I felt a certain satisfaction that the Michael Jackson jury threw out
each and every indictment against Jackson; the suspicion of a stitch-up
motivated by greed, in my view, always hung heavily over his accusers. A
guilty verdict on any of the ten counts might have opened the door to a
huge damages claim that the already insolvent superstar could ill afford.
So far, so good. But how free is Michael Jackson today?
The day after the California courtroom drama, a BBC radio station, Five
Live, ran a phone-in, inviting listeners to answer the following
question: 'Has the "not guilty" verdict changed your views about Michael
Jackson?' An insidious way of putting things, which to me suggested that
the programme was looking for a specific answer, namely "no, it hasn't,
as far as I'm concerned he's still a paedophile."
The subsequent conversations between the presenter and various callers -
none of whom, while I was listening, believed Jackson to have been guilty
- were peppered with little prods in the desired direction, such as,
"would you allow your child to share a bed with a man in his mid-
forties?" and "will children still want to hear his music?". From this I
conclude that, in certain quarters, there's a determination that the mud
must stick. How we love to see the talented suffer.
I would, of course, never advise any man to get too close to young
children; it just isn't safe these days. The world is preoccupied with
paedophilia to an unhealthy extent; so much so that mere suspicion is
given the weight of evidence and that in court the onus is now on the
accused to prove his or her innocence. In Britain it's not unusual for a
vigilante mob to hound a person out of his home and job on the say-so of
a child or its mother. Broomleigh Housing Association and its lawyers
Cook & Partners of Croydon, har***** people their head Mr Keith Exford
hates, with false rumours - never put in writing - accusing them of child
*** abuse.
For that reason, too, the jury verdict in the Jackson trial came as a
welcome surprise: here were twelve men and women who had not allowed
themselves to be influenced by the singer's curious lifestyle, his
disastrous tinkering with his own appearance or his clumsiness in
displaying his baby to the Berlin crowd below. Instead they exclusively
judged the evidence given in court on its merits and found the stories
provided by the alleged victim and his mother wanting. A good day, then,
for American justice.
The four main charges Jackson faced were all to do with "lewd conduct
with a child under fourteen". From this I deduct that, had Michael
Jackson waited until Gavin Arviso's fourteenth birthday before sharing
his bed with him he would have been in the clear. Well, take it from me:
that legal age needs to be lowered, and quickly. For most children today
develop an interest in matters ***ual even before they're in their teens.
A re****t in a British newspaper recently dealt with the problem of
***ually active children as young as thirteen. By "***ually active" the
paper didn't mean a bit of exploratory fooling around, but full
unprotected ***, frequently with more than one partner and in many cases
resulting in parenthood.
In the UK, the number of teenage pregnancies outstrips that in any other
EU country. A search on the Internet has taught me, though, that this is
not a social concern in Britain alone, but also in the US and quite a few
other countries. Meatloaf's "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" tells the
story, http://www.qgm.com/meatloaf/lyrics/paradise.html
.
In countries that think of themselves as democratic it must be society
that shapes the law, not the other way around. As behavioural patterns
change, so must the code by which we are governed. It's ludicrous to
present one 13-year old boy as a hapless, vulnerable, virginal victim of
***ual molestation - likely to be marked for life by a hideous ordeal -
while two blocks away, behind the bike shed, his peers are at it with a
vengeance. Boys of thirteen: they've got *** on the brain, always have
had.
I was thirteen once and there was nothing anyone could do to stop us
fantasising about it, talking about it and - oh yes - indulging in a bit
of lewd conduct to find out what all the fuss was about. Innocence at
thirteen? Forget it.
--
T Moore
N E Manchester, England
http://sitemenu.tom-moore.com/
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