You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes

by Jermaine Jackson

  This time, instead of leaving futile phone messages, I sent numerous letters, reminding him of what we had agreed about family and how important it was that we stick together. A lot of those letters were sent in the blind hope they’d get passed on and, in April 1993, I made that point to him by writing: ‘I’ve sent a lot of letters to you. I hope you get them all.’

  When I didn’t get a response, I wrote again: ‘I really need to talk to you about our relationship. I’m your brother and I miss you a lot.’ The following month, I wrote again: ‘Dear Michael, it would be great if you and I only could spend some time together and just talk about things … What’s important to me is our friendship now. Please respond asap – Jermaine.’

  Again, there was no response. I just kept praying he was okay.

  BY FEBRUARY 1993 – AROUND THE time of the big Oprah interview – Jordie Chandler, his sister and mother were guests at Neverland. Sometimes a whole bunch of families were staying there together. As with every other parent, Jordie’s mother June ‘never’ had a problem with her son spending time in Michael’s bedroom because, as she put it, ‘it was a boy’s room … a big boy’s room, lots of toys and things’, and everyone seemed to be crashing there. She then invited Michael to stay at their house in Santa Monica, which he did for a total of 30 nights, we found out. Even Dr Chandler played host and was happy for Michael to stay twice at his house with his son; all three of them ended up having a water-pistol fight. I know this from the court hearing.

  In time, Dr Chandler was clearly getting on so well with Michael that he asked my brother to pay for ‘a new wing’ to his property. Thankfully, Michael had the good sense to dodge that one. But maybe it sparked Dr Chandler’s resentment – a resentment which, however it started, would deepen as Jordie missed his weekend visits to his father so that he could stay instead at Neverland, where Michael treated him to expensive gifts, trips on Sony’s private jets with his mother and stays in five-star hotels. This would later be misrepresented as a seduction technique ‘to force a minor to comply with his sexual demands’. But Jordie Chandler wasn’t alone in receiving such treatment. My brother had always been generous to a fault with his nieces and nephews. He’d allow them to have whatever toys they liked from his games room or he’d take them on a Toys R Us hunt, where they would close the store and he’d say ‘Go on! Buy whatever you want!’ For me, his generosity was his over-compensation for those years as a child when he’d only ever known what it was like to shop at the Salvation Army; his way of giving back something he’d never known.

  He didn’t just treat the boy Jordie, though. He bought the mother, June, Cartier jewellery, a $7,000 Fred Segal boutique gift certificate and even allowed her to use his credit card to buy two designer handbags – and no one one ever accused him of trying to seduce her.

  Meanwhile, as more time passed, Dr Chandler became inreasingly angry because Michael had stopped calling him; he felt left out. Suddenly he said something ‘was not right’ about Michael’s relationship with his son. None of us could have known what his remedy would be and if Jordie’s step-father, Dave Schwartz, hadn’t secretly taped a telephone conversation to protect his wife’s interests, we would never have found out the truth behind what happened next.

  Dr Chandler – presumably using his ‘set routine of words that have been rehearsed’, as he put it – would demand $20 million from Michael to fund his screenplays ($5 million for each of four scripts). If Michael refused to pay, he’d go public with allegations that his son had been molested. A month earlier, he had said as much to Dave Schwartz in the call that was recorded. It was an extortion that was presented in person to my brother at a hotel on 4 August 1993. Michael ultimately refused to pay.

  For a lone man who was, it turned out, $68,000 in debt, Dr Chandler had supreme confidence in taking on the most powerful and wealthiest artist in the industry. Maybe he felt like he had nothing to lose, but it didn’t sound like he was acting alone. As he said, ‘Everything is going according to a certain plan that isn’t just mine … There’s other people involved that are waiting for my phone call that are intentionally … in certain positions.’ I presume he was referring to his legal team, even if he was only advised by one attorney. Either way, he would stick to his ‘plan’.

  From now on, the focus would be on the spectacle of this episode, not on the absence of fact. No one would listen when my brother’s team held a press conference playing back some of Dr Chandler’s taped conversation. No one would listen even when his malicious motivation came across loud and clear: ‘… that’s all I regard him [Michael] as … an attention-getting mechanism. It’ll take on so much momentum of its own that it’s going to be out of all our control. It’s going to be monumentally huge …

  ‘I mean, it could be a massacre if I don’t get what I want …

  ‘… Michael has to be there. He’s the main one. He’s the one I want. Nobody in this world was allowed to come between this family. If I go through with this, I win big-time … I will get everything I want, and they will be destroyed forever.’

  ‘Michael Jackson … is gonna be humiliated beyond belief. You’ll not believe it. He will not believe what’s going to happen to him … beyond his worst nightmares … he will not sell one more record.’

  A father was using his own son to extort money. And people wondered why Michael was so keen to give love to children.

  MICHAEL WAS IN THAILAND ON THE Asian leg of his Dangerous World Tour when police raided Neverland with search warrants and a locksmith. We wouldn’t find out until two days later when it broke on the television news. We had no means of contacting him immediately, but we thanked God that Bill Bray was with him because he was as good as family being there. All we could do was sit on the sidelines and watch the nightmare unfold.

  When Michael had refused to pay, the dentist had taken his son to a psychiatrist to discuss child molestation. Standard procedure led to a call to the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), who brought in the Sexually Exploited Child Unit of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Glory-hunters smelt blood. Then two things happened. Dr Chandler started a $30 million civil lawsuit, citing child battery, seduction and negligence. At the same time a criminal investigation was launched, overseen by two District Attorneys: Tom Sneddon for Santa Barbara County and Gil Garcetti for LA County. That was when an LAPD convoy arrived at Neverland, looking for evidence. They left with nothing more than memorabilia. There was nothing subtle about the raid: the police got as carried away as anyone else who came into contact with Michael’s world. One of America’s greatest entertainers was being treated like one of America’s most wanted.

  Days later, they also searched the condo in Century City, but Michael was truly devastated when they searched Hayvenhurst because he didn’t want to bring trouble to Mother’s door. Thankfully, she and Joseph were away so were spared the ordeal as police went through medicine cabinets, asking what this and that was used for. They hammered open a safe in Michael’s old quarters and found it empty, but seized private notes and writings, which turned out to be his scribbled lyrics – the seeds of his ideas. Those notes were never returned and yet, over the years, they appeared in magazines. In all three properties, the police found nothing but word reached us via attorneys that officers believed Michael to ‘fit the profile of the characteristics of a paedophile’ because he used words like ‘pure’ and ‘innocent’ and he preferred child-like activities and bought gifts for boys. Gone were the days of true detective work, replaced by the psycho-bullshit of a one-size-fits-all template. No one looked at my brother’s unique background, his character or what he’d done for people.

  In the meantime, Jordie Chandler – now under the control of his father – had sworn an affidavit that built a false picture of intimate allegations and descriptions of my brother’s body. Armed with that testimony, two detectives turned up with a camera and video-camera to subject Michael to what he rightly described as ‘a dehumanising and humiliating’ body search. H
e was compelled to undergo it because refusal ‘would indicate guilt’, they told him. Once they had stripped him of his dignity, Michael was made to stand naked in a room and lift his penis so that it and his scrotum could be photographed from front, right and left. As he turned to have his buttocks, chest and back photographed, a detective stood with a notepad, taking down every last detail. None of the markings on Michael’s body matched the boy’s description. In fact, the imagination bore no resemblance to the actuality.

  When we were kids growing up in Gary, we had believed in the American Dream – that each citizen, black or white, has the freedom to chase opportunity and deserve success; that self-motivation would be rewarded. We had believed in the ‘Land of the free, Home of the brave’ – that if you earned your prosperity, you would be acclaimed as an example of what makes America great. It was a lifelong belief unravelling by the minute.

  THE QUESTION NEVER CHANGED, AND HOSTS put it to Michael in every television interview he did: ‘What is a grown man doing sleeping in a bed with children?’

  I can still see ABC’s Diane Sawyer and the BBC’s Martin Bashir straining to comprehend the logic of the sleepovers; this habit that Michael willingly offered up and never once tried to hide. It was interesting to me that the question was never why Michael shared his bed with children: it was always posed with the sexual connotation of ‘sleeping with’. Especially when it was about getting into bed with hot milk and cookies and putting on a movie.

  Unless you knew Michael, it is hard to convey to you the trust and understanding innate to the sleepovers, because the simple answer to the question – that it was about giving love and providing hugs – immediately runs into a wall of suspicion that has nothing to do with Michael and everything to do with the modern concern about child abuse. Nowadays, a panic-stricken parent sees danger at every turn.

  I would simply ask: who is the one man in your family, or in your circle, who you would trust implicitly with your child? That man who you would say ‘I’d trust him with my life’. Because that man was Michael to us, and to every parent who entrusted their child to his care; parents who didn’t appreciate strangers on television or in newspapers telling them what was appropriate for their kid. It worries me that our minds have taken over our hearts, and fears and stigmas and blanket judgements now stand in the way of basic love being expressed to children. If we know that a man shares a bed with a child, and we ignore the merits of that individual and immediately leap to suspicious thought, what is this world coming to? But beyond that, it was also misleading to focus on Michael sharing a bed with only boys. Young girls played in his bedroom and jumped into those same beds – like Chantal Robson or Marie-Nicole Cascio or the sisters of Macaulay Culkin and Brett Barnes. I also know that some of the parents would join their sons and daughters and Michael in bed and snuggle up to watch a movie with popcorn. It was, at times, like that lullaby ‘There were ten in the bed, and the little one said, roll over, roll over …’

  It was about being with children who had the innocence to accept him for who he was; with kids whose presence brought him comfort and probably took him back to the days of sharing with Marlon, and cramming brothers into one bunk bed. I wondered how many people have considered that Michael had an anxiety about being alone in his bedroom and that was why he filled it with mannequins, and with children that asked nothing of him. The real clues about the real reasons he opened his bedroom to children were always there, but others would choose to see what they wanted to see.

  I also wish people could have seen how children were naturally magnetised to him. Tito’s three children, together with my kids, would trail Michael around both Neverland and Hayvenhurst, following him like ducks, upstairs, downstairs, to the kitchen, and even to the toilet, and it would have Michael in fits of laughter. Ironically, the person who best summed up this human ‘magnet’ was June Chandler when, in 2005, she told the courts that she had once told Michael: ‘You’re like Peter Pan. Everybody wants to be around you and spend 24 hours’.

  AS A FAMILY, WE WENT BEFORE the cameras at a press conference in North Hollywood. It was a deliberate show of strength at a pre-booked event to announce a television special on NBC, The Jackson Family Honours – a celebration to honour the humanitarian work of Mr Gordy and Elizabeth Taylor, who was, by now, a constant presence and source of comfort in our brother’s life. Mother had spoken with Michael on the phone and everyone had agreed that ‘the show must go on’, with our television special and his Far East tour, even though we knew he was struggling. Bill had told us he was ‘sick to the stomach but keeping strong.’ We suspected that his reassurance was to stop us worrying.

  Our show’s humanitarian theme provided an apt platform for us to demonstrate solidarity. Every one of my unanswered letters seemed irrelevant now; it was about shouting for the truth as the media invited ex-employees to run with their wildest allegations, induced by large six-figure payments and the racier the allegation, the bigger the cheque. I’ve since learned that Wade’s mother Joy Robson was approached by the National Enquirer and offered a six-figure sum if she changed her story ‘to say that Michael had molested your son’. Thankfully, people like Joy had scruples and she, like every other parent and child who’d spent time at Neverland, would not corroborate Dr Chandler’s claims or anyone else’s, even when the police turned the screw.

  One investigating sheriff was caught on tape – as we would hear in 2005 – saying to a child witness about Michael: ‘He’s a molester … great guy, makes great music, bullshit …’

  As the US and UK media wrote out life-changing cheques, there was a ‘while stocks last’ stampede to this open season on my brother’s reputation. With everything that we have learned over the years, it is hard for us not to view this police-media pursuit of Michael as the starting line for a hostile campaign designed to bring about his downfall.

  Back then, my eyes were less wide-open as Mother, Joseph, Rebbie, Tito and I took our seats in leather armchairs on that stage in North Hollywood. I thought the transparency of the case would become obvious when television pundits had caught their breath. I took that optimism into the press conference as we faced a jostling stack of lenses and television cameras. Not too dissimilar to Jackson-mania, only without the love. As the room echoed to the sound of a hundred shutter speeds, I could only think, If it’s this intense for us, what the hell is poor Michael going through in Singapore?

  When everything quietened, I spoke for us all: ‘Michael has been made a victim in a cruel, obvious attempt to take advantage of his fame and success. We know, as does the whole world, that he has dedicated his life to providing happiness to young people everywhere. His compassion is legendary and we are confident that his dignity and humanity will prevail in this difficult time.’

  After that, there was only one place to be: Joseph, Rebbie and the brothers started making plans to join Michael in Taiwan.

  OUTSIDE THE RAFFLES HOTEL WHERE HE was staying in Taipei, the first people to greet us were a bunch of kids, excitedly telling us how they had followed Michael around Asia every step of the way. Michael’s ‘soldiers of love’ were all over the world; an army standing shoulder to shoulder, never once doubting him. As isolated as he may have felt at times, Michael was never alone when it came to love, support and millions believing in him.

  Elizabeth Taylor had joined him before he left Singapore. Out of all his friends, she and Marlon Brando had remained constant. Elizabeth had a unique bond with my brother and he found her ‘playful and witty’. Their common ground was child stardom. Their connection was built on respect, loyalty and love, and she was always there for him.

  At the hotel, we didn’t immediately see Elizabeth because the first person we met was Michael’s publicist Bob Jones, whom we’d known since our Motown days and that first trip to Australia. He had joined Michael when he went solo. My problem with Bob was that, rightly or wrongly, I felt he formed part of the barrier to our direct communication with Michael. Hollywood entourages spend the
ir days standing in front of the artist – often without the artist knowing – but I was damned if that shield would be used against us after we’d travelled halfway round the world to support our brother, who knew we were arriving that day. When Bob explained that ‘Now is not a good time … Michael is sleeping’, I lost patience and the conversation turned into a dispute.

  Eventually I’d had enough. ‘Bob, get out of my way … you don’t tell us when we do or do not see our own brother,’ I said.

  ‘I’m just doing my job, Jermaine.’ He stepped to one side.

  Sure enough, Bob’s blocking tactic was false. We knocked at Michael’s door and walked in. He was happy to see us, even if we were a little surprised by what confronted us: he was sitting with an intravenous drip leading from a bag above his head into his wrist.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Jackie, forever protective. He wandered over to the bag, no doubt to confirm that it was saline.

  Michael explained that he’d collapsed before his concert had begun in Singapore; the show had been cancelled. The doctor, who was also in the hotel room, told us he was suffering from ‘dehydration’; Michael was still struggling and they were worried about his blood circulation and …

  He kept talking and I stopped listening, because I was watching Michael, who looked the saddest I had ever seen him before going on stage. Normally, he’d be focused and energised. Now, he seemed drained, sitting down like one of those exhausted marathon runners at the finish line, desperate for fluids – and yet he had a 90-minute set ahead of him. ‘I’m stressed, that’s all,’ he said, ‘I just need liquids.’ His eyes, which were usually smiling, were clouded; he had lost a lot of weight. Michael wasn’t into his food at the best of times, but when stressed, he just stopped eating. My guess was that he hadn’t eaten or slept for about a week, based on how emotionally shattered he looked.