How could mums of Jackson’s alleged victims allow this?

Every parent should watch Leaving Neverland, harrowing though it is, to see how easily the protective instincts of Michael Jackson’s alleged victims’ mothers were overridden, writes Miranda Devine.

Watching two men describe in detail how they were sexually abused as children by Michael Jackson in the new documentary, Leaving Neverland, it seems inconceivable that their parents didn’t know, at some level.

The mothers, at least, were unwittingly complicit in allowing their sons, aged seven and 10, to sleep in the same bed with the King of Pop.

“Every night that I was with him, there was abuse while my mother was — you know — next door,” says Australian Wade Robson, now 36, who met Jackson when he was five years old.

The rest of us need to ask whether perhaps we were all complicit. Jackson’s obsession with small boys went on under the gaze of the world. Yet we all suspended judgment and went along with the narrative that Jackson was just “Wacko Jacko”.

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Robson, and American James Safechuck, 41, say Jackson won so much trust from their families that it seemed normal to sleep in his bed.

Michael Jackson and James Safechuck who talks about abuse in Leaving Neverland. Picture: Supplied

Their recall of precise details of the alleged abuse is convincing, as is their honest explanation that it seemed normal because they loved Jackson. At one point, Safechuck’s hands shake as he shows us the gold rings he says Michael Jackson gave him. “We were just, like, fully in love at that time,” he says.

On a Neverland visit, Robson’s parents let him and his sister sleep in Jackson’s bedroom while they slept in a separate guesthouse. Then they left their son with Jackson while they went travelling, and the sexual abuse allegedly began. I won’t go into details but it’s revolting. Jackson was 30. Robson was seven.

The pattern was the same with Safechuck, who met Jackson at age eight on the set of a Pepsi commercial.

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You watch with mounting horror as the men’s mothers recount good times with Jackson. Their passivity is stunning. “I loved him,” said Stephanie Safechuck.

“You honestly believe that this is a lonely man, and that we can help make him happy. Us, who are just nobodies.”

Australian Wade Robson, now 36, met Michael Jackson when he was five years old. Picture: Leaving Neverland

The parents received lavish gifts over the years: cars, cash and even, in the Safechucks’ case, a house.

She refused Jackson’s first request to sleep in the same bed as her son. But when Safechuck joined Jackson on tour, “It seems like it was a natural thing that happened.

“My husband and I had to have said, ‘Yes, you can sleep with Michael’.” It seemed never to have occurred to them that Jackson’s interest was sexual.

Michael Jackson’s former home Neverland Ranch where much of the alleged abuse happened. Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty

Joy Robson said the same: “The fame, the whole thing, you do get caught up in it.”

The documentary is kind to the mothers. But they are damned by what is not said.

Wade comes the closest to chiding his parents for allowing him to sleep in Jackson’s bed.

“For me to look back on this scenario now, what you think would be standard kind of instincts and judgment seemed to go out the window… We’d known him for, I don’t know what, four hours maybe.”

Jackson’s family denies the claims and is suing HBO.

But every parent should watch this documentary, harrowing though it is, to see how easily the mothers’ protective instincts were overridden.

Both had troubled marriages and their husbands were sidelined by Jackson. But that’s no excuse. It shouldn’t need to be said: never trust any adult male who takes an obsessive interest in your child.

@mirandadevine