Well, perhaps go back and read my comment again before you get all wounded and want to leap to Jackson’s defense, because I was talking about when they were kids.

Their dad fucked them up something fierce.

I said this the other day to my better half. No mention anywhere about the Jackson’s being JWs.

I can’t remember where but back in the day I seem to remember hearing someone say Michael started changing his appearance the first time he looked in the mirror and realized he was starting to look like his father.  

It’s especially vicious because the kind of behaviors that get women labeled “crazy” are usually consistent with trauma. Double victimization.

This is so well put. You can struggle with mental illness, act erratically and still speak the truth. But as soon as a woman is branded “crazy” people stop listening.

I have thought that too. I really and truly feel Joe Jackson did some really terrible things to his kids, physically and mentally, and they were all traumatized, especially Michael (who I think got it the worst because he was the golden ticket), and it manifested itself in a lot of different ways.

I have no idea for sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if it came from some kind of verbal/emotional abuse that Joseph perpetrated against them as kids. Like didn’t Michael say one time that his father would give him shit about the size of his nose? 

Days of Our Lives over here. A large swath of us planned our every day around that show. Like sands through the hourglass....

Growing up in the 90s taught me to pay attention any time folks seemed super invested in discrediting a woman.

I wish the media would pay greater attention to the fact that the Jackson family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. After all, the JWs are a twisted, patriarchal cult that has a history of covering up child abuse. I think it would be illuminating to see the Jackson family’s sordid past discussed within that particular…

LOL. I had quit watching AMC regularly by then. But I did record Twin Peaks on my VCR so I wouldn’t miss it while I was working. :)

I only know who Lisa Rinna is because Days of Our Lives was always on during my break between classes in the common’s area. :)

It seems like there’s a cultural binary we have where a woman is either truthful or crazy. Once a woman has been branded as “crazy” it’s fair to discount everything she has to say, classic silencing technique. But that’s a false binary if ever there was one.

I believe somewhere in her recall during the 90's lies the truth.
I fully agree with what you are saying about compounded trauma.
But — that also feeds into the whole “need to please the abuser” that happens in grooming and why I honestly believe not one penny was afforded to her as hush money. More like her mom saying…

Not only that, but time has a a way of shaping our memories, particularly if we’ve suffered trauma, or mental illness, or drug abuse, or all three. I have no trouble believing that she suffered abuse at the hands of Joseph Jackson, and exaggerated those memories as she was abused by Jack Gordon, and came to believe…

If she refuted the claims only after her brother’s death, maybe she saw it as an opportunity to enter her niece’s and nephews’ lives and be a safe space. Where was she in the custody battle? Because that got ugly, too, if I vaguely recall.

The public labeling someone speaking about abuse and airing family secrets as “exploiting a personal matter” is why so many people stay quiet about abuse, rape and incest. Who wants to open themselves up to criticism and questions about one of the most painful periods of their life, especially when they feel they…

I imagine there was no cash incentive - just being that iced out by your family - no matter how toxic had to hurt.

Yes - she was right. Her brother was a pedophile. I can only imagine what kind of cash incentive she must have been given to make her try and take back the claims in later years.