It focuses on two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who allege they were sexually abused as children by the American singer Michael Jackson. Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our Instagram and Twitter account. Leaving Neverland is a 2019 documentary film directed and produced by British filmmaker Dan Reed. Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline on (1-80) or the American SPCC ( ). Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact the NSPCC on 08 ( ). Leaving Neverland will air on Channel 4 in the UK on Wednesday, March 6 and HBO in the US on Sunday, March 3. Wade Robson has a page dedicated to child abuse prevention and healing on his website.Ī handful of Michael Jackson fans turned up at the festival to protest the docu-series, and the Jackson estate has condemned it as a "tabloid character assassination".īut we argue that Leaving Neverland really isn't the documentary you might think it is, and viewers are left to come to their own conclusions. And it’s happened, and that’s incredible." But this is a sea change moment for me in this healing journey and in trying to be heard.
"There’s a lot of release happening for me. "Yeah, you kind of don’t know what to do with it at first," added Robson. "It’s strange to hear people clap," Safechuck, who is now 40 years old, told The LA Times. Wade Robson and James Safechuck were present for the screening and, having received a standing ovation, they have since spoken out about the audience response. The four-hour documentary aired for the very first time at Sundance Film Festival in January 2019, and it got quite the critical reaction. Did Wade Robson and James Safechuck know each other? "It was like being cast out, and it was like a realisation that like, OK, I'm not number one, and I just wanted to go home," he explained. Safechuck also described the pain he had felt when other boys started to hang around with Michael too. He later added, while trawling through jewellery that Jackson had given him in exchange for sexual acts, "It's still hard for me to not blame myself." "We filled out these vows, it's like we were bonded forever. "And I say married because we had this mock wedding ceremony in his bedroom. "We were like this married couple," he said. In one particularly harrowing scene, Safechuck describes a mock wedding that he had with the superstar, showing a piece of jewellery that symbolised a wedding ring. This psychological manipulation provides context and an explanation as to why they each protected their abuser for the time that they did. Playing out against the backdrop of our collective experience, the film documents the value of breaking a long-held silence, even when it implicates a powerful, revered figure.Like Wade, James does not hold back when describing details of the sexual abuse that he experienced but, again, there was also an emotional element to their bond. Through gut-wrenching interviews with the now-adult men and their families, Leaving Neverland crafts a portrait of sustained exploitation, deception and the complicated feelings that led both men to confront their abuse only once they each had had a young son of their own. Their families were unaware of the manipulation and abuse he would subject the boys to over a period of years. In separate but parallel stories, James Safechuck (10) and Wade Robson (7) were each befriended by Jackson, who invited them into his singular, fairy-tale world as his career reached its peak. When allegations of sexual abuse by Michael Jackson involving young boys surfaced in 1993, many found it hard to believe that the King of Pop could be guilty of such unspeakable acts. “Hard to watch, tougher to ignore, impossible to forget.” - ROLLING STONE