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Four siblings who were longtime friends of Michael Jackson are accusing the late pop star of being a “serial child predator” who preyed upon then when they were as young as “seven or eight” in a bombshell lawsuit filed last week in California.<\/p>\n
Edward, Dominic and Aldo Cascio and their sister Marie-Nicole Porte called Jackson a “serial child predator” who, “over the course of more than a decade drugged, raped and sexually assaulted each of the plaintiffs,” according to their complaint in U.S. District Court.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs met Jackson through their father, who worked at a hotel that Jackson often stayed at, the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n
The Michael Jackson Co. and people associated with the estate, trust and production companies attached to Jackson were named as defendants.<\/p>\n
“Plaintiffs reject the Jackson Estate’s morally bankrupt efforts to control and silence them,” plaintiffs’ attorney Howard King wrote in the federal lawsuit, which was filed Friday.<\/p>\n
“Plaintiffs bring this action to hold the Michael Jackson Estate, its affiliates and the persons who control or work on their behalf, accountable for Jackson’s conduct and their own wrongdoing,” it says.<\/p>\n
Veteran entertainment industry attorney Martin Singer, representing the Jackson estate, called the lawsuit a “desperate money grab.”<\/p>\n
“This new court filing is a transparent forum-shopping tactic in their scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael\u2019s estate and companies,” Singer said in statement.<\/p>\n
Singer pointed out that Edward Cascio’s 2011 book<\/a> \u201cMy Friend Michael: An Ordinary Friendship with an Extraordinary Man” included family statements that “consistently and repeatedly asserted that Michael never harmed any of them or anyone else.”<\/p>\n Singer also noted in a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey<\/a>, Edward, Frank and Marie-Nicole Cascio all agreed that Jackson never harmed them, Singer said.<\/p>\n “The Cascios spent decades defending and affirming Michael\u2019s innocence,” Singer said. “Notably, these shakedown attempts come more than 15 years after Michael\u2019s death, thus carrying no risk of being sued for defamation. Sadly, in death just as in life, Michael\u2019s talents and success continue to make him a target.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJackson\u2019s years of brainwashing prevented Plaintiffs from seeking help when he was alive and for years afterward,\u201d King wrote.<\/p>\n It wasn’t until the documentary “Leaving Neverland” <\/a>came out in 2019 when the four siblings were “deprogrammed” and forced, “for the first time, to become conscious of the reality” that “Jackson’s abuse was wrong and had severely damaged them,” the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n That year the Jackson Estate offered the family $690,000 “as compensation for the many years that Jackson abused each of them and that the Jackson Organization enabled and covered up,” the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n The plaintiffs signed the agreement without being allowed to have an attorney to review it, King wrote.<\/p>\n “Had Plaintiffs understood the full meaning of the Document, they would not have signed it,” he wrote.<\/p>\n Jackson was found not guilty in 2005 of all charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003.<\/p>\n Jackson was 50 when he died on June 25, 2009, <\/a>of acute propofol intoxication. He used the powerful anesthetic<\/a> as a sleep aid, and his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.<\/p>\n