Image via HBO
Tonight, HBO premiered the first part of Leaving Neverland, the long-awaited documentary detailing Michael Jackson's alleged sexual abuse of minors. Over a grueling, disturbing two hours (with the second and final part airing on Monday night), Wade Robson and James Safechuck explain their relationships with Michael Jackson as kids and outline the sexual abuse they allegedly suffered at his hand.
Similar to Lifetime's Surviving R. Kelly docuseries, Leaving Neverland sheds light on long-standing allegations; in this case, they've been in the news since the early 1990s. The graphic descriptions it presents have been unsettling audiences since its premiere at Sundance earlier this year, and one has to wonder what hearing these accusations will mean for the legions of Michael Jackson supporters the world over.
Here are the five biggest takeaways from Part 1 of Leaving Neverland.
Michael's alleged grooming started early on
The stories of Safechuck and Robson are too similar to ignore. Robson, who started dancing (and idolizing) Michael Jackson around age 5, met the superstar during a tour of Australia at 6, after winning a dance competition. Michael invited Robson to dance with him onstage during his Bad tour, and Robson stole the show, decked out to look just like him in the "Bad" video. Safechuck, who was around 9 years old when he met Michael on the set of a Pepsi commercial, went on tour with Michael, dancing during the same segment of the Bad show that Robson would.
The relationships Michael would have with both started out on the phone. Michael was said to spend hours getting to know them and making them feel special. Those phone conversations would turn into visits, first at the Hayvenhurst house (where Michael lived), but also involved situations where Michael would regularly be at Safechuck's home, where they would take walks in his neighborhood in the evening and play games. Safechuck's mother even describes treating Michael like one of her sons, washing his clothes and feeding him, saying that she loved him.
Michael would gradually increase the distance between the boys and their families
As Michael's relationships with each boy would progress, the amount of alone time he'd spend with them would increase. While he'd always allow parents and siblings to travel with them on tour, he'd allegedly distance the family members further from the child, initially getting them hotel rooms close to his before eventually putting them on entirely different floors. The same thing would go for sleepovers at Hayvenhurst and Neverland: Once Michael would start having the boys sleep in his bed, the rest of the child's family would be sleeping in the guest house.
Michael strategized to avoid getting caught
In the first part of Leaving Neverland, both Robson and Safechuck detail the ways Michael attempted to hide his alleged sexual abuse. They say that not only would Michael tell them flat-out that they all would go to jail if they were caught, but that he set up elaborate systems not to get caught.
At the actual Neverland ranch, there was a hallway that led to Michael's room. That corridor allegedly had a system of bells set up that would ring, letting Michael know when someone who might catch him with one of the boys would be approaching. It was also said that he'd set up blankets in his closet, just so there was another layer of privacy between him, a boy, and the rest of the world.
Michael is also said to have essentially run drills on the boys, making them practice quickly getting dressed just in case someone was walking to their room.
These relationships destroyed the boys' families
The amount of time Michael would spend with Robson and Safechuck (and, to an extent, with their mothers and certain siblings) would drive huge wedges through their respective families. Robson's father is said to have been suffering from bipolar disorder, and the periods Robson, his mother, and his sister were away from him and Robson's brother (which included moving from Australia to California to be closer to Michael) took a terrible toll on the family unit.
Michael would find new boys all the time
During the making of the "Black or White" video, Robson and his family were moving to California in hopes of having better access to the industry and, in Robson's eyes, being able to spend more time with Michael. When they moved, they realized they weren't as welcome as they were earlier, and understood why when they hit the "Black or White" set and saw Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin right by Michael's side. It seemed that when Michael was fixated on one boy, the others who'd previously occupied that space weren't in the picture. Robson says that he didn't think Michael liked to mix relationships, and he felt jealous when he realized that Brett Barnes, who Michael had started hanging out with in 1991, was also from Australia.