View Full Version : Do you think Jacko was guilty.....
A Place of Light
28-06-2009, 13:26
.....of the child accusations he faced and why have you come to that conclusion?
Personally, I don't think so.
I think that every paedophile that's been in the media has conformed to a specific personality type, typically fairly dominant and controlling. Jacko doesn't seem to fit into this. There's also the parents of Jordy Chandler who's motives were questionable at best.
I saw an interview with Uri Geller who mentioned that he'd asked Jacko why he'd paid out if he was innocent and Jacko's reply was "I just wanted the whole thing to go away". Now that sounds like just the sort of reply a man who was worth best part of a billion dollars at the time and whose favourite pastimes were climbing trees and having water baloon fights to me. It's not up for debate that he missed out on a childhood of his own, and it follows that he's done his best to relive that missed childhood in his later years, so I can accept that reason for the payout to be true. Of course, it's also been said that Jacko wasn't naive at all and was a good business man. This is countered by the state of the US legal system which, in many examples, has more to do with the lawyer you hire than your lack of guilt to determine your fate in court.
It seems to be a subject in which everyone has an opinion, I'm just asking you for yours.
A Place of Light
28-06-2009, 13:31
^
Mods please move to a more appropriate forum :( @ me.
Piggymon
28-06-2009, 13:38
Based on what little evidence I have I would say no.
I think he was still a child himself and liked spending time around children. I don't think he had an ulterior motive and could see nothing wrong with letting a child sleep in his bed. He was probably somewhere on the same level.
That said, he had so many people around him who could have stopped this type of behaviour as it is inappropriate.
I guess we'll never know :/
A Place of Light
28-06-2009, 13:50
Just in case anyone is wondering why the total votes is more than the listed members who have voted, it's because I had to ask a mod to move my vote from YES to NO, and when doing this vBulletin poops its pants and forgets to add the members name.
I don't think he did it. He doesn't fit the type, I think he was still in many ways a child stuck in a mans body. I agree with everything already said really.
There are many people who say why did he pay them off, what kind of an innocent man would do that. To me that is no arguement, there is no way on this earth that any parent I know would take money from someone who abused their child. So why not ask the question what kind of parent would accept money from their childs abuser.
I actually feel very sorry for people who are accused and aquitted, it seems (especially when children are involved) many people see accusation as guilt. He certainly had a very misguided viewpoint of what was and was not normal social behaviour. I don't think that he is guilty of abuse though in any way.
When a 13 year old boy says "If I go through with this, I win big-time. There's no way I lose. I will get everything I want and they will be destroyed forever...Michael's career will be over" it certainly makes you wonder about his motives.
Misguided, very much so. Obsessed with childhood and children, absolutely. Delusional, probably. Paedophile, absolutely not.
There was of course the rather unfortunate incident with his own child and a hotel balcony, but I'd consider that idiotic rather than malicious. Aside from that, no case was ever proven. Paying off an accuser to make the problem go away is no crime and not necessarily an admission of guilt. So many civil cases get settled out of court, from average Joe paying £500 to Davenport Lyons to multi-million corporate pay-offs. Often, it's simply the cheaper option (in terms of time, money, sanity, or whatever).
The law states that a person is innocent until proven guilty, and that is as it should be. The court of public opinion should only count when it comes to politics. Sadly, that is all too often not the case and journalists play on this very fact.
Personally I feel he was inappropriate with children, including some of the accusations. However, I think it was more down to being nieve than malice.
Personally I feel he was inappropriate with children, including some of the accusations. However, I think it was more down to being nieve than malice.
This.
I don't think either he or the kids he was around knew what was and wasn't appropriate, but the kids' parents will have asked them what happened and I'm sure that's where the accusations then stemmed from. There may have been all kinds of things going on, but I doubt either party would have perceived them as sexual until someone else told them it was.
Dymetrie
28-06-2009, 16:59
Any chance of a third option of:
"I was not involved in the case and so do not have any belief either way due to not being presented with all the evidence."
?
A Place of Light
28-06-2009, 17:09
Any chance of a third option of:
"I was not involved in the case and so do not have any belief either way due to not being presented with all the evidence."
?
Not really, because the OP requests your opinion and what lead you to form it. To be able to state as a matter of fact his innocence or guilt would've required the person to have been involved with the legal proceedings in depth, but as those people are in somewhat short supply (and almost certainly not members of this forum) I thought that opinions would be just fine.
Streeteh
28-06-2009, 17:12
Based on the fact that the parents all took the money and ran i'm going to assume he's innocent. I cannot envisage any parent knowing that someone has done those things to their child and letting them get away with it.
Greenlizard0
28-06-2009, 17:48
I'm still not really sure, though because of the very fact that the justice system is very vulnerable to how much money you can throw at it. Of course that doesn't answer in anyway whether he's guilty or innocent, a pity really because in an ideal world it'd be great to automatically assume true justice always takes place, and then that would be that.
However as said above, a man that rich is always going to be attacked in one way or another, due to his state, he was always going to be a relatively easy target. His mind is clearly very fractured, most people have said "a child within a man's body" and that's probably quite right. My own belief at the time of the trial's conclusions was that he did it, but honestly didn't realise what he did, in the same way that right and wrong are warped in a lot of mentally ill people. I don't think he did anything with venom.
So all in all I don't know, but I'm leaning towards a yes.
There's no "wouldn't know until I had all the info in front of me" job.
:/
I do second Streeteh though. If my child had been sexually abused I wouldn't back out until the person had been sentenced for love or money, no matter the amount. No price can pay for that kind of wrong doing in my head. But then, once again, it wasn't me in the situation and I don't know what kind of people they are so maybe they did have a price.
Yes I absolutely believe his is a child molester. I understand both sides of the argument regarding offering and accepting the bribes given. I know it is a fair point that the family should have fought it all the way. It is hard to know what advice they were given but I suspect they feared for their lives if they hadve gotten wacko banged up. Even now the kid is in hiding.
A lot of jacko's fans are a mental as he is.
I also don't buy this lost childhood story. Plenty of kids go through the same. I believe it was an excuse. He was abused himself and often abused kids carry on the circle. Everything about him was to make his house and his life appealing to children. The police certain believe he is a fiddler.
Put it this way, the people that think he's innocent would you let him look after your kid unsupervised for a week?
If it wasn't for him being a superstar, he would be banged up by now.
I think it's going to take 5 or so years before a person on the case has the balls to write an account of the evidence they found.
Of course we will never know either way for certain, yet everything about this man is a sham. The marriages, the children. I wouldn't trust anything about him anymore.
There's no "wouldn't know until I had all the info in front of me" job.
And there isn't meant to be. The question is what you think, not what a jury might think. :)
Put it this way, the people that think he's innocent would you let him look after your kid unsupervised for a week?
Somewhat of an unfair question. I wouldn't let anyone I didn't know personally and well (unless they were a professional child carer with references) look after my children (if I had any). So no I wouldn't have, but not because I think he is a child abuser but because I don't know him. I wouldn't let you look after my kids either, purely because I don't know you.
^^ This. I don't have any children but it would be my answer if I did. In fact, I'd be seriously concerned for any child whose parents gave any other answer.
He's as innocent as OJ was.
As far as the parents taking the money and running thing, I think everyone has a price, everyone. Another point of view is that those parents have brought the accusations to the media spotlight. They know he's going to have the very very best legal help money can buy. Their children/families face what is probably a very lengthy, very public and very dirty court process. Or they can take $20m dollars. I'd be thinking very very carefully, seriously. There's all kinds of justice, not just the legal kind. Do I think this is what happened.....I have absolutely no idea.
Do I think he's guilty? Is a childlike, naive, misguided adult capable of child abuse. Of course they are. He managed to get married twice and have his own children, he's not all that naive is he.
Matblack
28-06-2009, 19:47
He managed to get married twice and have his own children, he's not all that naive is he.
Those kids don't look a lot like MJ though, do they
genetic MJ (no plastic surgery/ 'vitiligo')
http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/9569/92xe7.jpg
MJ with children
http://image.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/jacksonDM0802_468x416%5B1%5D.jpg
Pink aren't they? ;)
MB
Dymetrie
28-06-2009, 19:48
Not really, because the OP requests your opinion and what lead you to form it. To be able to state as a matter of fact his innocence or guilt would've required the person to have been involved with the legal proceedings in depth, but as those people are in somewhat short supply (and almost certainly not members of this forum) I thought that opinions would be just fine.
Well I like to base my opinion on what I actually know. In this case then I don't know enough (and, in my belief, no one other than those involved know enough) to give a yes or no opinion to the OP.
I'm still not really sure, though because of the very fact that the justice system is very vulnerable to how much money you can throw at it. Of course that doesn't answer in anyway whether he's guilty or innocent, a pity really because in an ideal world it'd be great to automatically assume true justice always takes place, and then that would be that.
He's as innocent as OJ was.
And another reason why I refuse to give a yes or no opinion, given the way that money can make anyone innocent then the result of the court case can't convince me either way.
There's no "wouldn't know until I had all the info in front of me" job.
This is a better description of the option I want. My opinion is that I don't care. However, given enough evidence, from either side, then I would make a judgement based on that.
:)
Somewhat of an unfair question. I wouldn't let anyone I didn't know personally and well (unless they were a professional child carer with references) look after my children (if I had any). So no I wouldn't have, but not because I think he is a child abuser but because I don't know him. I wouldn't let you look after my kids either, purely because I don't know you.
A fair point. You wouldn't want me looking after your kids. I can barely tend to our newborn ;D
He managed to get married twice and have his own children, he's not all that naive is he.
They ain't his kids, they are as white as I am. I know you get the mix sometime where black people end up having a white child but to have three of them? He may bring them up but I'd bet my house there's no jackson dna in them (From a birth point of view) ;)
Whether they're they're made from his boy juice or not, they're his kids.
Matblack
28-06-2009, 20:07
Whether they're they're made from his boy juice or not, they're his kids.
Oh yes I know, I just don't see old Wacko as a sexual being at all and I for some reason I can't imagine him having sexual relations with any one or any thing including children. I suspect that if viewed by totally subjectively then some of his behaviour could have been considered borderline unacceptable, like sharing his bed with children but I don't suspect anything that would not be considered unacceptable with his own children.
MB
Other than dangling them off a balcony? Yeah I know I know, not paedo, but wrong all the same! :p
Based on what little evidence I have I would say no.
I think he was still a child himself and liked spending time around children. I don't think he had an ulterior motive and could see nothing wrong with letting a child sleep in his bed. He was probably somewhere on the same level.
That said, he had so many people around him who could have stopped this type of behaviour as it is inappropriate.
I guess we'll never know :/
Completely agree.
semi-pro waster
28-06-2009, 21:19
I'm going with no, while I think he might well have been borderline inappropriate with the children I don't believe that he abused them as such or that he'd probably even have viewed his behaviour towards them as inappropriate - the question that then raises is whether that would count as an excuse for anything in a hypothetical situation? As has been said there should probably have been some boundaries indicated by those advising him and around him about what is and is not acceptable behaviour.
I don't believe he was guilty of all charges levelled against him but he might have been guilty of some I suppose although without more information (which isn't likely to be forthcoming) I can't say for certain.
If you look at older pics of the kids they do actually look like him.
BB x
I don't think he was but I have to agree with Dym to some degree.
The thing is that every sleaze bag journo will be doing everything in their power, by fair means or foul to make sure the kids can give 'their side' to the story. The fact that Michael Jackson isn't here to defend himself has nothing to do with it. I think they will make sure he is guilty as charged be it now or in five years time.
Undoubtedly his idea of what was right or wrong must have been distorted by his own upbringing.
Chuckles
29-06-2009, 00:22
I suspect he was probably groping the kids but not actually penetrating them.
A Place of Light
29-06-2009, 00:56
I also don't buy this lost childhood story. Plenty of kids go through the same.
Such as?
Child movie stars don't for a few good reasons.
Firstly, the laws relating to the hours children are allowed to work have been in place for decades.....just not long enough to apply to Jacko when he was a child.
Secondly, child (or even adult) movie stars don't have anywhere near the same workload as their musical counterparts. Back then, they were on the road 24/7/365.
I'm genuinely curious as to who these "plenty of kids who went through the same" are.
Can I put a vote in the 'Couldn't care less' column?
Sorry. He may have been guilty, he may not have been - neither of which affect me.
However, you do care that everyone else is informed that you don't care?
If you're neither affected or have an opinion on it, why post at all?
killerkebab
29-06-2009, 02:38
Whether guilty or not something seriously dodgy must have happened for his lawyers to advise him to settle out of court for a frankly monstrous fee. Speaking only for myself, obviously, if I were innocent and accused of such disgusting crimes I'd be defending myself and my name at any costs, not giving out cash to my accuser.
TinkerBell
29-06-2009, 07:46
This:
Whether guilty or not something seriously dodgy must have happened for his lawyers to advise him to settle out of court for a frankly monstrous fee. Speaking only for myself, obviously, if I were innocent and accused of such disgusting crimes I'd be defending myself and my name at any costs, not giving out cash to my accuser.
and this:
As far as the parents taking the money and running thing, I think everyone has a price, everyone. Another point of view is that those parents have brought the accusations to the media spotlight. They know he's going to have the very very best legal help money can buy. Their children/families face what is probably a very lengthy, very public and very dirty court process. Or they can take $20m dollars. I'd be thinking very very carefully, seriously. There's all kinds of justice, not just the legal kind. Do I think this is what happened.....I have absolutely no idea.
I have to agree with the above. I can't decide either way but knowing these two fact's I don't see how anyone can say no for definate. I think it was probably the best move the accuser made to take that money. It makes people doubt MJ but it also means that they can try and protect the kid as much as possible without going to court and bringing it back up.
If you're neither affected or have an opinion on it, why post at all?
This is why I didn't post.
Oh hang on...
And there isn't meant to be. The question is what you think, not what a jury might think. :)
But that is what I think! I don't know and wouldn't be able to say yes or no until I could see all the information! :p
Personally, I try my best to not judge people I don't know until I have met them myself (or in cases like this, seen all the evidence I can). Obviously hard with celebs and things, but I think this is probably why I have never really ever "fancied" or been "obsessed" with any celeb (other than Captain Jack Sparrow ;)) or had any strong opinion of them... because what we see of them... say in films/music vids etc... isn't them. We don't know their lives behind closed doors, unless they do some reality tv thing, of which then I think it's all a bit of show and tell isn't it? And then what other information we know about them is provided through the media! I don't plan on taking what I read in newspapers/see on toovd as gospel!
So... I don't know.
Admiral Huddy
29-06-2009, 09:38
Whether guilty or not something seriously dodgy must have happened for his lawyers to advise him to settle out of court for a frankly monstrous fee.
Yep - no smoke without fire.. "here's 20m to drop the case!!"
A paedo with some financial and influential clout. If this had been Mr. J. Public, he would be in prison now.
No. I think he was mentally backward or certainly had some clinical issues. He hadn't really grown up, and whilst his behaviour for us would be deemed inappropriate I think he was just "playing" as a child with the children and not actually in sexually specific way. He was a tormented soul, but I don't think for one second he was a predator.
Flibster
29-06-2009, 09:58
However, you do care that everyone else is informed that you don't care?
If you're neither affected or have an opinion on it, why post at all?
Better?
I will get down on my knees and a beg for forgiveness for posting an opinion about someone whose personal life is of no direct impact to me.
I just think it's all a bit too far fetched. Voted no.
I don't think he did it. He doesn't fit the type, I think he was still in many ways a child stuck in a mans body. I agree with everything already said really.
There are many people who say why did he pay them off, what kind of an innocent man would do that. To me that is no arguement, there is no way on this earth that any parent I know would take money from someone who abused their child. So why not ask the question what kind of parent would accept money from their childs abuser.
I actually feel very sorry for people who are accused and aquitted, it seems (especially when children are involved) many people see accusation as guilt. He certainly had a very misguided viewpoint of what was and was not normal social behaviour. I don't think that he is guilty of abuse though in any way.
When a 13 year old boy says "If I go through with this, I win big-time. There's no way I lose. I will get everything I want and they will be destroyed forever...Michael's career will be over" it certainly makes you wonder about his motives.
^^
Absolutely what I want to say. Especially the last paragraph. I agree that everyone has a price - but how many of us have taken the easy option and paid someone to fix something that shouldn't have been our problem to fix, just because we wanted an end to it? And if someone kicked my dog, never mind a child, I'd take them to court, and if I lost the case, I lost the case - at least I'd know i did everything I could and at no point did I compromise my integrity by taking cash for something that is just utterly unacceptable.
I think it's absolutely despicable that people are saying things like 'Good, I'm glad the paedo's dead' and things like that when he was acquitted. Just saying he's a padeo is wrong imo. It's disgusting.
As has been said, we don't know what happened - and I was always under the impression that if there was reasonable doubt then the person was considered innocent. I had no idea it was 'once accused then guilty.' I honestly thought we as a society were better than that - however seems I expect too much of people. It's this attitude that has made it so easy for any troublecauser to cry rape or abuse and ruin someone's career on the back of their word.
^ As said, we really don't know all the facts so it's impossible to judge. All we can do is deliver Daily Mail-esk assumptions, which I'd rather people not do.
Admiral Huddy
29-06-2009, 13:55
I just think it's all a bit too far fetched. Voted no.
nothing is too far fetched
I'd say no, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be gobsmacked if it turned out to be true after all. He was without a doubt an extremely troubled man with deep rooted issues. Whether those issues were paedophillia or not is extremely subjective. Remember, he could have been a paedophile without ever actually acting on his urges. I think he had an unhealthy interest in children and maybe that's as far as it went. He enjoyed their company but never crossed the line. Enjoyed watching Disney with them and being close to them and their antics, but nothing sexual or perverse? Weird but also technically harmless, if you know what I mean? That's the way I saw it anyway.
One thing I must respect though is that he was trialled and was aquitted. He went through the legal system and was found to be not guilty. Now, innocent until proven guilty is one thing, but what about innocent until trialled and proven non-guilty and then treated guilty still? Very unfair to label him a paedophile.
As for as the out of court settlements, again, it's sometimes an admission of guilt and looks like money to shut them up. Or at the same time it can be *knowing* he's innocent and *knowing* these people are out to bleed him dry. Why not do damage limitation and pay off the money grabbers with enough to pacify them, but nothing compared to the potential damages he could face if the jury were pursuaded that he was guilty.
Weird but also technically harmless, if you know what I mean?
This is why I don't buy the 'would you let him look after your kids?' proposition, which I've heard from a number of people.
No, I wouldn't. Not because he might have done something illegal, but more that his actions would be inappropriate. There's a big distinction, and the 'line' isn't necessarily governed by what is or isn't legal.
nothing is too far fetched
plenty of people have been accused of things that they aren't guilty of. Some on this forum in fact - however they have the luxury of it happening in private, and to not be labelled because of it.
Stuff
Muban has basically summed it up for me. Misguided, strange, eccentric? Yes.
Raving paedophile sexual predator? No.
Or they can take $20m dollars. I'd be thinking very very carefully, seriously. There's all kinds of justice, not just the legal kind.
MB and me both said we'd let MJ bum our non-existant kids for $20m and Aitch wasn't very impressed :D
Okay we didn't mean it exactly like that but you know what I'm on about :D
A Place of Light
29-06-2009, 18:47
Yep - no smoke without fire.
And any chemist will tell you, you can easily have smoke without fire.
Settling out of court could be used to backup either side of the argument.
Say he was guilty.
He'd obviously know he was guilty and therefore there's a higher chance he'd be convicted. It'd be good business sense to settle outside of court IMHO. If convicted then even his most loyal fans would be hard pressed not to accept his guilt. His career dies and the money drains away. Settle and his fans will all refute all accusations of his guilt and of course he's assured of avoiding jail.
Now say he's innocent.
He also knows that even the innocent can have a bad day in court. The innocent often are wrongly convicted and given this pressure you can understand the mentality of "just make it go away" that's been suggested. It's the reply of a child, and Jacko was certainly less than mature.
Few people actually know what happened, but my gut feeling is that he wasn't guilty.
A Place of Light
29-06-2009, 18:52
The other thing that needs to be taken into consideration, is the whole bed sharing issue. Here's a man who not only admitted on prime time TV that he often shares a bed with children, but is quite shocked that anyone else has a problem with this. Now if I were abusing children I wouldn't admit any part of the process at all, because if I admit to being in their beds it weakens my defence relating to abusing them.
"everything they've said is complete fabrication" is a much stronger position than "yeah of course I slept in their beds, but I didn't touch them".
what's normal to you is normal to you. That's why so mAny victims of abuse don't even realise they've been abused until someone who knows it is points it out to them..and even then still often don't believe it.
Huddy, I don't mean to offend you now but I probably will with what I'm about to say. I've long believed that 'no smoke without fire' is an incredibly stupid belief to have - not in relation to this case but in general. Lets say you go out, cop off, take a girl home who then wishes she hadn't spent the night because she's married. So she tells the police that your consensual sex was rape. Everyone in your town believes you raped this girl because..well, you had sex with her right? So can you prove that it was consensual? It's unlikely - and because you can't prove otherwise in the eyes of many you're guilty. Still believe there's 'no smoke without fire?' Such a dangerous, uninformed thing to believe, I just hope you never have to face up to something like that, knowing people genuinely think that.
Unfortunately lots of spiteful people are clever enough now to create fire by just making smoke and letting it go. People create the fire now with their speculation and their opinion, whether it was there originally or not. That seems to be enough. Sorry for the clumsy example but I hope it gets my point across.
I think in this day and age the whole pedo thing is incredibly dangerous. Its very easy to have smoke without fire because you'll have an army of Daily Mail readers out for blood no matter what. A local photographer made the front page of the Echo recently. Big bold headline of "Lecturer arrested over child porn or something. Had his face on it. Ok so it maybe true that he was arrested over it but innocent or guilty his life is now over. Maybe theres a logical explination for it. We won't know for a long time I think. Either way people are still going to believe theres no smoke without fire even if the police say he's innocent.
Another example, real world type. The other week I had to get some photos of Liverpool One from Albert Dock. Perfectly normal. There's a water feature in Liverpool 1, a line of small fountains that people play in. Being an incredibly hot day some people let their kids run around half naked. Now I was using a really wide angle lens to get the buildings in from close up. You can hardly see people in the shot. However from the crazy parent perspective they see their half naked kid and a photographer near by. *ka-boooom* and my life is over.
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