The Brisbane boy who fell prey to the King of Pop

It is a truth Brisbane child star Wade Robson says he can no longer dance around: his relationship with Michael Jackson.

\Wade Robson leaves court in 2005.

It is a truth Wade Robson, once the hottest young choreographer in the world, says he can no longer dance around. The Brisbane-born long-time protege of Michael Jackson helped the superstar get off charges of child molestation when he appeared as a defence witness at his 2004 trial.

But now, in a shocking and graphic documentary, Robson and American James Safechuck — both of whom began travelling and living with Jackson when they were nine — have detailed shocking allegations of sexual abuse over years at the hands of the King of Pop.

Leaving Neverland is directed by Dan Reed and airs on television across the world next week. The documentary could ­finally shatter the lasting mythology around Jackson, who died in 2009, and the denial of fans who still worship at his throne.

The documentary could only have come about in the post-#MeToo world, where blind loyalty and fear of celebrity has been supplanted by witnesses and victims willing to challenge the powerful.

In 2003, just before Jackson was arrested, Robson, 21, had a hit show on MTV and was moonwalking his way to stardom after signing a Disney movie deal to ­direct three musicals.

“Everybody wants to talk to Wade,’’ his mother, Joy, said to me when at a chance meeting in Los Angeles I asked if she could help ­organise an interview with her son for an Australian newspaper ­profile.

The gossip shows were rife with (denied) speculation he was “the other man’’ behind the bust-up of then celebrity couple Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake.

Almost 16 years earlier, as a cadet journalist on the now defunct Daily Sun newspaper in Brisbane, I was sent to the outer suburb of Slacks Creek to do a story on the then five-year-old Wade. He had just won a Michael Jackson impersonation contest on the local leg of Jackson’s 1987 Bad world tour and had been invited on stage to dance alongside the superstar.

It was to change his life. Wade began touring Australia with the Johnny Young Talent School, before making his first visit with his mother to Jackson’s then fantastical Neverland Ranch home, about 180km north of Los Angeles.

Michael Jackson arrives at court in 2005. Picture: AP

In 1991, Jackson sponsored the immigration to the US of Robson, his mother and his older sister and cast him in three of his music videos and one of his Pepsi commercials. The superstar became omnipresent in the boy’s life, signing him to his label, taking him on tour and having him stay regularly at Neverland. When Wade turned 14, the superstar’s interest in his protege began to wane. Robson was soon making a name for himself, choreographing Spears’s first US tour and doing the same for Timberlake’s boy band ’N Sync, for which he co-wrote four songs, ­including the No 1 hit Gone.

It was a few years later, with The Wade Robson Project dance show on MTV pulling tens of millions of viewers, that I ran into his mother. The serendipity of doing his very first interview with me was enough for Robson to agree to what should have been a “puff” profile about his booming career. And then his world changed.

Just days before our November 2003 interview, Jackson, then 45, was arrested on charges of molesting 12-year-old cancer sufferer Gavin Arvizo, who had made a “last wish’’ to meet the entertainer. Police had begun to investigate after a documentary that year in which Jackson sat holding hands with Arvizo and told an incredulous world he regularly shared his bed with children, including the sick boy. In the documentary, Gavin said nothing sinister had happened — but later told police the superstar had plied him with alcohol and sexually abused him.

Robson’s mother insisted I ­refrain from asking her son about Jackson. I explained that as a journalist it was impossible to avoid the subject. “Why does his friendship with Michael always have to be brought up?’’ a distressed Joy said. “He has been trying to get away from all of that for a decade now — he is his own person.’’ Robson agreed to go ahead with the interview at his bustling Hollywood dance studio and when I asked about Jackson’s ­arrest and if he had been abused, he delivered what seemed like a ­rehearsed line.

“I never had that experience and I hope that it never happened to anybody else,’’ he answered.

I then asked him if he had ever slept in Jackson’s bed. Robson ­appeared startled, and sat thinking, presumably of a way to sidestep the question. He sighed and said: “Yeah, but nothing strange happened.’’ He added that he didn’t think it “weird’’ a grown man would share the same bed as a child.

“Everything in life is so ­complex. He just wanted something around that was simple — to hang with kids.”

The story exploded across the US, and within days Jackson’s lawyers put Robson on notice that he would be subpoenaed to give evidence in the star’s defence. Robson and child actor Macaulay Culkin later both testified under oath that they had slept in the same bed as the singer and had not been abused. And he was acquitted.

It was a show trial like no other. There were pop-up stalls selling Jackson memorabilia, hot dogs and popcorn. I was one of the journalists who secured a seat through a lottery in a spill-over court — with proceedings streamed on to a television — to watch him facing arraignment on nine charges.

Once Jackson left the courthouse, jumped on the roof of a waiting SUV and busted a few moves before calling out to fans to “come to a party’’ at Neverland. I bought a Jackson T-shirt on sale outside the court and asked his entourage for an invitation to “the party”. It was surreal. Hundreds of people, mostly families, were there, with children running between the amusement rides or playing in the video game arcade as they sucked down hot dogs, chocolate and soft drink. On the walls of the main residence were nicely framed large portraits of very young, mostly white children.

Robson, who now says he was abused for seven years, filed a $US1.5 billion lawsuit against Jackson’s estate in 2013, which was dismissed by a US judge who said he waited too long to take action. But he seems at peace, back in Queensland in December to hold dance clinics, and telling London’s The Times he “is filled with hope for a possibly more supportive ­future environment for child abuse survivors’’.

Leaving Neverland will air on Network Ten over two nights on March 8 (9pm) and 9 (9.30pm).