The Michael Jackson estate has been sued by four siblings, accusing him of sexual abuse and child trafficking.
Siblings Edward, Dominic, Marie-Nicole, and Aldo Cascio filed the complaint Feb. 27, alleging that Jackson “groomed and brainwashed” the children for over a decade, using his star power and influence to do so.
They described Jackson as a “serial child predator” who drugged and raped them as he took them to various parts of the world. According to the siblings, the abuse occurred when Jackson and his own children stayed at the Cascios’ family home.
Jackson began his acts when
the kids were “as young as seven or eight,” the 23-page suit obtained by People states.The Cascio siblings reportedly met Jackson in 1984 when he stayed at a luxury hotel that their father, Dominic, managed. After Jackson allegedly gained their parents’ trust through gifts and attention, the siblings claim that Jackson began to take advantage of them.
“The family staunchly defended Michael Jackson for more than 25 years, attesting to his innocence of inappropriate conduct. This new court filing is a transparent forum-shopping tactic in their scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael’s estate and companies,” said the estate’s attorney, Marty Singer.
Singer emphasized how the Cascios issued several statements in the past, all denying any wrongdoing by Jackson.
“With the Estate’s financial success growing, the Cascios, through two different attorneys, threatened to go public with heinous accusations that completely contradicted their previous statements defending Michael unless his Estate paid staggering sums of money,” he said.
According to Rolling Stone, the Cascios filed the complaint amid another legal bout with the estate. They are attempting to void a financial settlement, claiming that the payout seeks to “silence victims of childhood sexual abuse.” A follow-up hearing on the matter remains set for March 5.
In the filing, all four siblings expressed their own accounts of the abuse, some of which occurred at the residences of Jackson’s famous friends, including U.K. home of Elton John and the Switzerland home of Elizabeth Taylor.
“He would train me to say no to any authority and the police,” Aldo Cascio said. “If anyone asked, ‘Are you doing this?’ you would say no. He would say that people think this is wrong, but they’re wrong. This is real, this is love, but these people think it’s
wrong and I could get into trouble—they’ll want to kill me…he would make me ‘Promise you love me and that you’ll protect me’…And so you felt responsible for helping him in any way.”Jackson died in 2009 from a propofol overdose.
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