Why do people say Michael Jackson was a pedophile when he never was actually convicted of it?

Because his trial was a little “questionable”. Think what Barry Bonds did. If you have enough money, and are that famous, you can win most trials…

@dverhey, what was questionable about it?

People think that because the cases were settled out of court suggesting a pay-out and because there were 2 kids whose parents filed suit.

Because he paid BIG bucks to get out of it.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic, the second case wasn’t settled out of court. He was acquitted. That’s an IMPORTANT difference.

@jbfletcherfan, what do you mean? I’m talking FACTS here. Not speculation.

@SirBailey Ok. I didn’t follow that case very closely obviously.

the courts acquitted him, but it was the public and the late night pundits that accused him of being a pedophile. Technically, a pedophile is someone sexually attracted to children. A child molester is a pedophile that ACTUALLY does sexual things with children. A child molester can be a pedophile, but a pedophile isn’t ALWAYS a child molester. Sounds like a technicality, but then, court cases are decided on technicalities all the time. Circumstantial evidence is not allowed as proper evidence in a court of law. next time you get a call for jury duty, go and hope you get picked, jury duty is a wonderful learning experience.

So Michael Jackson may have been a pedophile, but that doesn’t mean he actually molested anyone. Being sexually attracted to someone (or something) and acting on those attractions are two different things, no matter how horrid and disgusting the subject makes other people feel.

He was found not guilty by the court system, and until something better comes along, the Justice system we have is the final answer. OJ was acquitted as well, and everyone still believes he killed his wife and her gay friend.

The fact that Michael Jackson had a thing for kids and had eccentricites that others saw as creepy, made them assume he was doing the worst. I for one am not convinced about him either way. But since he is dead, we will probably never know.

Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they all stink.

A lot of pediphiles remain unconvicted. That fact does not make them any less of a pedophile.

@basp , what would?

Let’s not forget about covert child molesters. They are ones that are very careful not to cross the line but get very close. I had a friend whose father was one. Would watch her undress but knew better then to touch.

@ChazMaz, that’s creepy and really disturbing, but not specifically illegal. Unless you could prove an invasion of privacy charge or trespassing. And it makes him a pedophile, not a child molester. Child molesters are those who touch, pedophiles are simply attracted to underage people.

@ChazMaz , I guess what I’m asking is, WHY do we even suspect him? On the basis of lawsuits surrounding two children, one of which he was acquitted?

Funny thing about Molesters and rapists for that matter. They know the law and how to get around.
Sad part is that mental abuse is hard to detect. In the example of my friend, she would say she liked it. The attention her father was giving her. The mental damage was he was doing it till she was 24 and he was/is a cop. He knew exactly what he was doing and how to get away with it.

@ChazMaz, so if someone has no proof against him then we still assume he is no matter what?

And you may have rationalized the circumstances surrounding your friend. How do you know she did NOT like it?

@SirBailey, one, MJ had odd habits, two, he identified with children, and not adults, three, he was famous, people (and the media) like to put stars on pedestals and then tear them down, four, the man was eccentric, and people love conformity, despite what they tell you; the first time someone operates outside the social norms, people will attack, thinking those ‘odd’ people are somehow a threat to their way of life, and five, people are presumptuous to the extreme when it involves those who cannot defend themselves, such as children and the mentally ill.

The last is understandable, but misguided. Children and those unable to fend for themselves should be taken care of and the rest of us should look out for them, that’s only natural. What puzzles me is out of the thousands of kids that spent time at Neverland, only two accused him of something. Something stinks in this case, and I for one am not quite sure what it is.

Stars and celebrities with money are always targets for people looking to make an easy buck, and many people are not above involving their kids to do so. Child molestation is such a volatile and emotional issue, that it makes for a perfect way to practice deception.

I’ve knew a guy going through divorce being accused by his wife of molesting the kids, and AFTER his reputation is ruined, it comes out that the woman lied, just to hurt him. He lost his job, contact with his children, and the respect of everyone around him for the most part, and had to move to a different part of the country to start over, just because the fucking bitch lied in court. There is always more going on beneath the surface than what you hear.

I for one hope like Hell that MJ never did any of those things, simply because no child deserves to be molested by an adult. That’s why we have laws against such things.

Yes he still is. Molesters never get over it and will continue to get away with it as long as they can or end up in jail. Him and his wife are also child hoarders. They adopt children for the might dollar. Funny thing the girls they adopt, once they find an attraction for other men, the father usually throws them out of the house. And, the mother is ok with it. No question she gets jealous.
As far as MJ goes. I do not know.
All I know, if my child is at my neighbors house and the issue comes up. I do not care if I do not believe it. I would rather be safe then sorry. My child would not be going over there again.
The world does not spin as to who my friends are or are not.
Sad, that was not the case for MJ.

In the civil trial, he thought the likelihood of being convicted by a preponderance of the evidence (the standard of proof for civil judgments) was high enough, and the damage to his finances and reputation to be likely to be severe enough, that he settled out of court. Innocent people with a lot of means do not do this, and if there were not a sufficient chance of winning, no lawyer would take something like this to trial in the first place.

In the criminal trial, he could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have molested the children. This is not a sign that he did not molest them, but an admission that there was not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it. And again, if there was not enough evidence that a district attorney thought he or she had a reasonable chance of winning, especially with such a high-profile defendant, it never would have gone to trial in the first place.

There may not have been enough evidence admitted in court to prove it by legal standards, but there’s more than enough available to suggest that it’s not a fluke.

@SirBailey I’m saying….if he was Joe Blow, I wonder if he’d have gotten off. Again, money talks.

@evelyns_pet_zebra You’re right. Everyone does have an opinion. Stink or not, that’s mine & I have a right to it.

Basically, look back to pre-1993, when Jackson was known to have boys in the 11 to 13 yo range sleep over at his ranch on a pretty much nightly basis, which is not normal behavior for an adult man. He also had a lot of things that would attract kids…you think about a guy who would be trying to lure boys to his house, you’d think he’d probably have video games and the like, well Jackson had pretty much a full arcade, plus an amusement park and a zoo! You also got the impression from his feminine features, which he made more feminine with plastic surgery, his high voice and just the way he carried himself that he might have been more into males than females…I mean at least that was the stereotype. Given that people suspected the non-married, effeminate thing to equal “gay”, the fact that he was not seen in the company of adult men, but in the company of 11 to 13 year old boys led to suspicion. So, there was a little bit of this kind of weird factor to it, and there were of course some whispers, but no real accusations. But then in ‘93, a 13 year old boy named Jordan Chandler accused Jackson of inappropriate sexual contact.

In his allegations which were leaked many years later, he claimed that when they shared a bed, Michael first kissed him on the cheek, then the lips, then slipped him the tongue, and when the boy complained he said that just because people think something is wrong doesn’t mean it’s wrong, and he started to cry so the boy let him go on. All this of course built over the course of many days. The allegations continued saying that Jackson said his other friends let him do it, don’t you like me as much as they do? Typical pedophile behavior basically. Then he started to rub up against the boy, then they’d lay on top of each other with erections. Then they took a bath together. Then Michael said he had other friends he masturbated in front of, then did the same in front of this boy, and told him when HE was ready, Jackson would do it for him. Then in bed he jerked the boy off. Then he gave the boy oral sex. Then he had the boy suck on one of his nipples and twist the other one while Jackson masturbated. He also recounted how Jackson grabbed his butt and kissed him and put his tongue in the boy’s ear. The whole sorrid court document can be found here if you care to read it.

Essentially, this was a civil case, and the LAPD was investigating it. The investigation included taking an affidavit from the boy describing Jackson’s genitalia, and they strip searched Jackson and took pictures of his penis. They felt the evidence was persuasive, but not concrete, not enough to prosecute on its own because of “some” inconsistencies. However, the lead investigator did allege that Jackson had a private room off his bedroom where he could hide, and he also had a trip sensor that would alert him and lock down his bedroom several minutes before anyone could get to his bedroom (so that he could cover up any goings on should the police show up). It all sounded pretty bad. Then Jackson paid the boy what is best estimated to be $22 million, he said because he wanted to move on with his life, and that it was also as much to protect the boy from a media circus as himself.

It should be noted however that Jackson claimed later that it was his insurance company that offered the settlement and not him personally and he claimed to be powerless to stop it. It should also be noted that the boy’s father, Evan, was never all that comfortable with the relationship, and was quoted as saying something to the effect that he hired a guy who pretty much was willing and able to destroy Jackson’s reputation to get what he wanted (money). It was also reported that Evan, a dentist, while extracting his son’s tooth, administered a drug which made him highly susceptible to suggestion. It is also worth noting that in 2006, Jordan sued his father for abuse, alleging things basically akin to mind control, and perhaps most interesting, shortly after Jackson’s death, though not widely reported, he supposedly claimed to have lied, making the whole thing up in tandem with his father who pretty much forced him to say the things he said. He now claims Jackson NEVER molested him.

But that whole affair, at the time the things about the Chandler’s father/son relationship, the recanting, the lawsuit, the allegations themselves…none of that was public. It basically seemed like someone made an allegation which sort of fit the personality (after all, he admitted to sharing his bed with boys he wasn’t related to…adult men in our culture JUST DON’T DO THAT), and the things that were being said were really consistent with pedophile behavior. Basically, Jackson either was a pedophile OR it was believable enough to think he was that these allegations were very convincing. But the fact that the LAPD had to shut down its investigation citing lack of evidence, AFTER the boy was paid an undisclosed sum which was suspected at the time of being between $15M and $40M, was enough to convict him in the court of public opinion.

And Jackson’s career suffered greatly. Now, a person such as myself, knowing what I knew at the time, had to ask, why, if Jackson was so innocent and had NOTHING to hide, would he pay the boy off. I mean, $22M was a small price to pay obviously, but it wasn’t about that, it was about the fact that his career would NEVER be the same after that. His very LIFE would never be the same after that. Personally, were I in that situation, and it stands to me that this is just COMMON SENSE, that if a person told a damaging lie like that about me, I’d sue the motherfucker for libel, I’d not rest until they were crying on prime time TV, begging the fans not to murder me. I’d want fucking blood. Yet, he just paid the kid off and then gave this tearful press conference that just seemed to me like he was lying.

Now new information has surfaced, and albeit it’s a London tabloid, but it’s worth reading here as it sheds light on a HOST of things if even part of it is true, that basically he DID have something to hide in 1993, just not pedophilia…he was gay and didn’t want to come out. Maybe that’s because of his religious views, I don’t know. But it’s part of the puzzle. So, anyway, it seemed like he made this payoff that he really shouldn’t have made, and he was known to be pretty astute when it came to business decisions…the way he had gotten the Beatles catalog out from under Paul McCartney showed incredible business acumen, so for him to do something that made so little business sense if he was hiding nothing seemed to be lunacy.

Now after that happened, suddenly this avowed bachelor is going on the MTV Music Awards to French Kiss his new wife Lisa Marie Presley, who maintains he wasn’t a pedophile, but who did say that maybe he would have paid more attention to her if she was a 12 year old boy. She claims they had a normal sexual relationship, but she married him at a time when she was trying to get her own music career off the ground, and he definitely needed a “beard” as it were, so the whole thing, given that he was supposedly a virgin up until this point was really kind of shady. Then when it dissolved, almost immediately he marries Debbie Rowe, who now claims that they never once had sex, they had separate beds, and that her babies were conceived by artificial insemination (or some claim the egg was implanted too and their not her biological kids either). And look at the kids. All 3 of them, the two he “had” with Rowe, and the one who just seemed to materialize out of thin air one day, are WHITE. Now, supposedly he had vitiligo which can make a black person’s skin turn white in patches, and supposedly he had the rest bleached to it would match, I don’t know, but what I do know is it doesn’t affect his genes and there’s NO WAY he’d have had a white kid, much less 3. What his motivations were for having those kids….who knows? Maybe he really wanted to be a father, maybe he wanted a cover for whatever he was trying to cover up, or maybe he was harvesting new sex partners…who knows?

What we do know however is that everything MJ did was shrouded in mystery and he kept it that way purposely. Then in 2003, he goes on national TV and talks about sharing his bed with young boys, and shows off his weird lifestyle, this new baby he bought (and had dangled over a balcony), his out of control spending, and basically tried to argue that sharing your bed with a strange boy was the most loving, natural, non-sexual thing you could do. No one agreed, it just made him look bad.

Then when the boy featured in the documentary with him, a cancer survivor nonetheless, named Gavin Arviso ALSO accused him of molestation, and the LAPD once again investigated, and the lead investigator claimed to have an open and shut case. But he was acquitted, by a jury of his peers…the same as OJ 10 years before him. There was very much an impression at that time (this was before Phil Spector and Martha Stewart actually did hard time), that a celebrity could buy his way out of trouble, no matter what with the right lawyers, because all that is required is a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one of 12 of your peers who can then deadlock the jury. Well, Jackson was acquitted, and it just seemed like, OK, you share your bed with kids, one accuses you of rape, you pay him off, another accuses you of the same thing, you can’t pay HIM off too, so you hire lawyers that no one but you can afford…yeah, I believe you’re innocent, right!

So, things looked pretty bad. Now, I’d love to see what this Arvizo kid says…if he too comes forward like Chandler, I’m going to actually feel pretty bad that I ever suspected the guy of wrongdoing. But still, I have to believe there was something he didn’t want the world to know. But anyway, guilty or innocent, there was just SOOOO much weird stuff that he got into, there were so many signs that pointed to him having something to hide, and he really had an unnatural attraction to young boys, whether that attraction was sexual or not, like I said, either he was guilty as sin, or he was innocent but his behavior made him the world’s easiest target. He just plain fit the profile, and there WERE allegations and there WAS a great deal of circumstantial evidence that made things seem pretty bad for him.

Bottom line in my mind is, he’s dead, he contributed an amazing amount to our culture, we should celebrate his legacy, and hopefully if he did victimize anyone they will now feel like they can seek help if they need it, and if all these kids who are now grown up don’t feel like there was anything wrong with their relationships with Jackson, then so be it. Basically, I have to feel like now there’s a shroud of secrecy that has been lifted and the real truth may actually some day see the light of day, and if it doesn’t, who cares? He’s not around to hurt anyone else even if he ever did, so let’s remember Thriller and get on with our lives.

@dalepetrie I’d give you 5 GA’s if I could. WOW.

OJ wasn’t convicted of murdering 2 people, either, at a criminal trial.

He paid up the butt for a civil trial, but then again, MJ settled monetarily with his accusers, too.

@jbfletcherfan – amazing what a little research can dig up, eh?

@dalepetrie yes, sir, it is.

@dalepetrie thanks for all tt information.

One thing I found weird, whether he was guilty or not, ANY parent who accepts money rather than justice if they really believe their child has been molested is a disgrace. By taking his money and not seeing justice done they are just allowing him to continue molesting other children rather than being behind bars where a child molester belongs. If that was my child I woldn’t rest until the person who abused them was locked up forever and because of that I find their claim to be as suspicious as MJ’s.

I don’t know what I beleive in this case. I like to believe that MJ didn’t do those horrible things and that he was just a victim of his own vulnerability bu like many people have said already, we will probably never really know.

@Leanne1986 – great point. I don’t think I’d agree to not testify for ANY amount of money if it were my kid and I believed the allegations. Of course if it WERE my kid, 2 things would be different. 1) He would not be sleeping over at the house of a 35 year old, never married man who had surgery to make himself look like Diana Ross and owned a zoo and an amusement park, much less in the same bed with the guy…only way MY kid would EVER stay over at the home of someone like this would be if I stayed over there as well and slept in the same room with my kid. 2) The accused would not live to see the trial anyway.

@dalepetrie Those claims that the kid recanted are false. I’ve done research on that, and all the information on that has been debunked.

Jackson was a pedophile. You don’t pay someone close to 20 million if you didn’t do anything. I don’t care what people say.

@casheroo You don’t think it’s possible that he paid them so that they’d leave him alone?

@Facade you don’t apologize for something you didn’t do.

@casheroo – good to know that those recanting claims were false. I was actually looking for the link to the allegations themselves, searching for them by using his name when I found the claims that he recanted, which I couldn’t verify which is why I said “supposedly”. That’s kind of the same impression I’ve had…you don’t pay someone off if you didn’t do anything, of course it’s still true that if he was gay and closeted and his privacy was worth that much to him as the Daily Mail suggests, and as @Facade suggests he just wanted to be left alone, then maybe he honestly would have wanted it to just go away. I’ve read that the stress of the whole thing was too much to take (according to an attorney in the 2005 case, some didn’t think he’d survive the criminal trial given his fragile state of mind). I suppose, and I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate here, but I suppose IF he really just was a stunted adult who had the desires and mentality of a 12 year old boy, and as such he related to 12 year old boys and wanted to be with them, but had NO sexual desires for them, and he was truly an innocent who never developed a sexual appetite, AND as such these allegations hurt him so deeply that he couldn’t even bear to defend himself against them, then MAYBE it could fit. It just seems pretty bad in light of everything, even if Chandler had actually recanted, it wouldn’t necessarily mean anything one way or the other.

I guess for me, the bottom line is this. What persuades me the most that he was a kiddy didller was him paying off Chandler. What persuades me the most that he wasn’t is the fact that he WAS an easy target for people who wanted money…Chandler’s dad said he was after money and Arvizo’s mom had tried to extort money from someone else previously as I recall, and combine that with the fact that in 20 years of sharing his bed with boys, some of whom were famous, to this day not a single other one of them has made a similar claim…it’s hard to imagne he would be able to keep all of them quiet, even if he molested only a small fraction of hte boys who stayed with him. At the end of the day, it’s like any question I can’t know the answer to, I just have to say, I don’t know what I don’t know, he’s dead now and I guess all I can do is appreciate the good things he brought to our culture and just hope that either he never did victimize anyone despite how it looks, or if he did, those who were victimized manage not to become predators themselves.

@dalepetrie, just read your answers. Now THAT’s what I’m talkin’ about! Thanks.

@SirBailey – you are quite welcome.

@eponymoushipster I have no clue if he apologized or not. I was playing with dolls in the 90s. I’m just saying, no one but him really knows what happened.

@Facade – well, him and a few hundred young men.

The first trial, in my eyes, was a sham from the beginning. The child’s father saw an opportunity to make a ton of money and he bit on it. If I were in Jackson’s position, and my reputation was being completely destroyed, and I had enough money, I would pay to make it stop. It’s very possible that he did in fact molest that boy as well as others, but that trial alone does not convince me of it. And the fact that he was completely acquitted on 14 charges in the second trial is certainly no evidence that he was a pedophile.

Without going into vast detail, because he is famous, obviously had some issues, and was a very sensitive man towards children. Whether he was really a pedo or not does not matter. He was an easy target for television ratings. Thats why.

Because he had a hard on during the Grammy awards when he got surrounded by little children. I’ve been on a stage and it’s pretty hard to get an erection even if you’re surrounded by naked women, what with the singing and dancing and all that. That was spooky imo.

@Jack79 – I didn’t see that. What year? Is there a video?

hmmm…not sure, several years ago though. 1996 I think. I remember watching it with my friend Kate in England, and the only time we were there together was just before I joined the army in Nov’96. So that should be May’96 or something.

The same thing doesn’t keep comming up in ones life over and over again, without cause.

@Bobbilynn – though I lean towards the “probably was” side, to play Devil’s Advocate, the “cause” you seek could be that he was worth tons of money and made himself an easy target for these allegations. Frankly, even if he didn’t do it, I’m surprised more boys’ families didn’t seek to make a mint off it.

OJ was innocent too. A jury said so.

The press was extremely vocal when it came to Michael Jackson and his peculiarities. It was, and still is, hard to know what to believe. To be truthful, I don’t really care, because he was one of the most influential and talented musicians of the era. He practically created a new genre – the music video; his productivity was almost inexhaustible. Like Eric Gill, he will not be remembered for his bad habits, but for his artistry.

@dalepetrie, 16 lurve for one post?!!! That’s gotta be some kind of record!

@SirBailey No way.

@dverhey, WOW! You got THAT right! I can’t figure out how I missed that one!!!

Wow, it’s up to 16! I wasn’t paying attention…I do think that might be a personal best.

Just because he was never convicted, does not mean he was not a pedophile. He was at least guilty of very strange behavior towards boys, including admittedly having them sleep in his bed. Thus, one can definitely say he was not normal, and I, for one, would never have my boys within 10 miles of the guy. His music was great, his personal life a mess. I believe he was disturbed emotionally. The great fanfare around his death is overblown. He was not even a real trendsetter in the music business on a level with Dylan, the Beatles, or Elvis..but he was a great entertainer, and probably a pedophile. I believe that this will be uncovered with certainty in the future, but who knows for sure. As Gene Simmons recently said, why would he spend 22 million dollars paying someone off, if 500 grand a year in legal fees would have completely exonerated him? Gene knew him well via his relationship with Diana Ross, and appears to be steering us towards the real answers.

I would like to see a good biography. He was, after all, an important figure in the arts. It appears to be a law of nature that artists are either mad, bad or both (think of Wagner, Charles Dickens, Elvis Presley).

I care greatly. IF he was guilty then the sick fuck should rot in hell and all music of his banned. IF he was innocent then carry on! We will know the truth eventually as there were many many people privvy to his personal life as well as the boys he “entertained”

make it 17 :)

@Bobbydavid – rot in hell? Yes, 100% on board with you on that one. Ban his music? Where the fuck are you from, Iran? If we’re going to start banning the artistic output of artists who’ve done bad things, you might as well your TV and iPod right now and go check into a Monastery, my friend. I hate to break it to you, but a lot of celebrities aren’t very good people. That’s why I’m not into idolizing celebs, keeping up with celebrity gossip, reading People Magazine and such….I really don’t care who celebs are as people, I enjoy their output and that’s it. If they do a crime, they should do the time like everyone else, but when they’re done, all that they are is what they’ve left behind and all the bad goes away with it, so why not appreciate the output and demonize the person?

Iran lol. Funny funny funny

hey, I’m a nice guy. I say ban the music of everyone who ever took drugs. That way I’ll be #2 in the charts for the rest of eternity (Cliff Richard will be #1 hehe) ;)

@Jack79 – you forget Michael Jackson….he was morally opposed to drugs (not the “medicine” that killed him though).

yeah but we just said he’d be banned for other reasons. Come to think of it, I also shared a room with a litte boy one time when we couldn’t get enough rooms…hmm…I wonder if that’s why his dad wanted to borrow my car the other day…maybe he’s blackmailing me, I should ask him next time I see him.

Oh, so ban everyone who’s ever molested a child or taken illegal drugs. Boy, I sure hope your music is good if that law ever gets passed, or else what the hell am I gonna listen to, Stryper?

Didn’t Stryper once throw their empty beer cans in the “paper recycling” bin instead of the aluminium one? Sorry, can’t listen to that one either.

If you’ve molested a child you need to be making license plates and keeping your cell mate Bubba happy.

You don’t need to be making music.

Unless they make license plates in hell, that ain’t gonna happen here. And the music is already made, so if you like it, you might as well listen to it…not like the music’s gonna rape your kid.

The fucker that rapes kids also doesn’t need my money or my support.

because people like to accuse others of things without 100% factual evidence. (in this case i beleive alot of it hade to do with draining MJs bank account)

@mzdesigns . . .Not because he was a grown, single man, living in an amusement park, and having children stay the night?

he definitely had mental issues, and perhaps did what the accusations are but I still believe $$ was also behind it

I don’ see any problem with a grown, single man, living in an amusement park, and having children stay the night. It’s actually very kind of him, assuming he did nothing wrong (which I guess is what the parents thought when they let them go there). Whether he actually did something bad to them will always remain a mystery, since we don’t have any real proof either way, though the settlement does make me suspicious (and that Grammy award thing even more so).

he kinda seemed like a child himself who never was given the chance to “grow up” normally and it affected his life majorly

Some years ago a Californian tabloid, reporting on MJ’s popularity, commented that his persistent fame outside the US was because Third World countries have weaker prohibitions against child sexual abuse. Well, I have never forgotten the insult. Music is music, and good music always has an audience, however creepy the composer. If the artist’s character was a factor in my response to art, then I would never enjoy the works of Salvador Dali, nor the lyrical music of Richard Wagner, nor even the novels of V.S. Naipaul (if you want a name of somebody still living). I won’t say that given hard evidence I would continue to enjoy his music in the same way; but to stop listening/reading/viewing? I could not do that.

@bea2345 – nice Wagner reference…I was going to bring him up myself but wasn’t sure how many knew of his Nazi tendencies.

@dalepetrie: to be historically pedantic, Wagner was an anti-Semite when the vast majority of Europeans were anti-Semites. By the time the Nazis came to power, Europe as a whole was less anti-Semitic, but the Nazis used anti-Semitism to leverage their rise to power.

It’s pretty clear that, despite having been born and having died too early to be an actual card-carrying Nazi, Wagner was really not a nice person. And you need to reconcile liking the lyricism with the misogyny in something like Tannhäuser (where there are two women, and one is the perfect virgin and the prize for the men to fight over, and the other is the perfect whore, an evil tempter of all men), and the anti-Semitism in something like Das Rheingold (where Mime is a bad caricature of the mid-19th century stereotype of Jews).

There are a lot of composers in more complex circumstances—Richard Strauss, who was a renowned composer at the time, was appointed as a high Nazi official in charge of music. He wrangled with the Party leaders, and wound up being removed from the position, but the public act was that he cooperated with them.

And Carl Orff, the composer of Carmina Burana (which gets used in every supernatural movie trailer), cooperated with the Nazis; establishing exactly how much he cooperated is difficult, because after the war he insisted he was part of the resistance. Of course, he had a significant financial interest in doing so—if he had been determined to be an actual Nazi, he would probably have lost the royalty income from works like Carmina Burana.

@cwilbur – agreed, which is why I said “his Nazi tendencies”, not that he WAS a Nazi. I suspect he would have fit in had be been born/died a bit later.

He was not convicted of it based on the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.
Most people use the standard used in civil court. The preponderance of the evidence.
He paid some kid millions of dollars to not talk about something.

i dont & will never believe that he molested any children. He simply loved children, and even tho it may have been a little too intense, a lot of ppl dropped the ball on the jordie chandler case. his mother especially. if michael was having dirty sexual thots about these children, then y on earth wud he b so open about his love for them? pedofiles dont walk around holding hands and kissing the person they are molesting in public.

He admited to sleeping in the same bed with boys that wernt his kids!
This in its self is just wrong.

1) Civil court has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. It’s about liability only. Being found liable or settling out of court is not an indication of criminal guilt and is not an admission of wrongdoing. Michael even signed a letter admitting no wrongdoing and no liability.

2) The dad, Evan Chandler, is the one who demanded money in the first place. The only reason he even took Mike to court was because he refused to give him as much as he wanted.

3) He didn’t have to pay the kid. The settlement was the decision of Michael’s insurance company which both he and his lawyers disagreed with. However this was allowed because the cost of the trial was greater than the amount he was being sued for.

4) There was a criminal investigation which turned up nothing. Michael’s genitals didn’t match the boy’s description. The boy claimed he was circumcised when Michael was actually uncircumcised. This lead the investigators to conclude he had probably never seen Michael’s genitals.

5) The dad, Evan Chandler, tried to use the case to get money out of Michael and garner attention for an album he was trying to push called “Evanstory” and gain a movie deal out of the ordeal since was out of work after writing and producing for “Robin Hood: Men In Tights”. I’m not kidding, look this s*** up.

He had kids at his Ranch but there are no reports they spent “a lot of time” in bed together or that they even slept in the same bed. A lot of the time adults and even the parents were present.

I think a lot of this irrational insistence anyway that the justice system must be wrong somehow, even in spite of the FBI clearing him, is based far more on emotion than facts. Unfortunately that’s how a lot of Americans vote too: with their gut instead of their head. He’s somewhat effeminate, he has a high voice and he doesn’t have consistent relationships with women: that’s enough for many people to suspect he’s gay since people expect men to stereotypically have deep voices and to be non-affectionate. Men are also assumed to be gay if they’re not promiscuous when single and don’t use fame and fortune to plow through groupies. And of course to many people gay = deviant and thus people suspected of being gay are seen as not above all sorts of other deviations. Many people also expect men to be reserved, unsympathetic, emotionally distant and barely able to hug their own kids. Let alone someone else’s. Men who don’t fit this stereotype and openly have an affinity for kids are assumed to be deviant in some way. Not so much with women since people expect women to be effusive with children and motherly. Women who aren’t are also assumed to be mentally ill. When a woman waves at a kid in the park people think “Aww! Isn’t that cute?” If a man does the same many people think “Oh my God! Stay away from those kids you pervert!” The fact that for the past 30 years there has been a mass hysteria moral panic about pedophilia doesn’t help matters for men like Jackson.

Some adults just really love kids non-sexually. Some even go into lines of work on purpose where they can interact with children. Like teachers, daycare workers, pediatricians, etc. Most of them are not pedophiles. And in some cultures of the world adults sharing beds with kids, even non-related ones, is not that uncommon. Michael talked about he, his siblings and cousins sharing beds with his parents and relatives when they were children and he continued to do it as an adult with people he was friends with. In industrialized countries where people have much more bedroom privacy it has become considered a non-kosher thing to do but it’s not immoral in and of itself. Not to mention a relative can rape you just as much as a non-relative.

In fact if he were a woman I don’t think anyone would have cared. No one freaks out about women sharing a bed with kids. No one is knocking down Angelina Jolie and Madonna’s doors even though they have all sorts of children sleeping over there.

Neverland Ranch was initially built for Michael and was a dreamland for all the things he was deprived of before being emancipated from his parents. Eventually he allowed people to visit it free of charge because he believed everyone should have access to a free amusement park. Most of the visitors were underprivileged urban minorities and almost half of the visitors were adults. The vast majority never stayed over at his house. This doesn’t really seem to matter to a lot of people as a lot of people think it’s “weird” for an adult to be interested in playing at all, especially a man. To many people this is enough to suspect the worst.

Overall he seemed to be a caring, sympathetic, if unconventional, father. Probably the biggest humanitarian in recorded history. Thankfully reality and the court of law don’t operate on the popular dislike of non-conformists. I don’t think his relationships were unhealthy. Non-kosher by modern Western standards, maybe. Unhealthy, no. The relationships in his life that were unhealthy seemed to be with the adults in his house who exploited him as a meal ticket and the doctors that ended up killing him and cared so little about him they left him lying on the cold floor dying while they tried to hide damning evidence.

Very sad all the way around.

Side note: It’s also misleading for people to keep saying he associated with “boys” because a good amount of the kids that stayed at his house were girls. Including but not limited to Nicole Richie, Britney Spears, Beyonce, Paris Hilton, Quinn and Dakota Culkin, etc.He also associated with many other people than just children.