A California appeals court this Friday reinstated two sex abuse counts against Michael Jackson. Alleged victims Wade Robson and James Safechuck opened up about their experiences of abuse against the pop legend in the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland (2019). Their lawsuits have been unsuccessful in US courts for a decade. This afternoon’s decision gives them strength to continue their fight against the companies managing the estate of Jackson, who died in June 2009.
In April 2021, a judge dismissed Robson’s allegation, finding that the two Jackson-owned companies had no legal responsibility to protect them from the artist, who knew them as children and repeatedly abused them until they reached puberty. “The evidence shows that the defendants [el emporio corporativo del músico: MMJ Productions y MJJ Ventures] They had no legal way to control Jackson, who had full ownership and sole control of the companies,” concluded Judge Mark Young. Safechuck had heard a similar argument in his case in October 2020.
Appeals judges have now ruled that Robson and Safechuck’s claims should not have been dismissed by lower courts. In their argument, the Togados posit that the two men have a right to be heard in a trial that would combine the two lawsuits, which were filed separately. The date for the trial has not yet been set.
“A company that facilitates the sexual abuse of children by one of its employers cannot be relieved of a positive duty to protect those minors simply by the fact that it is owned by the perpetrator,” the three judges wrote in Opinion. “It would be perverse if there were no obligation if the accused company only has one shareholder,” they added.
It’s a new twist in the case against Michael Jackson. Robson filed his first lawsuit in 2013 and Safechuck did so a year later. Since then, both experienced a legal roller coaster ride. In 2017, the two lawsuits were also dismissed by Judge Young, who found that the alleged offenses were statute-barred. However, and thanks to the MeToo movement, since 2019 a law in the US state of California has extended the statute of limitations for a sex offense from 26 to 40 years. This rule also gave victims three years to go to court.
several years of abuse
Safechuck, who is now 45, says he met Michael Jackson in the late 1980s when he was nine while filming a Pepsi commercial. After the shooting, Jackson began calling and texting him asking for dinner, according to the alleged victim. He also sent him gifts, money, and invitations to concerts and vacations together, a gesture that the child’s mother also attended. All of these costs were covered by MJJ Productions.
In 1988, when the two were in Paris in the middle of a six-month world tour, the musician reportedly told the boy that he would “change his life” by teaching him how to masturbate. First the artist did it, and then he gave instructions to the minor, according to the court documents. This type of abuse spanned the next five years, a period that allegedly included finger play and a Jackson giving Safechuck a “kiss on the genitals.” According to the victim, the Thriller singer lost interest in him when he was twelve years old.
Robson, a 40-year-old Australian choreographer, met Jackson when he was 5 years old. He then won a dance competition with the prize of meeting and dancing with the King of Pop. In “Leaving Neverland,” the dancer claims he was a victim of sexual abuse for seven years. This began in 1990 when he was 7 years old and received an invitation to visit Jackson’s ranch in Santa Barbara County with his family. MJJ Productions covered all of the costs of moving the boy and his family from Australia to the United States, where Robson starred in three of the artist’s music videos and posed with Jackson in commercials and other promotional events.
In his lawsuit, Robson alleges that Jackson repeatedly touched his penis, forced him to perform fellatio, and attempted to penetrate him. These events took place in various rooms of the artist’s expansive mansion. Some were even observed by the singer’s security team, the legal document said. Some of his guards were sent to buy gifts for the minors Jackson abused, gifts bought with funds from the companies the artist ran.
According to Robson’s lawyers, Jackson’s bodyguards were also tasked with taking the minors’ parents shopping or wine tasting to leave the alleged pedophile and his victims at the Neverland mansion alone. In July of this year, Jackson’s trading center attorney Jonathan Steinsapir claimed that the two men’s allegations were unproven and false. It has been argued over the years that employees are unlikely to be legally responsible for preventing the conduct of their managers. “This would require subordinates to confront their superiors and call them pedophiles,” Steinsapir said. Now he must develop his argument further in an expected process.