Do you think Jacko was guilty.....

[A Place of Light]

.....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]

^
Mods please move to a more appropriate forum @ me.

[Piggymon]

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]

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.

[Dunketh]

Originally Posted by Piggymon

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.

[Muban]

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.

[Kitten]

Originally Posted by Muban

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.

[Goose]

^ 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.

[Lopez]

Originally Posted by Muban

Stuff

Muban has basically summed it up for me. Misguided, strange, eccentric? Yes.
Raving paedophile sexual predator? No.

Originally Posted by Pebs

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
Okay we didn't mean it exactly like that but you know what I'm on about

[Mark]

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.