"Michael Jackson's Accuser", as the anonymous child whom Jackson allegedly abused in bed at Neverland is called in accounts of the trial now in progress, is accused of altering his story. The defense attorney is trying to use the varying accounts the boy has given to prove he is lying when he accuses Jackson of molesting him.
I have no way of knowing what happened when the kid was in bed with Michael Jackson, because I was not hiding under that bed. I have, however interviewed dozens of women who were sexually abused. These women were the prostitutes in my book, a few of whose interviews appear elsewhere in DavidFarer.com. I find the boy's stories to be consistent with what I heard from those women. I see similarities between what the child is saying in court and what the women told me about their childhood experiences.
Very many of the women told me that they had, at one time or another, strongly denied what had happened to them. They lied. They did so for the same reason Jackson's accuser says he lied about it when the principal of his school asked him if Jackson had molested him at Neverland. The boy said he was embarrassed and ashamed of having been raped.
Many of the women I interviewed said the same; they were embarrassed at having been victims. Jackson's Accuser mentions that his schoolmates were laughing at him as a rape-victim. Rape-victims are frequently the subject of cruel jokes, as if something were wrong with them because they were raped. Someone who has been sexually used by another bears the stigma of feebleness and helplessness, with no ability to fight back, as well as the dehumanizing stigma of being a mere sex-toy, a "thing" that exists for the sexual pleasure ot an adult. For a boy to be raped adds the additional stigma of being made into a girl.
I have not read all the testimony, but the Accuser is described in some of the quotes I have read as being a discipline problem and getting into fights with other children. If so, this would fit in with what I heard in the brothel: how many times did these rape victims tell me they lived in a constant state of rage, doing destructive things to themselves and others?
The Accuser is quoted as saying, "I liked being at Neverland. It was like Disneyland," This statement reminds me of things some of the prostitutes I interviewed told me about their childhoods - that the molesting adults gave them things and took care of them somewhat more than they would otherwise have done. Making the kid an offer he or she can't refuse - "you will be taken care of, but you must take care of me" - the molested child is forced into an exceptionally demeaning contract in which she or he gains some material good at the price of the most basic dignity. This kind of thing, for the prostitutes, was often one of the emotional bridges between early rape and present profession.
I am curious about how the Accuser feels about his mother now. Almost all the abused women I met told me that they hated their mothers even more than they hated the fathers who had abused them. They viewed their mothers as having abandoned them when they should have protected them. The prostitutes' mothers usually came across as weak personalities who were confused about what to do next, and who were themselves frequently beaten by their husbands. How is it, exactly, that the Accuser's mother allowed a thing like this to go on? Where was the Accuser's father all this time?
For the prostitutes, the role the absent mother plays in their psychology is that they want to be powerful - a prostitute does in fact dominate her clients - in contrast to their broken-down mothers. The fathers who raped them, in contrast, are where the power was, so they identify more with them when they grow up - "Now I rape men", as more than one prostitute told me. This is of course not necessarily parallel to what is going on in the Accuser's mind, but it makes me wonder what really is going on in there.
A few prostitutes, but only a few, went to the police when they were adults. One showed me documents about the father's trial; more than one put the rapist behind bars. Most did not. Chantal, in her interview, explained that she did not wish to take her father to court, because the cross-examination process would be more degrading for her than it would be for her father. One of the most painful experiences any rape-victim can have is to be called a liar by someone in authority. They feel isolated and afraid. They no longer trust adults. Such feelings might well have played a rold in the Accuser's refusal to confide in his principal.
Is it not indeed repulsive for an adult defense attorney to cross-examine a child and call him a liar in public? I suppose this is how defense attorneys make a living, and some children are no doubt liars, and the the trial system is adversarial by nature, but I think the whole scene stinks to Heaven. In Israel, the courts provide a specially trained social-worker who talks to the young abuse-victim in private. She then gives testimony in court, so that the child is spared this hideous experience.
The interviews in the Prostitution section of DavidFarer.com are relevant reading for what I say here, but I will now try to append those of Chantal and Marijke, who illustrate these points better than the interviews I have in there now. Chantal's father was the seductive kind of molester that the Accuser accuses Jackson of having been. Rose's father, in contrast, sounds like a vicious Nazi; her interview is the ugliest thing in my book. Jackson does not seem to have been that kind of rapist. Chantal also gives her views on secrecy, her mother, and putting her father on trial - a number of parallels are to be found here.