Jerry
Sandusky, accused serial rapist of boys, admitted to the Times that he lavished
gifts on the boy he would wrestle and host at sleepovers.
Martin
Weiss, accused boy molester and Hollywood agent, decorated his home for
Christmas in very child-appealing ways, separated the boys from their parents
and have over alone for movie watching.
Details
of how Bernie Fine, another accused molester of boys, lured them into his web
are not yet known. But his connection to Syracuse University basketball was
undoubtedly a big part of it. Sports, sport stars are big attractions to boys.
And being around a team is no doubt appealing. And sports provides a natural
place for a child to get naked--- the locker room and shower.
I
couldn’t help but think, as I listened to the m.o. of the Hollywood agent for
boy actors, how everything about this man that screamed “pedophile!” could be
said about another person accused not so long ago of also molesting boys.
Michael Jackson.
Neverland
was an enormous child lure. Jackson gave gifts and got boys away from parents
and had them for sleepovers.
And
yet, the same people who hear about Sandusky, Weiss and Fine and have no
trouble making the very reasonable leap to “pedophile” and yet when confronted
with the same sort of details but the person in question is Michael, refuse to
believe the obvious.
Had
John Nextdoor been tried with the same fact pattern that prosecutors presented
to Jackson’s jury, Nextdoor would have been convicted.
None
of Jackson’s many many defenders has ever supplied a satisfying answer to my
question: If Jackson’s sleepovers were innocent cookies-and-milk fun, after the
first public airing of accusations, when his career, fortune and very liberty
were at risk, why didn’t Jackson stop? That’s what any rational person would
do. But Jackson persisted in sleeping night after night with a series of boys.
He could not, would not stop himself because it was a compulsion.
When
you find yourself thinking how creepy Sandusky, Fine and Weiss seem, substitute
the name Michael Jackson and ask yourself if anyone would believe in his innocence
if he weren’t the “King of Pop.”
