2023-08-19 22:42:15
by Irene Soave
14 years after the singer’s death, two men who have accused him of sexual abuse dating back to when they were children return to court, readmitted by the judge
Michael Jackson died in 2009, but the lawsuits for sexual abuse concerning him may reopen: a Californian Court of Appeal granted it, to which two ex-children who have always claimed to be victims of the singer have turned, once again, to get justice. Under accusation is not Jackson, this time, but two companies linked to his heirs: Mjj Productions and Mjj Ventures. The two men, Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck – now 40 and 45 years old respectively and with jobs in the entertainment world – accuse the employees of having been accomplices to the violence and of not having protected them.
Robson and Safechuck are among the most explicit accusers of Michael Jackson, and for many years: their testimonies already appear in the documentary Neverland, produced in 2019 by Hbo.
Wade Robson today choreographer and director: the accusations he makes against Jackson date back to between 1990 and 1997, that is when he was between 7 and 14 years old as a boy. Meeting Jacko at a dance competition when he was just 5 years old: after that day, Robson was often hired to dance in the superstar’s videos and even made an album with his production company. Everything also derived from close, friendly relationships that the singer established with Wade’s family; at Neverland, where the Robsons went on vacation, Wade says he slept with the singer and touched his genitals. Over the next 7 years their relationship would turn sexual and would include oral sex, mutual masturbation and intimate contact. All this – reads the lawsuit – took place under the eyes of the employees of Michael Jackson’s companies, who also did everything possible for the child and the star to remain together.
The other plaintiff, Jimmy Safechuck, a former actor and manager, equally raw. He talks about a corporate network that procured children to abuse and facilitated meetings in an organized way. The meeting with the star on the set of a Pepsi commercial in 1986. A few months later, Michael Jackson was teaching the boy how to masturbate. Their encounters, all sexual, would be repeated hundreds of times over the next 4 years
Before those of the two boys, which arrived in 2013 and 2014, there had been other accusations against the singer, never resulting in convictions: in 1994 a Los Angeles prosecutor did not manage to instruct a trial starting from the testimonies of three boys because the family of one of them reached an out-of-court settlement (for 23 million dollars). The boy would later commit suicide in 2009, a few months after the singer’s death. In 2003 a Santa Barbara court indicted Jackson on numerous counts of child molestation and getting children drunk, but the jury acquitted him two years later.
Robson and Safechuck’s lawsuits against Jackson’s two companies date back to the following decade: 2013 and 2014. Legal turmoil ensues. First the filing, in 2017, because the statute of limitations had been exceeded. Then the reopening in 2020: a new state law had granted cases of child sexual abuse an additional period. Then new filing: a judge established that the two companies and their employees were not legally obliged to protect the then children from Jackson. On Friday, the new verdict, this time in the California 2nd District Court of Appeals: Corporations are not exempt from the duty to protect those children just because they are the property of the abuser. The two ex-children, forever victims, return to hope.
August 19, 2023 (change August 19, 2023 | 22:40)
© Time.News
#Michael #Jackson #lawsuits #sexual #abuse #companies #restart #time.news