Inside ‘Leaving Neverland’: Sundance’s Horrifying Michael Jackson Child Rape Documentary
Famed choreographer Wade Robson learned how to dance from watching Michael Jackson videos. His entire career is owed to Jackson’s mentorship. The King of Pop was the largest creative force and inspiration in his life. And, as Robson says in the new documentary Leaving Neverland: “He also sexually abused me. For seven years.”
Robson, who first caught the public eye at age five when Jackson invited him to dance on stage during the Bad tour, and later became a teen-phenom choreographer for Britney Spears and NSYNC, had revealed Jackson’s abuse, which started when he was 7 years old, before. He controversially came forward with the allegations in 2013, four years after Jackson had died and almost a decade after testifying in court that Jackson had never abused him. Robson’s testimony helped exonerate Jackson.
But in Leaving Neverland, Robson details a meticulous and graphic account of being sexually abused by Jackson, the psychological damage inflicted by Jackson that forced Robson to keep the secret, the lasting effects of the abuse into adulthood, and why he is coming forward now. Robson’s account is disturbingly mirrored by that of James Safechuck, a former child actor who starred in one of Jackson’s Pepsi commercials and says he suffered the same years-long pattern of sexual abuse after the singer befriended and, by their accounts, bewitched his family.
Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here