Thank Oprah for bringing out this side of the conversation. I feel like we hear the yelling of the Jackson defenders, but an extended, calm conversation that explores the horrors of child seduction/grooming makes it impossible to deny. The 1000 kids he didn’t rape don’t invalidate the 2 (or more) that say he did.

He’s saying the same thing Sung Yi did about Woody Allen.  She didn’t feel victimized when Allen was grooming her, she like the attention and felt like it was love. 

One of the most insidious things about sexual abuse is that the trauma inflicted on the victim causes behavior that people use to discredit them. For instance, the victim vehemently defending the abuser is actually one of the potential symptoms of abuse. It’s a result of the grooming and of the desperate need for the…

Whew. All of this was a tough watch. What was also tough was watching the rabid MJ fan base lose their minds and threaten everyone involved in this documentary, including Oprah for giving these men a platform to discuss their lives. I saw so many “cancel Oprah” posts on Twitter, I lost count. It’s amazing how some…

Adding this hour was brilliant. Oprah really managed to connect the harrowing story, carefully told in the documentary, to the experience of other victims; to the millions of child sexual abuse survivors whose abuser wasn’t famous, by showing how the pattern of grooming is essentially the same (ie the story told by…

I think that’s probably pretty common. Not only did the parents of both of these men utterly fail them, but enablers often feel like safer/easier targets for victims’ anger than the abusers. That anger is a lot less tied up in the guilt and shame they feel about their abuse. Plus, the dynamic between abused and…

One of the things I kept thinking about while watching this last night is how we expect adults (and CHILDREN) to testify in a court proceeding about this kind of abuse and when they can’t admit this happened to them, the accused is found innocent and freed!  I don’t know what the answer is to this.  Do we demand that…

Please be gentle with yourself. I’m so sorry that was done to you, and I know how hard it is to face it, even after a long time. You are in my heart and my thoughts. 

Uhm... Can Dan Reed, et al, do a doc on Trump next?

Because she has experienced it and spent a good portion of her career interviewing researchers, advocates, victims and abusers. I have a lot of problems with Oprah, but this is one thing she is actually qualified to discuss and has done a lot of advocacy on.

God he was so hard to watch.  Wade Robson seemed like he was in a much better place about things (though he might just have had a better game face), but James looked so anguished and uncomfortable the entire time.

I find it noteworthy that both of these men are angrier with their mothers than they are with Jackson.

I didn’t know how profoundly After Neverland was going to impact me. Really wish I hadn’t watched it. There was childhood sexual abuse in my family that I thought had been neatly tucked away but this film ripped that fucking wound right open. I doubt I’ll get a good night sleep for a long while.

Oprah asked tough questions, and they gave satisfactory answers. I thought the documentary laid out the timeline very well and showed where the boys/men were at in their lives during the two trials and why they made the decisions they made.

My dad was a WW2 vet and died in December. He had Alzheimer’s and didn’t have many lucid moments these past years, but when I told him Donald Trump was the president, dad did manage “that buffoon from TV?!”. 

Makes sense that those who lived through WWII and the rise of fascism would like to see this country correct course.

Yep, that’s the unsubtle sign that thirsty publicity-seeking is actually what this is all about. “Heartbreak”? “Betrayal”? Not except as a scripted campaign. Is Khloé stupid enough to expect anything new from a man who began their own relationship — such as it is— by cheating on his pregnant girfriend? Maybe she is…

Does everyone involved have to take their personal relationship problems to social media and blame/not blame each other? It’s SO attention-seeking and childish, trying to "win" a relationship triangle on the twitters...

lamar and now this, must be lonely having relationships with people because they add to your bottom line

My only questions are ...what the hell did Tristan tell Khloe?