It has been four years since the first public screening of Leaving Neverland to a shocked, tearful American audience in a packed 266-seat venue at the 2019 Sundance film festival. The four-hour documentary, co-produced by Channel 4 and HBO, is a brutally frank and explicit account of two abusive relationships that the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, had with children: one with Wade Robson describes how the boy was just seven when the entertainer first raped him, and an earlier one with James Safechuck, who was all of 10 years old when it began. The film’s spine consists of searingly candid interviews with Robson and Safechuck and their mothers. The Guardian reported: “After the film ended, an ashen-faced crowd rose to their feet to applaud Wade and James, who arrived on stage, both visibly moved by the response.”
What had motivated me – and Robson and Safechuck even more so – to embark on making Leaving Neverland was not just the opportunity to expose Jackson by having his victims speak on camera for the first time. Here was an opportunity to bring to the widest possible audience an insight into how children fall victim to any sexual abuser, the psychology of the predator and, above all, the grooming process. Maybe we could help prevent young children from falling prey to this most scarring, crippling of crimes. Of course the fact that the child molester in this case was one of the world’s most famous men meant that a lot of people would watch. Setting fire to Jackson’s reputation, already charred around the edges by multiple allegations and payments of hush money, was not the primary goal of the documentary. But it seemed like a necessary collateral impact: if you know that your idol has abused children, should that not make celebrating his personality a little more problematic, to say the least?
