(link via freckledawesome: dawnowar: azspot)

I had started my investigation convinced that Jackson was guilty. By the end, I no longer believed that.

I could not find a single shred of evidence suggesting that Jackson had molested a child. But I found significant evidence demonstrating that most, if not all, of his accusers lacked credibility and were motivated primarily by money.

Jackson also deserved much of the blame, of course. Continuing to share a bed with children even after the suspicions surfaced bordered on criminal stupidity.

He was also playing a truly dangerous game. It is clear to me that Michael was homosexual and that his taste was for young men, albeit not as young as Jordan Chandler or Gavin Arvizo.

In the course of my investigations, I spoke to two of his gay lovers, one a Hollywood waiter, the other an aspiring actor. The waiter had remained friends, perhaps more, with the singer until his death last week. He had served Jackson at a restaurant, Jackson made his interest plain and the two slept together the following night. According to the waiter, Jackson fell in love.

This article is by turns incredible and heartbreaking.

First of all, it mentions in a sort of offhand way that “one of his brothers” said he had once been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Wait… what?

Also the writer says that Debbie Rowe does want the kids. I’m not sure if this was written before or after she came out as saying she doesn’t want anything to do with them.

But mainly it’s about his life, the last few years of it specifically, and how awful and infuriating it is that nobody did anything to help him out of the hole he was in.

It talks about how “his people” were pushing him hard, to do the concerts, to perform, to make more money. Apparently he used to have “people” around him who cared about him, who were helping him through the emotional fallout of the molestation accusations. But somehow they got replaced with a different set of “people,” who, by all accounts, were looking out for themselves and their bank accounts. Allegedly one of them even made death threats(?!) to an auctioneer when he didn’t want to postpone a memorabilia auction. They also kept insisting that Jackson was fine, that he could perform, that his health was fine, despite all the evidence.

The more I read, the more I think that Michael Jackson was still mentally a kid in a lot of ways. Not just in the ways everyone talks about, like he built a giant playground and liked to have sleepovers, but in a more fundamental way. He didn’t (or couldn’t) take care of himself, of his health, of his money; he didn’t stand up for what he needed. And he didn’t have anyone to do that for him.

He hated his body, his appearance, and his performances were never good enough (after his iconic performance of “Billie Jean” in which he introduced the moonwalk, he said he was disappointed bcause he wished he had stayed on his toes longer). And he never had anyone to tell him that he was okay, that he was fine the way he was, someone who knew him and really loved him. The more I read, the more I think what he really needed was a parent.

From the article:

On June 21, Jackson told my contact that he wanted to die. He said that he didn’t have what it would take to perform any more because he had lost his voice and dance moves.

‘It’s not working out,’ Jackson said. ‘I’m better off dead. I don’t have anywhere left to turn. I’m done.’

He literally thought that if he couldn’t sing and dance anymore, he was worthless. It makes sense, from a psychological standpoint, because that’s all he was–since he was a child, since he was too young to remember anything else. But it’s sad as hell.