Another day, another complaint, another press release, another media rounds. This results in another installment of picking apart a radio interview of Robson/ Safechuck/ Doe lawyers. Robson/ Safechuck/ Doe lawyers are regulars of this show. The hosts of this show are known to be negative towards Michael as they have done blast shows against him back in 2005. This time Finaldi came to discuss the recent complaint filed by Jane Doe.
Like I did last time I invited MichaelJacksonAllegations and a friend to help me with commentary. (You can read our previous blog post by clicking here). The audio was posted on the radio show website on October 27th.
Note: There were two male hosts on the show. I didn’t try to differentiate between them.
Hosts: Often we have attorneys from the law firm Manly, Stewart and Finaldi. Finaldi is coming on now. They filed a lawsuit. In Los Angeles county superior court they have filed a lawsuit on behalf of a woman that they are calling Jane AA Doe. Supposedly a child sexual abuse victim of Michael Jackson. A girl. She was victimized when she was 12 years old and this began in 1986. This continued until she turned 15 and reached puberty. She also claims that there were cash payments were made to her. Let’s get Vince and talk about this case. A little bit of startler, it’s a female. A girl.
Finaldi: Good afternoon how you guys are doing
Hosts: Fine. First time I heard Michael Jackson molesting a girl.
Finaldi : Well you never know what you are going to hear if you live around long enough. But considering his behaviors that we know he had engaged in, it’s not surprising to me. It is important to understand that the sexual behaviors of pedophiles are different from the blueprint of sexually normal individuals. So it’s not surprising in the context of who he actually was.
Commentary: Allow me to fix that statement: If you push long enough and dangle promise of enough money, anyone can make accusations even though how unbelievable it might be.
Hosts : No it’s not uncommon for pedophiles to molest boys and girls. I certainly heard of that.
Finaldi: Correct. Look he himself would wear makeup every day, you know long hair and wigs , women’s perfume and women’s clothes. He actually had some of his male victims wear women’s pajamas, silk pajamas with rhinestones and things like that. Women’s perfume and so. He was crossing the lines and the boundaries his entire life…
Commentary: Excuse my language but what a complete bullshit.
First of all this is the first time we are hearing any accuser claiming Michael made them wear women’s clothing. It sounds totally made up by Finaldi. In addition to that Michael wearing women's clothing, makeup and/or wigs doesn’t mean a single thing. Famous men known for wearing women’s clothing, accessories and/or makeup include Dennis Rodman, Jared Leto, Jaden Smith, Prince, David Bowie, Elton John, Kurt Cobain, Boy George and so on. You will find nice assortment of pictures below. Furthermore I don’t get how wearing women’s clothing could be an explanation of alleged abuse of a girl. What’s the claim here? Men wearing women’s clothes abuse women? Women wearing pantsuits abuse men? Men not dressing conventionally are molesters? Well the men below would probably disagree with that.
David Bowie, Kurt Cobain - wearing dresses
Prince - wearing high heels
Boy George , Twisted sister - wearing makeup
Dennis Rodman - wearing a dress, earrings, necklace, wig and makeup
Kanye West, Jared Leto - wearing skirts
Young Thug, Lil B, Jaden Smith - wearing dresses
New York Dolls - wearing makeup and high heels
I guess you get my point. But let me repeat it once more: men wearing women's clothing, accessories, makeup etc. doesn’t mean a thing.
Finaldi, check your calendar. It's year 2016. Look around and you will see gays, transgenders, gender fluid and androgynous people. This is not limited to sexual orientation. You will see people who like to push boundaries, change the norms, creative people who aren't afraid to be unique, people who aren't afraid to express themselves. Just because someone (whether it's Michael Jackson or someone else) doesn't fit your conventional expectations, it doesn't mean they are suspect in wrongdoing. It's not okay to make assumptions about people based on such trivial things as clothing. Not cool man, not cool.
Hosts: How did this story start between Jackson and the girl when she was 12?
Finaldi: She and her family had gone sightseeing to San Francisco. On the way back they decided to stop by the gates of the Hayvenhurst home in Encino to see it as many people did in the 80s. You know back then you didn’t have the Internet so they went to stars homes and looked at them. And he happened to come home at the time driving his Mercedes and he stopped, rolled down the window and spoke with them for a few minutes before driving into the gates. Then he had one of his security guards go back to the gate and invite the plaintiff and her mother only into the home to meet Michael Jackson.
Hosts: Just the mother
Finaldi: The mother and the plaintiff.
Hosts: Not the father?
Finaldi: No the father was in the car with her brothers. Didn’t really want to stand around the gate.
Commentary: One of my pet peeves are the lawyers that can’t keep the story *cough*lie*cough* straight. The complaint they filed with the court alleges that Michael invited the whole family to the residence grounds but then only invited Jane Doe and the mother inside the house to the candy area. BTW in the “combined complaint” document they attached to the press release, there are two complaints with differences between them. One of them alleges the whole family was invited to the residence grounds, other one says only Jane Doe and her mother was invited. One claims it was Michael Jackson who asked for their phone number, the other claims it was the security guard as per Michael’s instructions.
In Version 1 of their complaint: "Michael Jackson spoke with Plaintiff and her mother, and requested and received Plaintiff's family's home phone number."
vs.
In Version 2 of their complaint: "Michael Jackson spoke with the security guard through his walkie talkie and asked him to obtain Plaintiff's telephone number. The security guard then requested and received Plaintiff's family's home number."
It hasn’t even started yet and they are already changing their story. We hope you are as amused as we are. We have all the confidence that by the 187th amendment they can get their story straight.
Kidding aside , the zeal to involve the security guard becomes more understandable when you know that the legal argument they have to make is to create some sort of responsibility by MJ’s companies in all this. That’s the only way they can sue them. So what they are trying to do by emphasizing a security guard is to say that somehow this makes MJ’s company responsible since they probably assume the guard was employed by the MJ companies.
Version 1 of their story
Version 2 of their story
Hosts: So what happened next?
Finaldi: Well he got her phone number, began calling her, began calling her mother, sending them gifts, inviting them out to different events that he was engaging in and that’s when the abuse started.
Hosts: What did the abuse entail?
Finaldi: it’s the standard gamut of abuse he engaged in. Fondling, kissing, oral copulation, digital penetration, one act of attempted vaginal intercourse. You know it occurred for several years after which he began paying her settlements for which she still has proof. She got copies of the checks, copies of the bank statements. We got all that information including the many letters he would send her and have his employees send to her. Gifts that he would give to her and things in that nature. There is quite a bit of that.
Hosts: So there could be no other reason for the payments?
Finaldi: Well it was $920,000 in the late 80s and the payments began when she was 16 years old. So I think any reasonable person would be able to conclude that “hey you don’t pay someone million dollars if nothing happened.” Especially if they are a minor and it’s late 80s. That’s a lot of money back then.
Commentary: We are talking about Michael Jackson - one of the biggest philanthropist. He was very generous with people in need as well as his friends. He paid a lot of medical bills for people that needed help, he financially supported his family/ friends, he paid education costs of friends and relatives. He is known to buy expensive gifts for his friends that included cars and jewelry. So no, a reasonable person who actually knew Michael would think that’s Michael helping a friend. Also tell me how did she spend this money? Anything like paying tuition, debts etc?
Finaldi also calls these payments “settlements”. For this to actually work as “hush money” or a settlement Michael Jackson would have to secure himself with a settlement agreement to make sure the girl would really not talk. So where is the settlement agreement then?
Hosts: What did her family know about this?
Finaldi: The payments were not made to her family, they were made to her.
Hosts: Well for a 15 year old girl to have that much money wouldn’t they know about it?
Finaldi: You know, they did not know the abuse was occurring. They knew that Michael Jackson was a friend. Once again he had groomed the entire family. He groomed the mother, he engaged in these long conversations about how he didn’t have a childhood, she is the only person that could understand him and bla bla bla , you heard it before. So they trusted him. Just like many of the other families did.
Hosts : But she collected $900,000. Wouldn’t the family be curious back then why Michael Jackson is giving you this cash? Or did they really not know?
Finaldi: That assumes the family knew about it and I don’t know if the family knew about it.
Hosts: It seems tougher for a teenager to conceal getting that much money. Why was he paying the money though? To keep her quiet?
Finaldi: To compensate her for the sexual abuse and you know to retain control over her. And remember the payment started when she was 16 and ended when I believe she was late 18 early 19 years old and that’s when the largest of the payments were made. The $600,000 payment was made I believe when she was 18 and half, 19 years old. So it’s not like she got a million dollars when she was 16. Most of these were made out when she was an adult and out of the house.
Commentary: Even the hosts who have a history of being negative towards Michael is having a hard time believing a minor kid could hide such money from her parents. And they have a point. First in USA teens can have bank accounts starting age 13 but there needs to be an adult parent co-owner on the account. You need to be at least 17-18 (depending on the state of residence) to have an account of your own. Technically a teen could cash a check with an ID without needing a bank account. We need to look into the checks that was sent before she turned 18. The $2,500 check was sent when she was 16 and the $10,000 check was sent when she was 17. Another $150,000 was sent when she was 17 to her friend. I would think any reasonable parent would realize if their 16 year old daughter suddenly got 2 Grand. Keeping $162,500 from your parents becomes way too much harder.
Hosts: Why is she coming out now?
Finaldi: Well she is coming forward now because several statements have been made by the Jackson camp in the course of our litigation of the other cases. You know we talked about already. Wade Robson case, James Safechuck case. They said you know number one he wasn’t only around boys, he was around girls as well and he never abused any girls. No girls have ever come forward. She said “well that’s not true.” He has abused a girl and she’d like the correct the record on that point. The other point is that the camp is saying “well you know the early Chandler allegation was $15 to $20 million payout but the insurance company paid for it and he objected to it and he didn’t pay a dime ever to any sexual abuse victims. And it was done under protest”. And she said “Well whether or not that’s the case, he still paid me out from his business accounts and I got hard copy proof of it”. You know to show that their camp is lying on this point.
Commentary: If you are keeping score: So they basically have four different versions as to the reason of why "Jane Doe" waited with her allegations until offered with the prospect of a multimillion dollar lawsuit/settlement.
1) She was paid off to silence.
2) She was threatened by Michael Jackson and she was told that she would be physically harmed and go to jail if she said anything. She allegedly didn't realize it wasn't true until she saw that Wade Robson didn't go to jail or physically injured for his allegations. She did not make that realization in 1993 when Jordan Chandler didn't go to jail or physically injured, nor did she make that realization in 2005 when Gavin Arvizo didn't go to jail or physically injured, although at both times she was an adult. However, miraculously and conveniently, Wade Robson suing for money just did the trick for her. Even then she needed 3+ years since Robson filed his complaint to come to this realization.
3) She didn't link her psychological injuries to her alleged abuse until September 2016. The 1993 allegations did not trigger this realization. The 2005 trial did not trigger this realization either. At both times she was an adult. A potentially lucrative multimillion dollar lawsuit suddenly does trigger this realization, however. And according to her lawyers this is reasonable because she is not a psychology or medical expert. That’s completely unreasonable and quite idiotic. In the complaint they claim she was affected to the point of not being able to do her daily activities and enjoy life fully. She was also aware that she was abused and compensated for the abuse. They want us to believe she couldn’t conclude abuse = negative effects until September 2016.
4) And now the fourth version in this radio interview by Finaldi. This version is that she felt compelled to come out now because supposedly the Jackson camp during the litigation of the Robson/Safechuck cases said that Michael didn't have female accusers and she felt she needed to set the record straight on that. Finaldi also claimed his camp defended Michael with the argument that the insurance company paid the Chandler settlement and “Jane Doe” wanted to show he did not only pay through insurance companies.
The problem with this statement by Finaldi is that it simply is not true. The Jackson camp has not made any public statements about any of this during the Robson/Safechuck litigation. It seems completely made-up, which wouldn’t be surprising from Finaldi, since last time when he gave an interview he also made it up that Michael Jackson’s Wikipedia page did not contain any information about the child abuse allegations against him and that these allegations were somehow hidden from the public. Only if you have been living under a rock in the past 23 years. In that interview he used that lie as another reasoning as to why it is their mission now to “set the record straight” about Michael Jackson. Because, you know, of course it is not the money that is their motive. Oh, no.
Thing is, the Jackson camp, his Estate, his lawyers, hardly even react publicly to this case and when they do it is a general statement of denying the allegations not going into specifics about girls or insurance companies or whatever. Why would they even talk about girls, when no girls have ever accused MJ before? In what context would that be even uttered in the Robson/Safechuck case when it is two men accusing him there?
The Estate hasn't made any public statements about girls and insurance companies for which "Jane Doe" had to feel so compelled to answer. We haven’t seen any such argument by the Jackson lawyers in court motions either, but let’s say, for argument’s sake that they did make such an argument somewhere in a hearing or a motion that we do not know about. How would “Jane Doe” know about that? That wouldn’t be some public statement but something hidden somewhere in some obscure court document that is not out there in the public eye. So again, how would she feel compelled to answer?
We are fully aware that discovery is happening at Robson case and it’s possible that girls and insurance payments could be mentioned among the parties during discovery, depositions, interrogatories etc. However that discovery information isn’t public. We follow every developments in those cases and post most of the publicly available documents. So even if such topics were raised during PRIVATE discovery stage, the only way Jane Doe would know about it is if these lawyers blabbed about it.
The only people constantly doing media rounds in this case are the Manly, Stewart & Finaldi law firm who represent the accusers. Remember, the first move they ever did in this case was publishing a press release and an open letter to the MJ Estate and they are seeking publicity ever since by constantly giving interviews, issuing press releases and sending out their court motions to the media. On contrary to them, the Jackson camp is fighting this in the courtroom and not in the media. Which must be frustrating to Finaldi and Co. since they cannot drag the Estate into a back-and-forth in the media - I guess that’s why they have to make up things about the Jackson camp supposedly saying things that they haven’t said.
I also want to take the time and educate Finaldi. “No girls were abused” was not exactly a defense argument back in 2005. In 2005 prosecution tried to build a profile of Michael, they argued he surrounded himself with boys. The defense argued that wasn’t correct, there were also girls around. It was the prosecution that claimed Michael had no interest in girls. So you might want to blame Tom Sneddon for that.
Hosts: What does she want out of this lawsuit?
Finaldi: Well number one she wants to correct the record and also she wants to address the abuse that occurred. You have to remember that with sexual abuse this is a lifelong sentence that’s imposed on the victims by their perpetrators. Something that she has to deal with for the rest of her life. That’s going to be addressed by a jury.
Hosts: She wants a further settlement of money?
Finaldi: Well obviously that’s a portion of it but there is also the factual component to it and also holding the people who are responsible for this liable. As we stated in earlier conversations he was not able to do this alone. There is no way he could have abused this many kids over this amount of time if he was just doing it on his own. He used his companies to orchestrate this. To facilitate his meetings with kids, to facilitate the meet ups at hotels, to take the kids here and there. Separating the kids from their parents. Giving the kids gifts. Sending letters. Most of these letters are written on his company’s letterhead.
Hosts: they must have a full time department to handling all this
Finaldi: Yeah several different individuals, it seems like their only job was to send notes from and to kids.
Hosts: well in the complaint you say that MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures operated as a sophisticated child sex abuse organization specifically designed to locate and track and lure and seduce child abuse victims.
Finaldi: Yeah that’s exactly what it was doing. For example just after he drove into the gates all sudden a security guard comes out and summons just the girl and her mother into the gate setting up the meeting. This is not Michael doing it himself. He is using his employees to do this.
Commentary: Man such a sophisticated child abuse organization. Secretaries typing dictated letters and notes, handling mailing and shipping, assistants making reservations and security guards handling crowds. Let’s hold them responsible for doing everyday mundane tasks that’s part of their job descriptions. How could a secretary dare to type and mail a letter? Why is a security guard is going outside a gate where people/fans are waiting?
Kidding aside remind me whose idea was to go and wait outside Hayvenhurst gates? Supposedly these people sue to hold people at Michael’s companies liable for their alleged abuse, but they never once hold their own parents liable. The parents who take them to see Michael Jackson. The parents who leave them alone with him. The parents who leave them sleep in his room. They are never liable. Secretaries writing letters and guards opening gates are the real evil here that need to be held responsible. And the best way of holding them responsible is, of course, suing MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures for money. We all know that you can’t sue a deceased person, you can’t sue his Estate so you need to desperately tie this to companies but don’t you get it’s becoming quite pathetic?
Here I also refer you back to the part of our commentary where we put Version 1 of their complaint against Version 2 and showed some changes in their story. This is why in Version 2 they put much more emphasis on the security guard and while in the first version they had Michael Jackson personally ask for the family’s phone number, in the second one they put the security guard between them.
Soon we will have another post about a September 2016 Radio Interview. It looks like as long as these lawyers keep playing into our hands, we will be doing these roast posts.