#Leaving neverland review full#
As presented by James Safechuck, now 40, and Wade Robson, now 36, every step of Jackson’s enticement of them was deliberate and cynical, particularly as, they say, Jackson did what he could to separate the boys from their parents for full access. According to the film, he fitted Neverland Ranch with hidden rooms and alarms to protect him from getting caught in flagrante. The film, which created a stir at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and which inspired the Jackson estate to sue HBO for $100 million to stop the airing, alleges that Jackson, as an adult, strategically groomed boys, seduced their parents into submission with elaborate trips and money, and sexually abused the boys over and over again, each of the many nights they spent together, sometimes with the mothers in the next room. But according to the two-part film, which airs Sunday and Monday at 8 p.m., Jackson was at the same time a victimizer of the most insidious kind, a man whose hunger for innocence led him to rob children of that same precious commodity.
Jackson may have been a victim in ways, as the intensity of his lifelong fame drove him to take refuge in a fairy-tale world. But the allegations in HBO’s “Leaving Neverland,” a riveting, grimly persuasive four-hour documentary, are the most powerful challenges yet to the public denial about Jackson that has thrived since his first sexual abuse case in 1993, which he settled out of court.