"Dan Reed, the director of the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, in a recent interview with , compared Michael Jackson to Jeffrey Epstein and, when it came to Jackson, bluntly said, "people just don't care." He is right. And the moment those words were posted, I knew that the arrows would likely start flying at Reed."
"They flew at me years ago when I wrote a column for the New York Daily News about watching Leaving Neverland as an abuse survivor myself. That column was eventually taken down, likely because the comments weren't expressions of sorrow or solidarity. They were death threats. Threats to find out where I live. Accusations of being racist. Vile, ugly attacks over my audacity to say anything critical about the pop icon."
"I'm saying it again anyway. And I'm bracing for more, because only those of us who have been through hell and back, tormented by memories of our predators, truly understand why Jackson and Epstein's names deserve to share a sentence. The accusations against Jackson ( listed them late last month), repeated over decades by dozens of people with nothing to gain and everything to lose, are not coincidences. They are not money grabs. They are not the fantasies of starstruck children."
"I know this because I recognize what truth looks like when I see it in their eyes, the quiver in their voices, and the shared fear that comes with telling it. I know it because I am one of those people. After the Pennsylvania grand jury investigation into clergy abuse in 2018, I wrote my first column for about discovering that one of the priests named in the report was the man who groomed and tried to sexually assault me shortly after my father died."
A comparison is made between Michael Jackson and Jeffrey Epstein, with the claim that people do not care about allegations. The text describes backlash against an abuse survivor who wrote about watching Leaving Neverland, including death threats, threats to locate their home, accusations of racism, and abusive attacks for criticizing a pop icon. The writer insists the repeated accusations against Jackson are not coincidences, money grabs, or fantasies, but truth recognized through shared fear and the physical signs of telling it. The writer also recounts personal experience with clergy abuse, including being targeted by a priest named in a Pennsylvania grand jury report, and describes the difficulty of writing about that trauma.
#child-sexual-abuse-allegations #michael-jackson #jeffrey-epstein #abuse-survivor-testimony #public-backlash
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