The family befriended Jackson in the 1980s when the father, Dominic, met the pop star at a Manhattan hotel he managed. The friendship continued for years, with the Times reporting that Jackson invited them to Neverland Ranch, planned sleepovers at FAO Schwartz, and even stayed in the family’s New Jersey home for months after 9/11. But by 2001, the now-adult children of the family say that he had been abusing them for years. They say the abuse began in 1993, when Dominic and his sons Frank and Eddie flew to Tel Aviv to support Jackson at a concert after he had already been accused of abuse of another child. The family alleges that Jackson preyed on all five children—Frank, Eddie, son Dominic, son Aldo, and daughter Marie Nicole—for years. (Frank is barred from participating in this current lawsuit due to other pending litigation.)
The specifics the siblings share in the Times interview are harrowing and disturbing. The now-35-year-old Aldo says he was seven when Jackson crawled into bed with him and initiated oral sex, and had requested sex from him until just days before his 2009 death. Marie Nicole says she was 12 when the abuse started, and that Jackson would masturbate over her nude body. According to Eddie, in the words of NYT reporter Matt Stevens, “when they began, he said his penis was so small that Mr. Jackson held it using only three fingers.” Eddie says the sexual encounters continued into adulthood. “We were brainwashed, we were groomed,” he says. “I felt like he took my manhood away.”
The Cascio family had long defended Jackson, according to the Times, appearing in an interview with Oprah Winfrey after his death to say there were “never” any “improprieties” with Jackson. They say it wasn’t until watching Leaving Neverland—the documentary about Jackson’s alleged abuse that his estate had pulled from HBO—that they began to recognize what happened to them as abuse. In the following months, the family arranged a settlement with the Jackson estate and received about $16 million total between the five siblings over five years. They say negotiations broke down when they sought more money after those five years which led them to taking the allegations public.
Jackson’s estate, of course, denies all of the allegations, and paints the siblings’ “false and defamatory statements” as a blackmail attempt. Estate attorney Marty Singer dubbed the lawsuit a “scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael’s estate and companies.” The Cascio family, however, tells the Times that taking the information public is now as much part of their goal as any financial recompense. You can read the whole Times story here.
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