Michael Jackson's accusers seek to open sealed records that include nude photos of the singer
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Michael Jackson’s production company is fighting to keep sealed court records out of the hands of two of his accusers ahead of a forthcoming jury trial.
MJJ Productions filed a motion Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court to quash four subpoenas issued by Jackson's alleged sex-abuse victims, Wade Robson, 41, and James Safechuck, 46. The subpoenas, directed at the county sheriff's offices and the district attorneys of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties, are for sealed police records related to Jackson’s 2005 pedophilia charges.
The production company believes Robson and Safechuck's actual target is a series of nude photographs of Jackson included in the records.
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The nude photographs were taken by police in 1993 amid accusations from a 13-year-old boy that he was sexually abused by Jackson, which culminated in an estimated $20-million settlement.
They are also protected by a court-entered protective order, MJJ Productions said in the Wednesday filing.
“Beyond the invasion of privacy issues, the available records indicate the photographs Plaintiffs now seek are also subject to a strict protective order agreed to by Michael Jackson and Santa Barbara law enforcement and entered by the Santa Barbara Superior Court," said the filing, according to the Mail Online.
MJJ Productions went on to say that the photos were “not taken willingly” and were “the result of a court-ordered search based on a false statement in what became a discredited criminal investigation.”
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“To allow Plaintiffs to exploit that series of circumstances to their benefit by obtaining those photographs now adds a second defilement to the first,” the company concluded in the filing, the Mail Online reported.
The motion comes less than a year after a California appeals court revived lawsuits from Robson and Safechuck that had been thrown out and later revisited twice since they were first filed in 2013 (Robson) and 2014 (Safechuck).
The second dismissal came in 2021 from the L.A. County Superior Court, which ruled that the corporations MJJ Productions Inc. and MJJ Ventures Inc. — of which Jackson was in sole control — had no legal duty to prevent sexual abuse of children by the singer.
In its August 2023 decision, the state appeals court reversed the decision, approving Robson and Safechuck together to take their abuse claims to a trial — in which they will need to prove not only that Jackson abused them, but that production company staff were complicit.
Jonathan Steinsapir, attorney for the Jackson estate, said his client was “disappointed" with the appellate court's decision.
“Two distinguished trial judges repeatedly dismissed these cases on numerous occasions over the last decade because the law required it,” Steinsapir told the Associated Press. “We remain fully confident that Michael is innocent of these allegations, which are contrary to all credible evidence and independent corroboration, and which were only first made years after Michael’s death by men motivated solely by money.”
Howard Weitzman, the late attorney who previously represented Jackson, similarly described Robson and Safechuck as “serial perjurers, whose sole agenda has been to extract money from Jackson’s rightful heirs and chosen beneficiaries,” after the release of the 2019 HBO documentary "Leaving Neverland.
In the documentary, the repeat plaintiffs recounted the abuse they endured as boys at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch.
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Jackson’s estate sued HBO over the documentary, alleging that the cable channel violated non-disparagement agreements it had made with the singer prior to his death in 2009.
“Despite the desperate lengths taken to undermine the film, our plans remain unchanged,” HBO said in a statement at the time of the lawsuit. “This will allow everyone the opportunity to assess the film and the claims in it for themselves.”
Robson and Safechuck’s trial date has been scheduled for April 2025, the same month that the forthcoming Michael Jackson biopic is slated for release.
The two hope their trial comes first, but apparently suspect MJJ Productions is gunning for the opposite.
“They want the Michael Jackson biopic to come out before the trial. That's what I think,” their lawyer John Carpenter told Rolling Stone in February. “These corporations that facilitated the abuse in the first place, they're rewriting the history.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
