Photo: Dave Hogan/Getty Images
Four siblings, Dominic, Aldo, Marie Nicole, and Eddie Cascio, accuse Michael Jackson of child sexual abuse in a lawsuit against Jackson’s estate, The New York Times reports. The suit was originally filed in February. The five siblings and their parents, who were described as Jackson’s second family, were close with the singer for years, and the children defended the previous child sexual abuse allegations against Jackson to Oprah Winfrey. They befriended Jackson through the family’s father, Dominic, who owned the Manhattan hotel where Jackson stayed. Now, they say they were “groomed” as Jackson’s “soldiers” to defend him publicly. All five siblings are claiming abuse by Jackson, but one sibling cannot participate in the lawsuit. “We were brainwashed, we were groomed,” Eddie told the Times, explaining how the “biggest popstar in the world” prepared the children to defend him at all costs. “I felt like he took my manhood away.” Some of the siblings knew that Jackson’s behavior felt wrong, but feared speaking out, and others gained more clarity after watching 2019’s Leaving Neverland, as the abuse detailed mirrored their own.
The family shared explicit details of the abuse to the Jackson estate in 2019. The estate agreed to pay each plaintiff “the wholly inadequate sum of five annual payments of approximately $690,000,” in order “to prevent Michael’s family, particularly his children, from having to be subjected to any further false allegations.” “The family staunchly defended Michael Jackson for more than 25 years, attesting to his innocence of inappropriate conduct,” Marty Singer, the estate’s lawyer, said in a statement. “This new court filing is a transparent forum-shopping tactic in their scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael’s estate and companies.”
This was not the only mention of Jackson’s abuse allegations ahead of the release of Michael. James Safechuck, who was one of the victims featured in the Leaving Neverland documentary, released a video in support of other survivors of child abuse. “Our abusers are praised sometimes, even after we come out and tell the truth,” he shared in a statement on April 24. “And I just wanted to let you know that you’re not alone and that there’s other survivors out there that understand what you’re going through and that are there with you. And that if you’re feeling all the feels, then lean into people that are close to you, lean into people that support you and that give you love and know that you’re not alone.”
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