Four brothers who were longtime friends of Michael Jackson are accusing the late pop star of being a “serial child predator” who preyed on Jackson when he was “7 or 8” years old in a new bombshell lawsuit filed last week in California.
According to the complaint in U.S. District Court, Edward, Dominic and Aldo Cascio and their sister Marie Nicole Port called Jackson a “serial child predator” who “drugged, raped, and sexually assaulted the plaintiffs over a period of more than a decade.”
According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs met Jackson through their father, who worked at a hotel where Jackson often stayed.
Individuals associated with the Michael Jackson Company and the late entertainer’s real estate, trust and production companies were named as defendants.
“Plaintiffs reject their morally bankrupt efforts to control and silence the Jackson Estate,” plaintiffs’ attorney Howard King said in the federal lawsuit filed Feb. 27.
“Plaintiffs brought this action to hold the Michael Jackson Estate, its affiliates, and persons managing or acting on their behalf accountable for Jackson’s actions and their own wrongdoing.”
Martin Singer, a veteran entertainment industry lawyer representing the Jackson Foundation, called the lawsuit a “desperate money grab.”
“This new court filing is a transparent forum shopping tactic in their scheme to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael’s estate and businesses,” Singer said in a statement.
Singer pointed out that Edward Cascio’s 2011 book, “My Friend Michael: An Ordinary Friendship with an Extraordinary Man,” includes statements from family members who “consistently and repeatedly maintained that Michael never harmed his family or anyone else.”
Mr. Singer also said in a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey that Mr. Edwards, Mr. Frank and Marie-Nicole Cascio all agreed that Mr. Jackson had never harmed them.
“The Cascios have spent decades defending and asserting Michael’s innocence,” Singer said. “Remarkably, these shakedown attempts occurred more than 15 years after Michael’s death, so there is no risk of a defamation suit. Sadly, Michael’s talent and success continue to make him a target in death, just as they were in life.”
“Jackson’s years of brainwashing prevented Plaintiff from seeking help during his life and for years afterward,” Dr. King wrote.
It wasn’t until the release of the documentary “Leaving Neverland” in 2019 that the four brothers were “deprogrammed” and forced to “recognize for the first time the reality” that “Jackson’s abuse was wrong and deeply damaging to them,” the lawsuit said.
That same year, the Jackson Estate offered the family $690,000 “as compensation for the years of Jackson’s abuse of his entire family, which the Jackson Organization has enabled and concealed,” the lawsuit says.
The plaintiffs signed the agreement without having it reviewed by their attorneys, King wrote.
“Had Plaintiffs fully understood the meaning of the document, they would not have signed it,” he wrote.
Mr. Jackson was acquitted in 2005 of sexually abusing a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003.
Jackson was 50 years old when he died from acute propofol poisoning on June 25, 2009. The singer used the powerful anesthetic as a sleep aid, and his doctor, Dr. Conrad Murray, was found guilty of manslaughter.
