Jordan Chandler Admits he Lied about Michael Jackson - Or did he?

[celticmaestro]

Any parents out there?  If you find out tomorrow that your 13 year old boy/girl has been molested by a celebrity or otherwise, do you seek money or try to get the man behind bars?

most responsible and respectable parents want justice rather than money.  however, his parents werent either, clearly shown in their decision to allow their son to hang with mj unsupervised.

It's interesting you bring up the comments about sharing a bed with children.  His comments obviously weren't intended to portray himself as a sick pedophile.  He was trying to be honest about his relationship with his young friends.  He was referring to times in which friends (such as MacauleyCulkin or Wade Robson or even his young nephews and cousins) would stay up all night in his massive bed playing video games.

this is kinda creepy.  even if he didnt molest a child, his relationships and boundaries with children were terrible. i attribute it to his messed up childhood, but that does not excuse his own decisions, actions, and boundaries.

i loved the guys music and he is by far the best performer i have seen.....but he clearly had issues and his behaviors should be questioned. 

I agree with what you've said here d_l. I personally don't think he was a child molester, however, his behavior and actions were inexcusable. In his interview with Martin Bashir ('Living With Michael Jackson' - where Bashir lived with him for 8 months) 6 years ago he was truly chilling in his behavior. Alas, he was the best performer I've seen, and I'll just finish with an RIP and leave it at that.

[LarBrd33]

I assure you, it isn't.  It never picks a side. . . . But it is merely a matter-of-fact representation of all of the facts of that scandal in detail.

It may be factual, but that doesn't mean it wasn't biased or didn't have an agenda.  I mean, they bring up the fact that the kid's dad had a couple of bad dental cases to undercut his credibility, and yet you think it doesn't pick a side?

I more figured the dental history was relevant in explaining how he'd be able to eventually drug his own son with the hypnotic drug sodium amytal during a "dental visit" ... a pretty key part of the story since it was only after being given the "truth serum" that the boy made his first allegations... "The use of amobarbital as a truth serum has lost credibility due to the discovery that the subject can be coerced into having a 'false memory' of the event."

In the presence of Chandler and Mark Torbiner, a dental anesthesiologist, the boy was administered the controversial drug sodium Amytal—which some mistakenly believe is a truth serum. And it was after this session that the boy first made his charges against Jackson. A newsman at KCBS-TV, in L.A., reported on May 3 of this year that Chandler had used the drug on his son, but the dentist claimed he did so only to pull his son’s tooth and that while under the drug’s influence, the boy came out with allegations. Asked for this article about his use of the drug on the boy, Torbiner replied: “If I used it, it was for dental purposes.”

Given the facts about sodium Amytal and a recent landmark case that involved the drug, the boy’s allegations, say several medical experts, must be viewed as unreliable, if not highly questionable.

“It’s a psychiatric medication that cannot be relied on to produce fact,” says Dr. Resnick, the Cleveland psychiatrist. “People are very suggestible under it. People will say things under sodium Amytal that are blatantly untrue.” Sodium Amytal is a barbiturate, an invasive drug that puts people in a hypnotic state when it’s injected intravenously. Primarily administered for the treatment of amnesia, it first came into use during World War II, on soldiers traumatized—some into catatonic states—by the horrors of war. Scientific studies done in 1952 debunked the drug as a truth serum and instead demonstrated its risks: False memories can be easily implanted in those under its influence. “It is quite possible to implant an idea through the mere asking of a question,” says Resnick. But its effects are apparently even more insidious: “The idea can become their memory, and studies have shown that even when you tell them the truth, they will swear on a stack of Bibles that it happened,” says Resnick.

Recently, the reliability of the drug became an issue in a high-profile trial in Napa County, California. After undergoing numerous therapy sessions, at least one of which included the use of sodium Amytal, 20-year-old Holly Ramona accused her father of molesting her as a child. Gary Ramona vehemently denied the charge and sued his daughter’s therapist and the psychiatrist who had administered the drug. This past May, jurors sided with Gary Ramona, believing that the therapist and the psychiatrist may have reinforced memories that were false. Gary Ramona’s was the first successful legal challenge to the so-called “repressed memory phenomenon” that has produced thousands of sexual-abuse allegations over the past decade.

As for Chandler’s story about using the drug to sedate his son during a tooth extraction, that too seems dubious, in light of the drug’s customary use. “It’s absolutely a psychiatric drug,” says Dr. Kenneth Gottlieb, a San Francisco psychiatrist who has administeredsodium Amytal to amnesia patients. Dr. John Yagiela, the coordinator of the anesthesia and pain control department of UCLA’s school of dentistry, adds, “It’s unusual for it to be used [for pulling a tooth]. It makes no sense when better, safer alternatives are available. It would not be my choice.”

Because of sodium Amytal’s potential side effects, some doctors will administer it only in a hospital. “I would never want to use a drug that tampers with a person’s unconscious unless there was no other drug available,” says Gottlieb. “And I would not use it without resuscitating equipment, in case of allergic reaction, and only with an M.D. anesthesiologist present.”

Chandler, it seems, did not follow these guidelines. He had the procedure performed on his son in his office, and he relied on the dental anesthesiologist Mark Torbiner for expertise.

Maybe the fact that Chandler (a dentist) once had his license revolked for negligence should have been left out of the article... but since so much of the "Jackson molested children" debate is based on the fact that, "he's weird... he plays videogames in bed with children" ... the fact that his accusers were scum probably is a bit relevant.

[JSD]

Wine and adult magazines.

[LarBrd33]

Wine and adult magazines.

"Adult materials found at Neverland included over 70 magazines of heterosexual ****, including publications dedicated to mature and overweight women. All were legal. However, some had fingerprints of the two brothers on them; both boys claimed that Jackson showed these adult materials to them for the purpose of Child grooming, and gave them alcohol, which he called "Jesus juice". Both were allegedly for the purpose of lowering inhibitions to sexual behavior. Jackson denied this; he claimed that the accuser and his brother were sometimes “out of control” at Neverland, they found some magazines and drank alcohol in his absence."

Again, that 2005 case is a joke, because it defied all logic that Jackson would start molesting the boy AFTER that documentary aired and AFTER the police were already investigating his behavior and AFTER the boy and his mother had already made recorded statements denying anything inappropriate and praising their savior.   

You can choose to defy logic and still believe the family's fraudulent claims, but knowing that the boys were 13 year old shoplifting punks it doesn't seem that far-fetched to me that they would find some adult mags and wine on their own while living at Neverland Ranch (Jackson wasn't always there).  Anyone out there ever been a 13 year old boy before?

The 1993 thing is more important because it set the perception.  I listened to interviews with members of the jury after the 2005 trial and the most interesting thing was that they all basically said that they didn't believe he had molested the 2005 kid.  There was a severe lack of evidence and the mother's testimony was highly questionable.   However, they DID mention that most of the internal discussion on a verdict was based on whether or not Jackson might have molested kids in the past (the 1993 kid).  This tells me that some of the jurors probably came into it with preconceived ideas about Jackson's guilt and yet they still let him walk, because the 2005 case was clearly shakey.    Maybe had they known all the facts surrounding the 1993 case as well, they wouldn't have had much to debate.

[LarBrd33]

So that documentary aired Feb 6th, 2003.   

The boy sitting next to him during that famous comment is in fact Gavin Arvizo (this is all publicly known)

In 2000, the accuser was diagnosed with cancer and had his spleen and a kidney removed. Jackson paid Gavin Arvizo's medical expenses and accommodated transport for his chemotherapy treatment. Soon thereafter, Jamie Masada, the owner of a comedy club called Laugh Factory, fulfilled his wish to meet Jackson, and the boy often visited Neverland, also when Jackson was not home.

"Living With Michael Jackson" airs on Feb 6th, 2003...  Public hysteria and an investigation into Jackson followed.

"Gavin, his sister Daveline, brother Star and mother Janet were "upfront" and said that inappropriate behavior had "absolutely not occurred" while also calling him a father figure. They also insisted that they slept in Jackson's bed although Jackson himself always slept on the floor. To further the rebuttal Janet Arvizo (the mother) issued the statement:

"The relationship that Michael has with my children is beautiful, loving, father-son and daughter one. To my children and me Michael is part of the family.". She also stated that she was thinking of taking legal action against Martin Bashir (the creator of the documentary).

Later that month

Instead of going to police, Janet Arvizo decided on February 20, 2003 to take her family to be interviewed by the Sensitive Case Unit of L.A.'s Department of Children & Family Services (DCFS), as part of an investigation jointly carried out with the LAPD. A school official from the Los Angeles Unified School District had lodged a complaint out of concern for the boy who would later be Jackson's accuser, and his younger brother. The official did so out of general neglect by their mother and sexual abuse by Jackson, after watching the Bashir documentary. The entire family insisted that no inappropriate contact with Jackson occurred; moreover, the mother said that the children were never left alone with Jackson. The case was closed; the charges marked as "unfounded."

However, after Jackson decided to distance himself from the family they later decided to accuse him of wrongdoing.  The alleged crimes happened in February and March of 2003 (while the above was happening) ... That's just silly.

I do wonder what kind of affect this will all have on Gavin.  I'm assuming his mother forced him to lie on her behalf (as she had done with the JC Penny thing)...  what kind of guilt will he have later in life?  That's a lot to handle knowing that Jackson, a father-figure to him, paid to save his life and he responded by going along with his mother's lie and ultimately cementing his hero's downfall.   That's rough.  Good luck to that man (now 19).

[TheLegendaryClub]

Of course I can't claim to have any idea whether the allegations were true or not, but I will say this: Michael's eccentricities make him a very easy target. If you're going to charge a celebrity with molestation, you're not going to pick Will Smith or Tom Hanks, you're going to go after Michael Jackson, someone whose qualities tend toward the out-of-the-ordinary.It is difficult to see Michael Jackson in a criminal light. He always appears childlike in his interviews, from his soft-spoken demeanor to his gentle giggling. He seems very naive and trusting. He was the single most exploitable celebrity on the face of the planet.

As for all of these odd behaviors, I think it's obvious where they come from. He was beaten as a kid, he was emotionally abused, he never had a childhood. At the same time it was denied to him, his desire to prolong it increased. He bought Neverland and surrounding himself with kids because he wanted to be a kid again. They seemed more like peers to him than a lot of adults did, and, let's face it, they didn't judge him like the adults reading the tabloids did. I tend to think he's innocent, and just easy to exploit.

It was so obvious that all of the pressures in his life have been weighing him down for decades. If "Leave Me Alone" and "Scream" weren't enough, then the near-tearful interviews he's given had to have been. When you add up the fact that he's such a perfectionist himself, avoided looking in mirrors because he came to hate his appearance so much, got made fun of by every tabloid and news source in the country, and was slapped with molestation charges by people he'd presumably come to trust a great deal, it's no wonder he was on so many painkillers and died so young.

Personally I think it's terrible the way he's been treated. Guilty or not, when is it ever okay to ridicule someone because of a skin condition they can't help? Or, hell, even the plastic surgery? If other celebrities have ten plastic surgeries, no one cares. Michael had, what, three on his nose and that's it? The first because he broke it while was a teenager, and two more because he wasn't happy with the way it looked? He probably had the third one because everyone made fun of how he looked after the second! The first rule in the book of preschool is that you don't make fun of other people because of their appearance, but the entire world did it to him for decades because of his Vitiligo and then his nose. As always, the public and the media display less maturity than their four-year-old children.

What makes it so difficult to believe that Michael was really a young-at-heart man who wanted to do everything he could to make kids happier than he'd been? Apparently, two questionable and unproven molestation charges, and the fact that the world likes villains more than heroes.

[LarBrd33]

TP TheLegendaryClub.  Jackson made some mistakes, but he was also just an easy target.  J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) was thought to be an asexual who had close friendships with young boys (such as the inspiration for the Peter character).  Those relationships were depicted by Johnny Depp in that "Finding Neverland" movie, but it's interesting that years later people in our modern-day culture have written essays speculating on whether or not J.M. Barrie was a pedophile.  It's just not a relationship adults can relate to... so we just assume there is something sinister about it.   

[dark_lord]

Any parents out there?  If you find out tomorrow that your 13 year old boy/girl has been molested by a celebrity or otherwise, do you seek money or try to get the man behind bars?

most responsible and respectable parents want justice rather than money.  however, his parents werent either, clearly shown in their decision to allow their son to hang with mj unsupervised.

It's interesting you bring up the comments about sharing a bed with children.  His comments obviously weren't intended to portray himself as a sick pedophile.  He was trying to be honest about his relationship with his young friends.  He was referring to times in which friends (such as MacauleyCulkin or Wade Robson or even his young nephews and cousins) would stay up all night in his massive bed playing video games.

this is kinda creepy.  even if he didnt molest a child, his relationships and boundaries with children were terrible. i attribute it to his messed up childhood, but that does not excuse his own decisions, actions, and boundaries.

i loved the guys music and he is by far the best performer i have seen.....but he clearly had issues and his behaviors should be questioned. 

I agree with what you've said here d_l. I personally don't think he was a child molester, however, his behavior and actions were inexcusable. In his interview with Martin Bashir ('Living With Michael Jackson' - where Bashir lived with him for 8 months) 6 years ago he was truly chilling in his behavior. Alas, he was the best performer I've seen, and I'll just finish with an RIP and leave it at that.

gr8 minds think alike