Mike Tyson said there’s no way he would have left his his eight-year-old son with his late friend Michael Jackson, amid the ongoing controversy surrounding the singer’s legacy in the wake of the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland.
In the documentary, former child entertainers Wade Robson, 36, and James Safechuck, 41, claimed the late King of Pop sexually molested them when they were children, with detailed accounts from both the men and their relatives.
‘Michael has a reputation of this,’ the boxing icon, 52, told Michael Rapaport, 48, on the I AM RAPAPORT podcast Tuesday. ‘I have an 8-year-old kid – I wouldn’t let Michael hang out with my kid; I wouldn’t let my kid go over Michael’s house – I love Michael. You know what I mean?’
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The latest: Mike Tyson, 52, said there’s no way he would have left his kids with his late friend, Michael Jackson, amid the ongoing controversy surrounding the singer’s legacy in the wake of the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland
Concur: Rapaport agreed with Tyson he wouldn’t let his kid stay with Jackson either
Perspective: Tyson also turned the focal point to his own 1992 rape conviction, saying he understood and respected when people told this they wouldn’t let their daughter near him because of that
The New York City native said that while ‘whatever happened’ involving Jackson’s accusers Robson and Safechuck as children was ‘wrong … it comes across that these are guys just out to get some money.’
‘What you’re doing now is even wrong, coming out saying this stuff’ he said of Robson and Safechuck. ‘It’s wrong, it’s wrong on both sides.’
Tyson is the latest friend of the late Thriller singer to go public with their mixed emotions amid the furor surrounding the Dan Reed-directed documentary.
In defense: Singer Aaron Carter, pictured in 2017, said he was upset that Jackson’s legacy was being damaged by the allegations
Actor Corey Feldman last week told HLN he couldn’t any longer stand up for Jackson amid the claims in Leaving Neverland.
‘I don’t want to be perceived as I’m here to defend Michael Jackson, because I can no longer do that,’ the 47-year-old actor said. ‘I can not in good consciousness defend anyone who’s being accused of such horrendous crimes. I’m also not here to judge him, because again, he did not do those things to me and that was not my experience.’
Singer Aaron Carter told TMZ Monday that Jackson never attempted anything inappropriate with him during the time they hung out when he was around 15-years-old. He noted Robson and Safechuck both had previously testified on Jackson’s behalf in legal proceedings, and that they should have spoken up when Jackson was on trial in 2005 on molestation allegations.
‘Why not do it when he was alive?’ he said. ‘Why not do it when he was being accused of all of these molestation charges. Why not do it then and actually indict a perpetrator?’
Jackson died at the age of 50 in June of 2009 as result of a drug overdose.
Source: Daily Mail
