I am working on a roundup of media and blogger reaction to the death of Michael Jackson, but I just want to make an initial point about the revulsion many people (here and elsewhere) have expressed toward Jackson because of the child molestation charges filed against him in the mid-1990s.
Jackson was acquitted of wrongdoing, but it’s widely believed that the charges were true. I am not going to venture a definitive opinion — I certainly think it’s likely they were true, and if they were, then the abuse Jackson himself experienced as a child is even more relevant. I believe that it’s possible to hold Jackson responsible, in a personal and moral sense (as opposed to legal, since he was acquitted) for sexually molesting young boys, if that’s what he did, while also acknowledging and understanding the connection between his childhood experiences and his behavior as an adult.
TMV contributor Michael Stickings titled his post about Jackson “The Sadness of Michael Jackson,” and that’s very apt. Sadness pervaded Jackson’s existence throughout his entire life — mostly because of horrendous abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his father. Here is a description from Jackson’s Wikipedia entry (internal Wikipedia article and cite links removed):
From a young age Jackson was physically and emotionally abused by his father, enduring incessant rehearsals, whippings and name-calling. Jackson’s abuse as a child affected him throughout his grown life. In one altercation — later recalled by Marlon Jackson — Joseph held Michael upside down by one leg and “pummeled him over and over again with his hand, hitting him on his back and buttocks.” Joseph would often trip up, or push the male children into walls. One night while Jackson was asleep, Joseph climbed into his room through the bedroom window. Wearing a fright mask, he entered the room screaming and shouting. Joseph said he wanted to teach his children not to leave the window open when they went to sleep. For years afterwards, Jackson suffered nightmares about being kidnapped from his bedroom.
Jackson first spoke openly about his childhood abuse in a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey. He said that during his childhood he often cried from loneliness and would sometimes get sick or start to vomit upon seeing his father. In Jackson’s other high profile interview, Living with Michael Jackson (2003), the singer covered his face with his hand and began crying when talking about his childhood abuse. Jackson recalled that Joseph sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as he and his siblings rehearsed and that “if you didn’t do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you.”
These things are real. They happened, just as surely as what happened to Jackson’s child victims. And although it is undeniably true that everyone is responsible for their actions in adulthood, that does not mean we must deny psychological truth, and we can feel compassion for the children Jackson may have molested as well as anger at Jackson for what he did, and also hurt for the psychic and emotional pain and trauma that Jackson himself suffered.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
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