A 13-year-old boy who accused Michael Jackson of sexually abusing him told police of marks on the star’s body that he could have only seen if the singer was ‘nude’, two detectives have revealed in a new documentary.
An allegation of sexual abuse of a child was brought to the Sexually Exploited Child Unit within the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) against the mega-pop star in 1993.
Jackson was accused of molesting Jordan Chandler, whom he had initially met at a restaurant when he was ‘very, very little’, before they eventually began visiting each other years later.
Rosibel Smith, an LAPD detective who worked with the unit at the time, explained that allegations included the Thriller singer ‘rub[bing] his body against [the child’s] body’, fondling, as well as escalated sexual abuse.
In the second episode of the documentary, the detective shared the boy had informed police about specific markings on the singer’s body, which she said could only have been seen if Jackson ‘was nude’.
After receiving this information, she said police prepared a search warrant for the King of Pop’s body, including his private areas, upon his return from his Dangerous World Tour, which was cancelled amid allegations of child molestation.
‘We had information from the victim about Michael’s body, and specifically the markings on his body,’ she told the BBC. ‘So the only way that a child would see that is if Michael was nude.’
Meanwhile, her former colleague, Federico Sicard, also an LAPD detective, revealed the moment they told Jackson that they had a warrant signed by a judge to take images of his ‘private parts’.
‘He said, “You a**holes”. The outcome was that the evidence that was provided by Jordan Chandler – it was confirmed,’ Detective Sicard said.
In the midst of the media frenzy, Jackson issued his own statement, unequivocally denying the allegations, branding them as ‘totally false’ and accusing the press of having ‘dissected and manipulated these allegations to reach their own conclusions’.
‘I ask all of you to wait, or hear the truth before you label or condemn me. Don’t treat me like a criminal because I am innocent,’ Jackson said in his televised statement in 1993.
The popstar also accused Jordan’s family of attempting to extort him for a $20million film deal.
A phone recording, alleged to have been the boy’s father, Evan Chandler, was played on CBS news, where a man was heard saying: ‘If I go through with this, I win big time… I will get everything I want.’
Detective Smith maintained she did not get the impression of ‘money motivation’ from the 13-year-old, however, she said the ‘parents were a different story’.
‘The father did, in fact, ask for money to keep the situation quiet. So it did hurt the case a little bit,’ she added.
In 1994, Jordan, now 46, won a $20million settlement from Jackson after his dentist and aspiring screenwriter father took legal action against Jackson for sexually abusing his son. The singer was never charged over the allegations, which he denied.
Jordan, whose father took his own life days after Michael Jackson’s death in 2009, has since gone to great lengths to disappear from public view and has only been pictured on a handful of occasions.
As part of the settlement Jackson family signed with the Chandlers in 1993, they are prevented from ever dramatising the Chandler family or the incident.
Detective Smith said once the lawsuit was settled, it was ‘pretty much the end of [the LAPD’s] case’.
Her colleague Detective Sicard added: ‘I felt bad because I was pretty certain that Rosie and I had a good case, but when the victim doesn’t want to testify, there is a saying that says ”no victim no crime”. So there was nothing that we could do.’
Following the allegations, Jackson’s public image had taken a huge blow with his team scrambling to ‘rehabilitate’ how he was perceived by leaning into his appeal among the black community, as well as promoting his relationship with Lisa Marie Presley.
‘The allegations really changed how the public, I think, thought of him, and Michael had to kind of rehabilitate that image,’ Shana Mangatal, who worked on Jackson’s talent management team, explained. ‘People had been obsessed with Michael’s sexuality his whole life, and his managers thought it would be cool if the press found out that Michael had a girlfriend. Michael and Lisa started soon after the allegations had been settled.’
She added: ‘He knew marrying Elvis Presley’s daughter would be headlines everywhere. Everyone would be talking about that, and they no longer talk about this horrible time in his life.’
But controversy around the pop star would not subside in the years to come, with comments the King of Pop made in a 2003 Martin Bashir documentary called Living With Michael Jackson causing a public outcry.
During the documentary, Bashir questioned Jackson about rumours of children staying in the musician’s sharing his bed with children, which the pop star confirmed were true.
When Bashir pressed him about the appropriateness of young boys staying in his bedroom and how that could be perceived, Jackson said he ‘felt sorry’ for those who would think it was negative.
‘Thats judging someone who really wants to help people,’ the popstar told the journalist at the time. ‘Why can’t you share your bed? The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone.’
When Bashir questioned him further, Jackson maintained that parents who would not allow their children to share a bed with a grown adult who was not a relative were ‘wacky’.
His spiritual advisor, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who was a close confidant of the celebrity, was left in ‘absolute shock’ by Jackson’s remarks in the documentary.
‘I felt shock. Absolute shock,’ he said. ‘Have you lost all touch with reality that you don’t even know how people are going to react to that?
‘Michael crossed lines that clearly are uncrossable. Sharing a bed with a child that’s not yours, even if it’s not sexual, it’s still insanity.’
