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.

[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.

[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.

[Nutcase]

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.

[Belmit]

Originally Posted by Nutcase

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]

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]

Originally Posted by Dymetrie

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.