The Abuse AGAINST Michael Jackson and the TRUTH About His Singular Fame, with Mark Geragos

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Whatever the truth is about Michael and children, and it does matter. I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but whatever it is, >> you cannot deny his talent. You cannot deny his importance as a cultural figure in the United States, in the world music scene. It's just it is enormous and like too big to really understand.

[00:00:17]>> It's hard to overstate the phenomena that was Michael Jackson in the 80s. I if you were adult and sentient in the 80s and he was literally the kind of soundtrack of that decade and longer and it was a I'm I cross every there's the picture you've got with the Reagans. I mean he cut across every socioeconomic ethnic you name the category he was he permeated. It was unbelievable what the kind of phenomena that he was. Even going into 2000, I've had my good fortune of representing some of the >> Princess Diana.

[00:01:02]>> Yeah, the Princess Diana adored him. Um uh the look at look at the now king. He uh he was enthralled. I mean, it was unbelievable the kind of rarified air that he occupied.

[00:01:17]and the bigger star. No matter who he met, he was the bigger star. A world-class talent, almost godlike in the way people would respond to him just because in this one package, this overwhelming amount of talent, you know, just the number of things he could do unlike anybody else, better than everybody else. And we grew up with him. I mean, he he was a child star with the Jackson 5. He was the star of the Jackson 5. There was a story online as I was preparing for today where um his mother was saying that she went to Joe and said, "Let Michael sing." And he said, "No, Germaine's the singer." And she said, "No, no, no, but listen to Michael sing." And he was like, "Jermaine is the lead singer." And she apparently insisted. And Joe Jackson was an terrible father, but he listened to her in this one case and let Michael sing. And Michael immediately became the lead singer of the Jackson 5, which they practiced all the time. They were from Gary, Indiana, which is a very rough, rundown town. With all due respect to Gary, it's I don't know if it's seen better days in my lifetime.

[00:02:29]It's never been good days for Gary. And uh he was determined to see that family rise up out of that. And boy, did they ever. So they the kids become huge stars but not without awful sacrifices. And Michael when he became an adult gave some key interviews on what it was like growing up in that household and what it was like to have this guy as your dad.

[00:02:52]And of course Michael was like a large child when he was a grown man and sounded it had had the voice of a young child had the demeanor of a young child.

[00:03:01]So for those who have you know our younger audience may not have seen any of these clips. They may be sort of shocked by how he looks and sounds, but here he is in a famous interview with um Martin Basher talking about the abuse.

[00:03:13]Warning, this stuff is disturbing.

[00:03:15]Sautu.

[00:03:16]>> He was tough. How often would he beat you?

[00:03:22]>> Too much.

[00:03:25]>> Would he only use a belt?

[00:03:31]Why do you do this to me?

[00:03:35]No more than a belt.

[00:03:38]What else would he use to hit you with?

[00:03:42]Iron quartz, whatever is around, throw you up against the wall hard as he could.

[00:03:53]Um, see, it's one thing to >> But you were only a child.

[00:03:57]>> I know >> you were a baby.

[00:03:59]>> I know. It's one thing to disappoint.

[00:04:01]You were producing successful records.

[00:04:03]>> I know. He would lose his temper. I just remember hearing my mother scream, "Joe, you're going to kill him. You're going to kill him. Stop it." I mean, scared.

[00:04:15]So scared that we I would regurgitate.

[00:04:19]>> You would vomit.

[00:04:20]>> Mhm.

[00:04:23]>> When would you vomit? What What would produce that sort of reaction in you?

[00:04:27]>> His presence. just seeing them and uh sometime I'd faint and my bodyguards would have to hold me up.

[00:04:39]Uh when he was beating you, did you hate him?

[00:04:45]>> Yeah.

[00:04:47]Strong hate.

[00:04:50]That's why to this day I don't lay a finger on my children. I don't want them to ever feel that way about me.

[00:04:57]ever. And he didn't allow us to call him daddy. And I wanted to call him daddy so bad.

[00:05:05]>> He said, "I'm not daddy. I'm Joseph to you."

[00:05:10]>> You know, >> just one more. Um, >> before you go to the next, >> this was what triggered to my mind in retrospect. I didn't know it at the time obviously, but this Martin Basher interview is what triggered I think uh in a lot of ways the dominoes that led to his downfall and death because that interview so it was so used against him or weaponized against him that it ended up fueling the fire that was the DA. It ended up being kind of the wind at the back of the prosecution and I he never recovered from it. It was just that >> I I'll play that sound bite, too. But before before I get to that before I get to that piece of it, just want to stay on the abuse because of course if Michael Jackson was a child molester, the odds are overwhelming that he was molested too when he was a child. And you know, everybody wants to know how does one become like this because we want to prevent the creation of more.

[00:06:12]And um he never accused his father of sexual abuse, but I did find an extraordinary clip. This is from um a recording made for the book, the Michael Jackson tapes, and it's Michael's voice over old pictures of the family. And you heard him there saying his dad used to hit him with an ironing cord. He means and he explains here the cord of an iron, like the literally the the plug that plugs into an iron. And here he goes further with it in it with some disturbing additional details in saut 3.

[00:06:46]>> He was rough. The way he would beat you was, you know, was hard. You know, sometimes he take um he would make you strip nude first. He would oil you down. Your whole ritual. He would oil you down.

[00:07:04]So when when the flip of the um of the ironing cords hit you, it would just, you know, and it was just like me dying and the flips all over your face, your back, everywhere. And I always hear my mother, "No, girl. You're going to kill him.

[00:07:19]You're going to kill him. No." I was I would just give up like there was nothing I can do, you know, and I hated him for it.

[00:07:29]>> Wow.

[00:07:30]And now I have to say a father making his son get naked and covering him in oil takes me to a different place and it is very plausible to me that Michael Jackson might not have been ready to admit or ever prepared to admit what else happened. Um but it's just very strange to hear of a father making his child get nude and oil him up before a beating. Either way, Mark, you can make the argument that that behavior plus physical abuse, that behavior plus sexual abuse could have created something very dark inside Michael.

[00:08:04]>> Well, I I mentioned earlier the first time I was brought in was when child protective services was called on him and you hear see there that he's talking about her in one of the previous things talking about his own children. And I I think in retrospect he was prepared for later prepared for the criminal case. I don't think he was ever prepared in retrospect for that child protective services investigation. It was so hurtful, devastating, and um shook him to his core. I just remember talking to him about it and and he just could not wrap his head around the idea that he would be doing anything untored towards the kids and we did get it shut down but by that time time it was shut down the criminal case had kind of heated up and so you there was no rest for the weary so to speak and it was a very difficult time for him. I I remember, you know, I think I've mentioned this one once before. One of the most terrifying times to have a client was being called one time and finding him on the floor um oded uh in the runup to the trial itself. And he had this wonderful housekeeper who was living in the house who was um who had called and was panicked. And obviously you couldn't uh take him to the uh hospital immediately.

[00:09:35]He had to have a doctor there. I mean, he by the time the 2000s ran came around, he had undergone so much and he was to use the term self-medicating, having others medicated. It was just a a spectacularly hard fall from the heights to your point that he had been at, you know, 20 10 years earlier.

[00:10:02]>> Yeah. I mean, it's it was everything, right? I just from my vantage point out in in the press and in the public, it was the the multiple accusations now.

[00:10:12]The 93 accusation, the two 2003 accusation of abuse, the endangerment of his own children in injected into the conversation as you know he could lose custody of his kids. um the multiple plastic surgeries which like that's a whole that his name is almost synonymous with like the bizarre plastic surgery trend that's kind of taken over since then. But he was a pioneer >> uh and just doing too much >> and getting addicted to it and not knowing when to stop. the skin color changes, you know, all all there's so many eccentricities about him and some you could kind of easily dismiss as the product of mega fame, like ultra fame, like Elvisike fame. And of course, he would wind up marrying Elvis's daughter.

[00:11:04]That's another whole twist, right? But like part of the mystery is was it how much was attributable to incredible fame and this bizarre upbringing like that that that might happen to any child who was exploited as much as he was at a young age and how much Here's Lisa Marie Presley just loving on him on stage. Oh, sorry. No, no, it's just a family.

[00:11:27]>> I was going to say I don't think that's Lisa Marie.

[00:11:30]>> For a second I thought this woman's too tall to be Lisa Marie. Um and how much is attributable to Look at those look at those fans. For for me as a just as an observer, I don't remember that kind of reaction except for the Beatles back in the 60s. I that >> and Elvis, I'd say.

[00:11:50]>> Yeah, look at that.

[00:11:52]>> When you I think feel like Elvis Elvis brought people there, too. Um but yeah, no, like there's a term starruck.

[00:12:00]>> Yeah. And it's that's exactly what these people were like struck by this megawatt star. And unlike so many of these stars, Mark, he delivered. You know, it's not like we we today build people up with image making and PR firms and, you know, sort of the social media blitz. Here's a woman being taken away on a stretcher.

[00:12:22]She's so overwhelmed by him. But he delivered in terms of the performance and the skills and the talent and just you know the way he moved was not human.

[00:12:33]It was overwhelming to behold.

[00:12:38]>> And what and what you see was is just that kind of that tearing apart of him.

[00:12:46]And it's the analysis. I've thought a lot about it over the years and and uh at what price and the kind of the collateral damage around him and most recently with the new accusers and the you know on the heels of what we're talking about here which is the movie that is out there that kind of truth drops off right before next up I'm uh I I believe will be a movie that talks about the trial and uh that my guess is is be out momentarily as well. And when you see there uh by the way that that that clip that you showed, I don't know a whole lot of men that could do what he did in terms of leaping up on top of an SUV even at that stage in his life and with the physical ailments that he had.

[00:13:44]It's just hard to >> Well, that's that's one of the sad things. If he if it hadn't been for the drugs, he probably would have lived a long life because he was obviously extremely fit, you know? I mean, from years of aggressive dancing. I mean, for the love of God, Keith Richards is still alive just based on what he did on stage with the Rolling Stones. Can you imagine? We could have had Michael for decades. But a man named Dr. Conrad Murray entered his life and bizarrely agreed as a board-certified anesthesiologist to administer Propifal to him night after night in 2008 or nine and killed him. I mean, he he died. That is not a safe thing to have happen. And that's how he ultimately died. Go ahead.

[00:14:27]No, I was just going to say it reminds me I I see this all too often with a lot of people trying to basically turn their brains off when they reach these kinds of levels. And uh and that was I think to some degree where where he was is just trying to uh literally anesthetize himself to the point where he could sleep where he could just stop being having the neurons firing and everything else. I mean, it's an immense tragedy and and it's a first cousin to the talent uh that I mean I I don't even think there are not enough words to describe just how talented he was and the kinds of uh he even even in the somewhat adult state that he was by the time all of this other stuff was swirling around him, he had flashes flashes of of just a incredibly brilliant mind.

[00:15:30]>> Thanks for watching this clip. If you're new here, subscribe. We got a whole lot more goodness where that came from.

[00:15:36]Would love to hear your feedback. You can email me, too. Megan megnanc kelly.com or just leave a comment below.

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