Dan Reed’s Leaving Neverland documentary purports to be a reasonably argued, morally responsible investigation into the true nature of the performer Michael Jackson, a once uber-famous, once much-admired man whose reputation was extremely damaged by a series of high-profile child abuse cases. 

 The most serious of these cases was the 2004–2005 criminal trial The People of the State of California v. Michael Joe Jackson held at the Santa Barbara County Superior Court. Jackson was charged with molesting Gavin Arvizo, a 13-year-old boy. After an 18 months long trial the jury delivered a verdict of not guilty on all charges, including four lesser misdemeanour counts. For better or worse Michael Jackson emerged from a real court a free man, having faced down real lawyers who presented real evidence. 

 Leaving Neverland effectively placed Jackson on trial again. This time the setting was the court of public opinion. The makers of Leaving Neverland appointed themselves as an all-powerful prosecution who sought to convict Jackson in a manner that clearly violated any accepted standards of international and basic human rights; Jackson is dead and could not speak in his own defence.

• The de facto TV court did not even feature a defence lawyer who was intimately acquainted with Jackson’s case and thereby able to question and rebut his client’s accusers.

• No pro-Jackson witnesses were interviewed. 

• The two “star” witnesses against Jackson did not produce even the flimsiest of material evidence to back up their claims or even provide a sustainable timeline of the alleged offences. 

•  The only other people who were called to “testify before camera” were the two accusers’ own mothers! 

If any citizen of the UK or America was tried in a foreign county under these circumstances the matter would be raised in an emergency session of the UN.

No sane person who grew up in any functional democracy would accept these conditions. And yet this deeply flawed trial, with its forgone conclusion, despite offering up no tangible evidence to sustain its principal claim of Jackson guilt, wishes to have the last word on Jackson’s reputation and legacy.

Whatever my own suspicions about Jackson’s guilt I can’t accept that this is the standard for holding abusers accountable. 

I take it as a given that all survivors must be heard and supported. It gives me no joy to conclude, after watching this documentary, that this was the closest spectacle I’ve seen to a modern lynching.

I hope one day to have my own day in court with my own abuser. I accept that I will have to give evidence in order to secure a conviction. I am firmly aware that my abuser’s legal team will seek to refute my testimony, and that my case will largely boil down to my word against his, and that there’s a chance a jury might not convict him.

I accept this (well, I’m trying to) because I value the notion that the justice system of my country is designed to treat the accused and the accuser fairly. I hope I’m strong enough to continue to value this ideal even when miscarriages of justice (including, possibly my own) occur in the future.