“Leaving Neverland,” a four-hour film by British director Dan Reed, is considered so potentially devastating that counseling was made available at its Sundance Film Festival premiere in January.Reed said he tried to include “sexual detail in a very measured way, so it wasn’t done for shock value.”
Both describe the childlike Jackson wooing them: inviting them into his fairy tale existence, gaining their families’ trust and manipulating them into keeping their sexual relations secret.Their mothers also offer narratives of seduction into the cult of Jackson and the ensuing guilt that haunts them.The megastar invited the boy to his Neverland Ranch, where Robson, by then seven, said the abuse began.
Jackson’s estate has vehemently defended the late star, suing HBO for $100 million over a “posthumous character assassination” it says breaches an agreement made not to disparage the icon, a condition for airing one of his concerts. Neither man reversed their stories until recently, after becoming fathers themselves. Both filed their own lawsuits that were dismissed over statutes of limitations.