Aftermath
Bahrain is not an easy place to visit in the summer. Desert covers most of the thirty islands that make up the country, and in August it’s so hot, humid and miserable that temperatures regularly exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit. But this remote nation does offer one attraction. It’s the perfect place for a troubled man to put distance between himself and his problems. Which may explain why it was there, in the Persian Gulf, that Michael Jackson sought sanctuary after the trial.
In August of 2005, Michael turned forty-seven. He had his freedom. But, in truth, his problems were far from over. Rather than relish his new independence, Michael had sunk into a deep depression, often suffering from panic attacks and insomnia as if traumatized by the trial. He refused to speak about it. This was not the ‘victory’ that his friends and fans had fought for. After the verdict, the pop star all but disappeared from public view. There were no post-trial parties, no triumphant press conferences. In truth, Michael was in no fit state to celebrate. He was too ill. A couple of days after the verdict, he checked into a hospital in Santa Barbara to be treated for exhaustion and dehydration. Not long after he was released, he took off, leaving Neverland, never to return.
‘He went into total seclusion,’ a source close to the singer told me. ‘He was depressed, anxious, unable to eat or sleep. He almost lost it all: his freedom, his family, his career. You don’t just bounce back after something like that. He told me, “To this day, I wake up feeling upset and scared to death, and it takes me a half hour to remember that it’s over.” ’
The only person Michael saw in the weeks after the trial – other than his children and their nanny, Grace Rwaramba – was a therapist. For the first time in his life, Jackson decided to seek counseling. It was definitely a step in the right direction. He knew he needed help, and maybe it was an indication of growth that he actually sought it instead of ignoring the signs. ‘He felt totally victimized by Gavin, the rest of the scheming Arvizos, and also by the Santa Barbara district attorney, Thomas Sneddon,’ one of Michael’s inner circle told me. ‘He had a difficult time getting past the fury he feels about the whole situation. One day he told me, “God forgive me, and don’t tell KatherineI ever said this, but I hate that kid. I so hate that kid.” Then I remember he looked at me for a moment and he said, “Part of me thinks, no, that’s not right. You shouldn’t hate. But then I think, I can’t help it. I hate that kid for what he did to me. My therapist is telling me that I need to get real with myself and feel what I feel, not suppress it likeI usually do. Well, how I feel is that I hate that kid. I do.” ’
As described to me, what Jackson had been experiencing sounded akin to post-traumatic stress syndrome. He had persistent nightmares about the trial, replaying in his head the lurid evidence against him, the many witnesses, the pornography shown to the jury, the look of anguish on his mother’s face. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, and it made him feel raw and, if at all possible, even more disconnected.
Michael didn’t want to talk to anyone who reminded him of what had happened in Santa Maria, even the people who were at his side throughout the trial. His family was out, as far as he was concerned. He seemed to want nothing to do with most of them. Some of the Jacksons were talking about a reunion tour again, and this time it must have felt to Michael as if he really
owed
them the honor – but, still, he wasn’t going to do it. He felt pressured into becoming involved in other family matters, not to mention his collapsing financial empire, and he simply didn’t want to traffic in either world. So he took off. He went to Bahrain, which was about as far away as he could get. The rejection hurt his family, deeply. Joseph desperately wanted Michael to make an appearance at a birthday party for him in Germany. Michael couldn’t bring himself to do it. In the end, Joseph had to hire a Michael Jackson impersonator.
Apparently, Michael knew the royal family in Bahrain, and so he hunkered down with them. Of course, later on the Prince would sue Michael for breach of contract, saying they had a deal to make records and Michael reneged.
So what else was new?
It was Michael’s lack of personal responsibility that made me want to have nothing to do with him after the trial. I was able to get past the molestation accusations in my reporting of him. After all, I believed him to be not guilty in the Arvizo mess pretty much from the very beginning. However, I simply couldn’t reconcile his total disregard for other people in his life. In my mind, he owed his family something for their loyalty. Perhaps they had pressured him into participating in ventures in which he wasn’t interested in the past, but this timeI felt he had an obligation to at least try to work with them again. After all, their support must have meant
something
to him during the trial. There were Jacksons there every single day. Beyond that, I couldn’t understand his lack of loyalty to all of the people who kept Neverland afloat in his absence during the trial. As soon as the trial was over, practically everyone was let go without severance pay. Dozens of caretakers, maids and other functionaries – people with children at home who had given their all to Michael – were just dismissed by him, seemingly without a second thought. Then there was the onslaught of lawsuits by former attorneys and business associates, one after another after the trial. Of course, Jackson had been anything but the consummate businessman for at least the previous ten years, but now things were out of control. Did he ever pay anyone with whom he made a deal? Did he ever sign a contract he didn’t break? It was so obvious to me that he was not a man of his word and, to be frank – as his biographer and someone who had known him for so long – it just pissed me off. ‘I’m a man of honor,’ he once told me. It was when I had made a joke about his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley on the TV show
Good Morning America
, and he called to chastise me. ‘If you believe anything about me, believe that.’ Indeed, looking back on it now, I guess I felt let down by Michael Jackson. So for years after the trial, I didn’t want to write about him. ‘But you have to be more objective,’ one editor told me. ‘Yeah, well,’ I responded. ‘When he starts paying his bills, maybe then I’ll start writing about him again.’
In my view, Michael Jackson had a golden opportunity to reclaim his career after the trial. I couldn’t understand why he wanted to blow it on such an epic scale. He kept promising records that never came out, dates that never materialized. He seemed to not have a place to live: He and his children would live with friends in one city and then migrate to another as if they were homeless. I didn’t want to know anything about any of it, it all seemed so disappointing and useless to me.
Looking back on it now, I wish I’d had more sympathy for a man so clearly in pain. He never got over the trial; that trauma was still eating away at him. I understand that now. How could he care about anyone else when he was just trying to get through the day himself? ‘Anyone who thinks he is just going to bounce back after such public humiliation doesn’t know Michael Jackson,’ his former manager Frank Dileo had told me on that June day when he was acquitted. ‘This is devastating. For a guy like Michael, this is life-ruining, I’m afraid.’
Indeed, after Santa Maria, little mattered to Michael – except for, perhaps, the only thing that should have mattered: his children. His career was in a shambles and his finances in ruin, but it was of no consequence as far as he was concerned. He had the love of his three children, the two Prince Michaels and Paris, and as long as that was the case, he figured he’d be fine. Ironically, considering his nomadic existence, those who know him best like to think that those post–Santa Maria years were among his best in the sense that he had truly re-prioritized his life. No longer did he care if he was Number One or not, and that had certainly been a goal of his for most of his time on this planet. He no longer had the kind of fire in his belly a person needs to do what Michael Jackson had already done with his life and career. For those who wanted to see him back on top, his lack of passion for his career was difficult to accept. But maybe he had given all he had to give. Maybe, after so many decades in the spotlight, it was finally time for us to just leave him alone.