It is now six years since the release of Dan Reed’s documentary Leaving Neverland, a film that cast the late megastar Michael Jackson as a serial paedophile. Over four hours, Reed profiled two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who allege Jackson abused them when they were young children. The details were harrowing – the lavishness of their seduction, the closed doors and elaborate warning systems, the spare telling of the acts that took place.
The response, among critics and film festival audiences, was commendatory, and the film seemed then part of the wider groundswell that led to the toppling of a number of monolithic men – among them R Kelly, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. Their work has duly been tarnished as a result. The fact that the same has not happened to Jackson is intriguing, and certainly attributable to more than the absence of a conviction.
