Do you think Michael Jackson was guilty?

[Shadow1980]

I've always deemed it "possible, but unproven." There's no way to know for sure.

All we do know is that on one hand, we have a popular black celebrity in the 80s who had spent years being hounded by the media ("Does Wacko Jacko have the Elephant Man's bones? Does he have a shrine to Elizabeth Taylor? Does he sleep in a hyperbaric chamber? Is he bleaching his skin?"). They were always trying to tear that man down. And when there was actual criminal charges against him for child molestation, he was found not guilty. He's also had more than a few people who knew him as kids actually defend him and say he did nothing wrong. Some of the people who tried to accuse him of sexual misconduct when they were kids haven't been able to keep their stories straight, either, which raises some red flags.

On the other hand, he did himself no favors. He was a profoundly weird man with some obvious issues (having an awful childhood like he did will do that to you), and he really had no business having kids over for things like sleepovers or really much of anything. It's not normal for a grown man to want to hang out with kids, even if the desire to so has nothing to do with pedophilia. Thinking he may have likely done sexually inappropriate things is to be fair not an unreasonable assumption to make.

All we really have at the end of the day are conflicting accounts that are pure hearsay. Some people may believe in "trial by documentary," but I don't. I believe in trial by jury, and this wasn't something where guilt was painfully obvious like the cases of Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter, Harvey Weinstein, or Jeffrey Epstein. It's just a big question mark. Jackson has been dead and buried for years, and we'll probably never know for sure. Yeah, not knowing for sure definitely sucks, especially if you are or were a fan of his. I sure don't like unanswered questions. But there will always be gaps in our knowledge. Some things just can't be conclusively proven one way or another. That's life. But the man is dead now, and he is well past the point of being able to benefit from people still buying his records even if he was guilty.