by The director of the documentary. Departure neverland has argued that the upcoming Michael Jackson biopic will “glorify” a child rapist.
The 2019 documentary is a “brutally frank and explicit account of two abusive relationships,” British director Dan Reed wrote in a commentary for The Guardianposted on sunday.
The documentary reveals that the pop star first raped a boy, Wade Robson, when he was just seven years old, and abused another, James Safechuck, when the boy was just 10 years old.
Mr. Reed wrote that the film was “an opportunity to bring to the widest possible audience an insight into how children are victimized by any sexual abuser, the psychology of the predator, and most of all, the grooming process.”
He described his hope that the film could prevent other children from being abused, adding that destroying Mr. Jackson’s reputation was not the “primary goal” but “seemed like a necessary side-impact”.
“If you know that your idol has abused children, shouldn’t that make celebrating his personality a bit more troublesome, to say the least?” asked the manager.
Mr. Reed said he wrote the commentary piece because a film being made about Jackson will soon begin filming, produced “hand in hand” with the “co-executors of the Jackson estate.”
He hollywood reporter states that “it’s unclear how the film will address the many controversies involving the late music icon, given that the film is being made in conjunction with his estate, which has defended him against allegations of child sexual abuse.”
The director added: “In an era where full-throated outrage accompanies anything that smacks of delegitimization or insensitivity against a vulnerable group, it amounts to deafening silence. No one is talking about ‘cancelling’ this movie, which will glorify a man who raped children.”
He said the “most shocking insight” from his documentary is that “the predator makes the child fall in love with him, luring him into a kind of guilty complicity in the abuse,” meaning that victims “will cover up for their abusers and will protect”. for years or decades.
Reed noted that Robson now admits that he lied in court in 2005 to protect Jackson, which led to his acquittal in his child molestation trial.
The director wrote that the lack of anger at the biopic’s announcement reveals that “Jackson’s seduction remains a living force, operating from beyond the grave.”
He said the media and his fans seem willing to ignore child abuse and “just follow the music.”
The director then addressed the fans and the press directly.
“Even if you don’t believe a word of what her many accusers have said; even if you’re not worried about police investigations and massive payments to stop legal proceedings, how do you explain the completely indisputable fact that for years Jackson spent countless nights alone in bed with small children? he asked her. “What was he doing with them, alone in his Neverland bedroom, with alarm bells in the hallway? That cannot be acceptable by any measure.”
Turning his attention to the creators of the biopic, Mr. Reed asked: “How will you portray the moment when Jackson, a grown man in his 30s, takes a child by the hand and leads him into that room? How will you describe what happens next?”
“By sidestepping the issue of Jackson’s predilection for sleeping with young children, he is sending a message to millions of survivors of child sexual abuse. That message is: if a pedophile is rich and popular enough, society will forgive them,” she concluded.
