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, “the crime of rape is so revolting” that both blacks and whites were unwilling to delve into the details to determine what was true and what wasn’t. Instead, “Even … Afro-Americans … have too often taken the white man’s word and given lynch law neither the investigation nor condemnation it deserved.” I believe the problem Wells described in 1892 still holds true today — specifically, the tendency to avert our eyes and not look too closely at allegations of sexual assault or abuse.
The crime of rape, especially the rape of a child, is so abhorrent that I believe many cultural critics have been swayed by the intensity of their feelings and refuse to look at the evidence. In fact, many act as if it is morally reprehensible to even question Robson and Safechuck’s allegations against Jackson. However, today as in the past, this reliance on belief rather than evidence is a dangerous stance, especially in the U.S. when the case involves a sex crime with a white accuser and a black defendant. Historically, this is one way that white Americans have controlled black Americans and stymied black advancement, often targeting some of the most successful or outspoken black men with false accusations of sex crimes.
The allegations against Jackson seem to fit this historical pattern. He was certainly successful and outspoken, making him an obvious target. In fact, Jackson himself was aware of this history. As he told Jesse Jackson in a 2005 interview, the allegations against him and the public persecution he faced as a result are part of “a pattern among black luminaries in this country.” This is a pattern that has repeated itself all too often, and it is perpetuated in part by a predisposition among white Americans to see black men — including some of the most respected “black luminaries” — as a sexual threat to white women and children, regardless of the evidence.
Piers Morgan of Good Morning Britain questioned Reed in a 2019 interview about the scant evidence in his documentary. Reed replied that he had reviewed the evidence, but he didn’t offer any details and seemed rather dismissive of that line of questioning. When Morgan then questioned Reed about the “massive financial” stakes involved, meaning the “hundreds of millions of dollars” Robson and Safechuck are seeking, Reed was dismissive of that as well, saying, “This isn’t about money.… They want justice. They’re not fussed about the money.” That seems naïve, especially when it’s been estimate their claims, if successful, could total as much as $1.6 billion. While it may be true that Robson and Safechuck aren’t motivated by financial gain, they are seeking a “massive” compensation payment, and it is valid for Morgan to question the influence of that.
Morgan finally told Reed, “I’m just not certain, as you are, that Jackson was proven to be a pedophile, and I’m concerned about the credibility of the two people” — meaning Robson and Safechuck — “that you so wholeheartedly rely on.” Reed replied, “This is a case of what happened in the dark behind closed doors, and I believe these two young men and their accounts.” So ultimately, as Reed himself concludes, it comes down to belief — specifically, his belief that Jackson is a child molester — and opposing evidence isn’t investigated or even considered.
Reed concluded his interview with Good Morning Britain by saying that “it just beggars belief” that Robson and Safechuck would “concoct a whole charade” of false allegations. So while Reed, a White man, can believe that Jackson would molest children, he can’t believe that two other White men might tell a false story, even if that story is worth as much as $1.6 billion. This seems to reveal inherent biases in Reed’s belief system.
It also reveals a profound ignorance of American history. As discussed in Part 1, white Americans have falsely accused black men of sexual assault for centuries — sometimes for land or other financial gain, and sometimes for more subtle reasons such as racial jealousy, status anxiety, or misplaced rage. Historically, these accusers were abetted by mobs of angry white men intent on preserving white supremacy. However, they were also unintentionally assisted by well-meaning people — people such as Dan Reed and Oprah Winfrey today — who genuinely wished to support victims of sexual violence and abuse. However, by letting their sympathies rule their judgment and blindly believing accusers without carefully weighing the evidence, they unwittingly helped perpetuate another type of injustice: one based on an unfounded but widespread fear of black men as sexual predators.
In Jackson’s case, there is another factor that may have intensified these feelings, and it may help explain why the public was so ready to believe the allegations against him despite the evidence — namely, the apparent change in the color of his skin. In The White African American Body: A Cultural and Literary Exploration, Charles Martin traces white America’s centuries-long fascination with “white Negros”:
For more than two hundred years, natural philosophers, scientists, and showmen have exhibited the bodies of African Americans with white or gradually whitening skin in taverns, dime museums, and circus sideshows.… Founding fathers, laborers, and Irish immigrants, among many others, gathered to witness the spectacle of whiteness on skin the audience expected to be black.
Martin posits that “white Negro” bodies have entranced and threatened white audiences for so long because they challenge notions of racial essentialism and purity. Specifically, Martin says that the image of a black body with white skin arouses confused notions of miscegenation, contamination, and corruption:
[T]he spectacle of vitiligo still bears the taint of fraud and traitorous racial conversion. The folk wisdom surrounding the disorder associates the appearance of whiteness on dark skin with sexual escapades across the color line.
Given this historical context, Martin suggests that Jackson’s “white-and-black skin” itself became “primary evidence of his madness, his perversity, his crimes” — an irrational prejudice that perhaps gained additional potency because Jackson was accused of sex crimes “across the color line.”
Most critics agree that the allegations against Jackson did irreparable damage to his reputation and career, but the consequences of those accusations did not end there. In fact, they impacted every aspect of Jackson’s life. For example, they created a heavy psychological burden that he carried for decades, as he described to Frank Cascio:
I have the whole world thinking I’m a child molester. You don’t know what it feels like to be falsely accused, to be called “Wacko Jacko.” Day in and day out, I have to get up on that stage and perform…. I give everything I have…. Meanwhile, my character and reputation are under constant attack. When I step off that stage, people look at me as if I were a criminal.
The long-term effects of the child abuse scandals were devastating to Jackson: emotionally, socially, professionally, financially, even physically. Those who knew him say he was never the same afterwards, and many feel his death can ultimately be traced back to the allegations against him.
However, because of Jackson’s unique cultural position, the repercussions extend well beyond him personally. He was arguably the most famous man in the world, black or white, and before the allegations tarnished his image he stood as a much-admired representative of his race — a position he took very seriously. As he told reporter Gerri Hirshey in a 1983 Rolling Stone article, he guarded his reputation obsessively, “just like a hemophiliac who can’t afford to be scratched in any way.” He knew he was seen as a shining example of a successful young black man as well as a global inspiration of a future without racism, and he was determined to fulfill that role to the best of his ability — even while occasionally challenging what white Americans at the time thought proper for a black man to do, such as attending public events with well-known white women like Brooke Shields or Madonna. In this way, Jackson used his celebrity and iconic cultural position to confront racism.
Jackson also fought racism through his art, especially his visual art. He overtly addressed racism and other types of prejudice in films such as The Triumph, Black or White, and They Don’t Care About Us. And he fought racism in more subtle but perhaps more potent ways — for example, through the apparent change in the color of his skin, one of his most provocative and most potent works of art, as well as films such as Thriller, which used a psychologically complex structure to undermine the narrative of the black sexual predator.
However, in a painfully ironic twist of fate, the molestation allegations turned Jackson into a preeminent example of a black sexual predator — the very narrative he had worked so hard to subvert — and helped spread that uniquely American racist image around the world. This was intolerable to him, and he responded in an extraordinary way. We will explore his artistic response to the allegations in the final essay of this series.
Note: This essay is the third of a four-part series. Part 1 takes an extended look at white fear of black men, particularly the centuries-old narrative of black men as sexual predators, to provide a historical context for Jackson’s art. Part 2 looks at some of Jackson’s important early work, including Thriller, to discover how he addressed white fears. Part 4 looks at the revolutionary art Jackson created in response to the allegations against him.
