In her 2019 essay Lost Boy, the Pulitzer-winning writer Margo Jefferson considered Michael Jackson’s legacy in the wake of Dan Reed’s Leaving Neverland, the HBO/Channel 4 exposé that starkly and devastatingly laid out the testimonies of two men who alleged that they had been sexually abused as children by the singer. “We’ve long seen how charming and generous [Jackson] could be,” opined Jefferson. “Now we’ve also seen how calculating, selfish and gripped by demons he was.”
Leaving Neverland remains the most effective résumé of that apparent duality, and of how – in the case of Wade Robson and James Safechuck – their memories of the singer’s dream-like ranch would take on an infernal quality. Michael Jackson: The Trial isn’t as stylised nor as groundbreaking – many of the people here have been telling their stories for decades, be it in books, podcasts, blogs or otherwise. Yet where Channel 4’s latest series triumphs is in collating these accounts from both sides, and letting you decide what is more plausible, as well as spotlighting details that can’t easily be explained away. And, of course, there are the tapes: recordings of Jackson from 2000 and 2001, many of which have never been heard before. They’re not definitive proof of any wrongdoing, but they’re certainly alarming. In one clip, Jackson declares: “If you told me right now … ‘Michael, you could never see another child’ … I would kill myself.”
Over four episodes, the series charts the events leading up to and surrounding Jackson’s 2005 trial, at which he was accused of molesting 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo (he was later found not guilty on all 10 counts). Many viewers will already be aware of that case, and of how Jackson’s admission during an interview with Martin Bashir that he allowed Arvizo to sleep in his bed, kickstarted a police investigation (Jackson had also previously been accused of sexual assault by another boy, Jordan Chandler, in 1993).
They may be less aware of how deep the Arvizo family were in with Jackson, as shown in an unreleased video they made supporting him after the broadcast of Bashir’s documentary. We also see the seeming pain and confusion in the family’s faces – particularly Gavin’s – when the cameras stopped rolling. Christian Robinson, a videographer who worked with Jackson in the 00s, remembers thinking Arvizo’s mother, Janet, was “the type of person who might take money to say Michael Jackson molested my kid”. Elsewhere, Louise Palanker, a friend of the family, recalls a struggling mother who was divorcing her allegedly abusive husband and whose son, Gavin, was recovering from cancer. “What you’re seeing in Janet here, she just truly wants this all to be true,” says Palanker. “Because this is just a godsend, that there would be a male influence in her children’s lives who was kind and caring.”
Whether Robinson is correct is still under debate. But the ideas his opinions are built on aren’t unhelpful for abusers hiding in plain sight. People looked at Jackson, he says, “not just as a man, but as a god”. The Trial does well to find people who acknowledge the grey areas that abound here. They include Shmuley Boteach, a rabbi and former spiritual adviser to Jackson. He doesn’t believe Jackson abused children, but says his mouth was “agape” at the revelation of him sharing a bed with other people’s children. Even as they protest his innocence, some of those around him clearly know how it looked, and just how easily Occam’s Razor might be applied.
As for the things that cannot be glossed over, these include what the police describe as “grooming materials” found at Neverland. Vincent Amen, a former publicist for Jackson, says he found a naturist magazine with videos of naked children circled (a copy of which is shown in the series). The psychological wound of his discovery, he says, “will always affect me”. His emotion is palpable, as is that of Ruby Wolff of the Santa Barbara sheriff’s office, who breaks down as she recalls the “intensity” of the case after all these years.
The Trial leans hard on discussion of and archive footage from Leaving Neverland in its conclusion – perhaps to justify its own existence, or perhaps to salute that documentary for having the impact it did. Really, though, this series makes its own points, and makes them well. “I don’t know why I get so protective,” says Robinson towards the end, as he continues to defend his former employer, before turning the question back to the faceless interviewer, and – by extension – us at home. “Do you think he’s innocent, after everything you’ve seen?”
Michael Jackson: The Trial is on Channel 4 now
