A book and a lawsuit
According to his blog, after his first telling of his allegations to his therapist on May 8, 2012, Wade told of them his family and friends. On the very same day that he first told his therapist, he told his wife Amanda, his older brother Shane and his sister Chantal with whom he had a family outing at Food Truck Tuesdays in Venice, California. According to Wade’s story, his brother’s wife, strangely, just had a dream the night before about the allegations of Jackson molesting Wade being true and his brother “in a playful tone” told him about that while going to get some food from the truck, which prompted Wade to blurt “It’s true”. [1]
Whether Wade takes some liberties with the sequence of events and details of the story here, we cannot tell, but certainly it sounds like an incredible coincidence that his sister-in-law would have a dream about Wade being sexually molested by Jackson on the night before Wade first told such a story to his therapist – allegedly not yet knowing about his sister-in-law’s dream.
A few weeks later, according to Court documents on or about May 27, Wade also told his mother about his allegations. In his blog Wade says that to tell her he “organized for her to come into a therapy session with me, enabling me to have the Therapist’s support” [1].
In discovery for Wade’s civil lawsuit it was revealed that Wade and his mother exchanged numerous e-mails during the year between Wade’s “realization” of his alleged abuse on May 8, 2012 and his filing of his creditor’s claim and civil lawsuit against Jackson’s Estate and companies on May 1, 2013. (E-mails that Wade tried to hide from the legal team representing Jackson’s companies for a long time, along with his book draft, and the legal team for Jackson’s companies only got access to them after a Motion to Compel was granted to them by the Court. [2])
Apparently Wade needed that information to put together a coherent story. In his deposition in 2016 he said that at the time he was writing a document “to just kind of reprocess my life and the truth of my story with Michael, and then began to turn into this being a goal, to turn it into a book” [3; page 75].[a] Not only a book, but he was also preparing his lawsuit. In a September 7, 2012 e-mail that he sent out to over 30 relatives and friends about his allegations and a “transformational time” [4] in his life, he asked them for confidentiality, warning them that it was “an extremely sensitive legal matter” [5; 257-258]. (This e-mail will gain significance during the Probate Court proceedings as you will see later.)
Indeed, many of those e-mails to his mother during that period sound like interrogatories for a lawsuit, with Wade dispassionately asking Joy a huge number of questions about the events and circumstances surrounding their relationship with Jackson. [To get an idea about the tone and content of those e-mails click here [6]. E-mails from 2012 can be read on pages 2-3, 6-8, 10-11 of that document.]. From the e-mails it is clear that Wade does not have much independent memory of his own about those events, he has to heavily rely on his mother’s recollections to construct his story. Later he “evolved” some of those recollections into his own. For example, in an e-mail on September 12, 2012 one of the questions he asks his mother is “What was the driving arrangement when we all went to Neverland that first time?” [6; page 10] At his deposition in 2016 he already claims this story as his own, independent memory.
Wade Robson: I — Michael asked if myself and my sister wanted to drive with him in his car and, and we did. And so we drove with him to Neverland while my parents and grandparents followed behind.
Katherine Kleindienst: So it was just you and your sister and Michael?
Wade Robson: Yeah, in the car.
Katherine Kleindienst: Do you remember that specifically or is that something that you’ve been told since that time?
Wade Robson: No, I remember that.” [3; page 95]
The e-mails also revealed in discovery that in late 2012-early 2013 Wade was shopping a book about his allegations. With the help of his long time entertainment lawyer, Helen Yu (not to be mistaken with Susan Yu who was on Jackson’s defense team in 2005, no relation) he contacted several book publishers, but apparently they all turned him down. In a privilege log provided during discovery we can see that 73 e-mails were sent between Wade, a literary agent Alan Nevins and Helen Yu in the period between December 12, 2012 and February 22, 2013. Although we do not see the content of those e-mails in public court documents, it is safe to say those e-mails all have to do with Wade trying to sell his book.
In actuality, among the discovery documents we do have an e-mail that we can see and that Eddie Pletzak sent to Alan Nevins (both from Renaissance Literary & Talent agency) on February 27, 2013 regarding Wade’s book [6; page 4]. In that e-mail we can see Wade writing to Nevins and inquiring about what publishers he contacted for his book. From the answer it turns out that the publishers, Pan Macmillan and New American Library had already turned down the book and Harper Collins was still reading the draft at the time. In another e-mail we can also see that Wade had a conference call with Harper Collins in January 2013 [6; page 5].
During Wade’s deposition in 2016, Katherine Kleindienst, an attorney for the Jackson companies revealed that she spoke to Alan Nevins on the phone and he volunteered to her that Wade had asked for “a large amount of money” for his book. Wade denied this. [3; page 31-32]
In his deposition Wade said that he eventually stopped pursuing the idea of a book deal around the first quarter of 2013. When asked why did he stop pursuing it, he said because he realized that a lawsuit would be more impactful in getting his message out and that he would be more in control of his story, so that it would not turn into tabloid sensationalism [3; page 35-36]. This seems to be a hypocritical comment considering the fact that he and his lawyers used tabloid sensationalism to tarnish Jackson several times during the course of the case.
When the case became public on May 8, 2013, Wade’s lawyer at the time, Henry Gradstein, immediately talked to the tabloid website TMZ, declaring Jackson “a monster” [7]. There are also signs of Wade and/or his legal representatives feeding stories to one of the most low-brow, most sensationalist and most unreliable tabloids, Radar Online (which is essentially the online National Enquirer) and when Radar Online published a story about his case with the most graphic, tabloidish and sensationalist headline and coverage that is imaginable, Wade and several of his relatives, such as his sister Chantal and his wife Amanda, reposted it on their social media recommending it to their followers [8]. At other times his second lawyer team during the case, Vince Finaldi and John Manly, put out press releases written in a sensationalist tone.
The book shopping will have more significance when we discuss the legal side of the Probate Court proceedings, because Wade somehow “forgot” to mention it in his court documents (Jackson’s side only learned about the book during discovery in 2016) and it was not an irrelevant omission considering certain things that Wade claimed to get around statutes of limitations. More about that later.
By the way, Wade said in his deposition that writing a book was still a possibility for him [3; page 76].
Meanwhile Wade and Amanda moved from Los Angeles to Maui, Hawaii, where Amanda is originally from. In his November 24, 2017 blog post Wade claims that this was a part of his “healing process” from the alleged sexual abuse.
“About nine months into the healing process, so much having changed in my families inner and outer life, the external details of our current life situation had begun to feel less and less relevant: most notably of which, the notion of continuing to live in Los Angeles. Amanda and I decided we were going to move to Maui, Hawai’i, where Amanda is from. This idea was terrifying and incredibly exciting: a new beginning.” [1]
However, according to an interview that Amanda gave to a Hawaii blog in 2015, the idea of moving to Hawaii predated Wade’s alleged “realization” of childhood sexual abuse.
“Since I graduated from Maui High in 1997, I was in San Francisco and California studying/working in various art focuses: Fashion, Culinary Arts, Floral Design, Entertainment. Then four years ago, I became a Mother and the arrival of our precious son, completely re-routed my mainland existence and paved a path for my family to come back to Maui.” [9]
(Emphasis added.)
Their son was born in November 2010, one and a half years before Wade’s alleged realization of childhood sexual abuse. So apparently, when Wade first made child sexual abuse allegations against Jackson in May 2012, he and his wife had long had a desire to move away from California to Maui, and, as we have seen above, Wade’s desire to move away from show business also predated his alleged realization of sexual abuse.
In his 2013 declaration Wade says he first met with his lawyers, Henry Gradstein and Maryann Marzano on March 4, 2013. He claims that before that he was not aware of the administration of Michael Jackson’s Estate and that he could take legal action against them. [10; paragraph 27] This was a lie to get around statutes of limitations as we will discuss in detail when we discuss the Probate Court proceedings in the next chapter.
On May 1, 2013 Wade filed a creditor’s claim against Michael Jackson’s Estate in the Probate Court and a civil lawsuit against Jackson and two of his companies, MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures. In both he demanded monetary compensation for Jackson having allegedly sexually molested him as a child.
Wade Robson’s claim is that Jackson has allegedly sexually molested him for seven years when Wade was 7-14 years old. His allegations contain every imaginable sexual act from mutual masturbation and oral sex to even an occasion of anal penetration (no other Jackson accuser claimed this latter before Robson). He also portrays Jackson as a reckless and insatiable molester who allegedly molested him on each and every occasion whenever the two of them were alone in a room. For example, he claims that other than Neverland, Jackson’s condos or the Robson’s own apartment, Jackson even molested him in his trailer during the shooting of a commercial or in a separate room in the recording studio – and that while outside the places were packed with other people [3; page 165-169]. However, this “insatiable” portrayal seems to be contradicted by the fact that Jackson did not actually spend that much time with the Robsons, and it was Wade and his mother who often had to pursue him to involve Wade in his projects or spend time with him – as you will see when we discuss Robson’s Civil Lawsuit.
On May 8, 2013 the celebrity gossip website TMZ first reported about Wade’s allegations and with that the case entered into its public phase.
On May 16, 2013 Wade went on NBC’s The Today Show to give an interview about his allegations [11] and he also gave a short interview to TMZ at the Los Angeles airport [12].
The previous chapter: No more dance, films, entertainment?
The next chapter: The Probate Court Case (Creditor’s Claim )
Footnote:
[a] Wade also stated (for example in his deposition, or on his very short-lived child sexual abuse victim advocacy website www.heartsinourhands.org that he launched at the height of his legal proceedings, but it became defunct as his lawsuit became more and more likely to be tossed) that he has read a lot of books on child sexual abuse during that period – both on victims and perpetrators. His story is that he was looking for solace in those books, and he often goes out of his way to emphasize how typical of an abuse victim he supposedly is and how typical his story supposedly is. Of course, finding solace is the way to use such literature if we are talking about real victims. False accusers, on the other hand, may use such literature to collect material in order to build their own stories and adopt familiar elements of child sexual abuse into them to make themselves more passable as “victims”.
Sources:
[1] Wade Robson’s blog “Wade’s Window” – Break to Heal, Part II (November 24, 2017)
http://www.waderobsoncreations.com/wadeswindow/breaktoheal2
[2] Robson ordered to turn over unredacted emails and all drafts of his tell-all book (Daily Michael, March 14, 2017) – includes the Court’s ruling document
http://dailymichael.com/lawsuits/robson-v-estate/343-robson-ordered-to-turn-over-unredacted-emails
[3] Deposition Transcript of Wade Jeremy William Robson (December 12, 2016)
https://themichaeljacksonallegationsblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/wade-robson-deposition-extracts.pdf
[4] John Schreiber – Alleged sex abuse by Michael Jackson led dancer to claim nervous breakdown (My News LA, March 31, 2015)
https://mynewsla.com/hollywood/2015/03/31/dancer-claims-michael-jackson-molested-led-him-to-nervous-breakdown/
[5] Deposition Transcript of Lynette Joy Robson (September 30, 2016)
https://themichaeljacksonallegationsblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/joy-robson-deposition-extracts.pdf
[6] E-mails between Wade Robson and others, mainly his mother, between 2012-2016
https://themichaeljacksonallegationsblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/2016-12-27-robsonemailswatermark.pdf
[7] Wade Robson – “Michael Jackson was a monster” and sexual abuser (TMZ, May 8, 2013)
http://www.tmz.com/2013/05/08/wade-robson-michael-jackson-molestation-monster-sexual-abuse/
[8] The original article: Jen Heger – Wade Robson Asks Michael Jackson Estate To Admit The King of Pop Anally Raped Him And More — READ The Documents (Radar Online, August 4, 2014)
https://radaronline.com/exclusives/2014/08/michael-jackson-wade-robson-sexual-assault-anal/
A follow-up article that mentions Robson’s recommendation of their previous article: ‘Silence Perpetuates Abuse’ — Wade Robson Opens Up About Graphic Michael Jackson Anal Rape Claims, And Why He Kept Quiet For So Long (Radar Online, August 8, 2014) https://radaronline.com/exclusives/2014/08/wade-robson-mj-anal-rape-claims-facebook-post/
[9] Original article was at: http://www.createinhawaii.com/profiles/maui-childrens-bookstore-amanda
Unfortunately the interview is no longer online.
[10] Declaration of Wade Robson (April 30, 2013)
https://themichaeljacksonallegationsblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/2013-04-30-robson-declaration.pdf
[11] Wade Robson Interview (Today’s Show, NBC, May 16, 2013)
[12] Wade Robson Interview (TMZ, May 17, 2013)
http://www.tmz.com/videos/0_h3mwtpde/
The Michael Jackson Allegations 