By Herald news services
They’d told their stories before, first in the quiet confines of therapists’ offices, then explicitly in court documents.
But Wade Robson and James Safechuck never felt truly heard until they stood in front of a crowd applauding them at the Sundance Film Festival last month. After the premiere of “Leaving Neverland,” the four-hour docu-series in which both men allege they suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of Michael Jackson when they were boys, hundreds of festivalgoers rose to their feet to applaud the film’s subjects.
Only a clutch of Jackson fans had turned up to protest the docu-series, which will begin its two-night HBO run on March 3. But online, his legion of supporters were already launching websites and Twitter threads to lay out why they believe Robson and Safechuck are liars.
Jackson’s family had a feeling the years-old child molestation allegations against the pop superstar would resurface at some point. Even before the festival, Jackson’s estate slammed “Leaving Neverland” as “yet another lurid production in an outrageous and pathetic attempt to exploit and cash in on Michael Jackson.” In the following weeks, the estate has only ramped up its defense, releasing a 10-page letter directed at HBO Chief Executive Richard Plepler slamming the network for airing the project.
The main argument against Safechuck and Robson’s credibility centers on the fact that both men previously testified on Jackson’s behalf in child sex abuse cases brought against him by other boys. In 1993, when Robson was 11 and Safechuck just a few years older, both said they told investigators that Jackson had never been sexually inappropriate with them. At 22, Robson reiterated that position again under oath in 2005, subsequently sitting for numerous television interviews in which he spoke positively about Jackson.
As “Leaving Neverland” details, both men now say they were under immense pressure from Jackson and his lawyers to keep quiet about their alleged molestation.
Robson says he was sexually abused by Jackson from age 7, shortly after he won a 1987 Australian competition in which he mimicked the performer’s dancing. Safechuck, who met Jackson that same year on the set of a Pepsi commercial, says Jackson started molesting him when he was 10 years old.
“My experience with Michael’s threats was that he told me, ‘You and I, Wade, we have to save each other,’” recalled Robson. “‘We have to stop these ignorant people. If this gets out, both of our lives are gonna be over. We’re gonna be pulled apart. We’ll both go to jail for the rest of our lives.’ It was like we were in this together, you know?”
In 2013, when Robson filed a lawsuit against Jackson’s estate and companies claiming the singer had sexually abused him as a boy, Safechuck felt seen. In the docu-series, he describes how Robson’s legal efforts inspired him to speak out and begin his own legal battle with Jackson’s business entities in 2014.
The director of the project, Dan Reed, first approached the men about “Leaving Neverland” in 2016, after the filmmaker learned about their lawsuits.
“I wanted the story to be treated with respect, and I wanted someone to really show people what it’s like to be abused,” Robson said. “I wasn’t looking for a radical movie.”
With the intimate focus on the men and their families, no representatives for Jackson — who was never convicted of sexual abuse — were included in the film, which is the Jackson brothers’ central criticism of the film. The brothers said they would have answered the allegations had the filmmakers asked them.
“Oh, we definitely would have come and talked to them about the situation … to protect our brother,” Tito Jackson said.
Marlon Jackson added, “I look at it as yes, you’re protecting your brother, but you’re telling the truth, and we want people to understand the truth. And I do not understand how a filmmaker can make a documentary and not want to speak to myself or some of the other families that were at Neverland.”
Reed, who wasn’t looking to “take Michael Jackson down,” said “it’s so much bigger than that.”
“It’s the story of these two families and not of all the other people who were or weren’t abused by Michael Jackson,” Reed told the AP the day after the film’s premiere. “People who spent time with him can go, ‘he couldn’t possibly be a pedophile.’ How do they know? It’s absurd.”
At the time, Robson was already deep into years of therapy. With the aid of Jackson, he’d risen to fame in the late ’90s as a choreographer for pop stars like Britney Spears and N’Sync. But in 2011, just as he was about to direct his first film, “Step Up 4,” his childhood trauma bubbled to the surface. He suffered what he calls a nervous breakdown, dropped off the film and moved to Hawaii with his wife and son.
By the time he met Reed, he was far down a path of healing. Though he’d discussed the details of his abuse with his therapist, he said he found “a whole new level of therapy” in telling his whole story chronologically in front of the camera.
Safechuck, however, did not find the experience therapeutic.
The men’s lawsuits have since been thrown out on technical grounds, but are on appeal.
The Jackson estate’s lawsuit, filed last week, alleges “Leaving Neverland” violates a 1992 contract agreeing the channel would not disparage Jackson in the future. HBO called the lawsuit a desperate attempt to undermine the film.
Jackson’s family urged those inclined to watch “Leaving Neverland” to look deeper into the situation.
“That’s all we’re worried about is just facts,” Marlon Jackson said. “The facts, which are public record, tell a totally different story than what this documentary talks about.”
HBO announced Wednesday that it will air a special on Monday night in which Oprah Winfrey also interviews Robson and Safechuck.
Amy Kaufman of the Los Angeles Times and Andrew Dalton of the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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