“I mean, somebody has to be arranging that,” Oprah said. Theo Wargo / Getty Images In the upcoming HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, Wade Robson and James Safechuck go into devastating detail about the sexual abuse they say they experienced at the hands of Michael Jackson when they were children. But in an interview for a special that is scheduled to air after the documentary, Oprah pressed director Dan Reed on something that isn’t a focus of the film: Who in the pop star’s inner circle enabled the abuse or turned a blind eye? “How many people knew?” Oprah asked during the taping Wednesday at TheTimesCenter in New York City. The audience was filled with more than 100 survivors of childhood sexual abuse and their supporters who had recently finished viewing the four-hour-long film. “I think a great many people knew,” Reed responded. Courtesy of Bennett Raglin The After Neverland special is filmed on Feb. 27, 2019. Robson, who was 7 years old when he says Jackson initiated their sexual relationship, told Oprah it was “very rare that Michael was alone” and that the star “had a machine around him at all times.” “Secretaries organized most of my phone calls and would organize cars to pick me up to bring me to him,” Robson said. “Security guards were always there outside of the door.” Oprah recalled a point made in the documentary, that oftentimes parents would sleep in separate rooms and sometimes separate floors while their children spent the night with Jackson. “Yes, in the film we see that the mothers are being moved further and further away. First, you’re next door. Now there’s not a suite on this floor,” Oprah said. “I mean, somebody has to be arranging that.” Robson said he doesn’t believe Jackson, who died in 2009, “could have abused at the level that he did” without people around him being complicit. When he was alive, Jackson denied allegations of sexual abuse against him. Pool / Getty Images Robson and Safechuck previously defended Jackson when he was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor in 1993 — a case that was settled out of court. In 2005, when Jackson was on trial for sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy, Robson testified on Jackson’s behalf; Safechuck, who said Jackson first began abusing him when he was 10, declined to testify. Jackson was acquitted of all charges, and Oprah asked if the men thought about the boys they testified against, even though, as the host said, “a whole lot of other people looked the other way.” “Well, them looking the other way and us looking the other way, I think are two different things,” Safechuck said. “We were trained and groomed for it,” he said. “So we’re approaching it differently. Not comparable.” Robson echoed a similar point, saying he couldn’t think about anyone else because he was “trained to be a soldier for Michael and protect him.” “I wish it could’ve been different. I wish that I could’ve been ready when I was 11,” he said. “I wish that I could’ve been ready when I was 22, to give some validation, to give some sense of justice, to be able to play a role in stopping Michael at that point. I wish that could’ve been the case, but it just couldn’t.” Taylor Jewell / AP Wade Robson (left), Dan Reed, and James Safechuck. Earlier this week, four members of Jackson’s family defended the singer on CBS This Morning in an interview with Gayle King. “It’s always been about money,” said Taj Jackson, Jackson’s nephew, when asked why he believed Robson and Safechuck decided to come forward now with the allegations. “I hate to say it. When it’s my uncle, it’s almost like they see a blank check.” Howard Weitzman, the Jackson estate lawyer, sent a 10-page letter to HBO in early February condemning the documentary, calling it “an admittedly one-sided, sensationalist program.” Both Robson and Safechuck deny monetary gain as a motive, and Reed defended them against people who repeat that claim. “Going to court is a well-established way of holding an entity to account,” he said. “What Wade and James are alleging is that a whole lot of people working for Michael Jackson looked the other way while they were being raped and why should those people not be held to account?” Part 1 of Leaving Neverland premieres Sunday, March 3 at 8 p.m. ET on HBO, and Part 2 airs the next night, March 4, at the same time. Immediately following Part 2, Oprah’s one-hour special, Oprah Winfrey Presents: After Neverland, airs simultaneously on HBO and OWN at 10 p.m. ET. Adam B. Vary contributed reporting to this story.<doc-sep>Oprah Winfrey is arguably the most famous survivor of childhood sexual abuse in the world. And, as she said Wednesday in Manhattan where she recorded a special with two men whose allegations against Michael Jackson are detailed in the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland,” the subject was a part of her daily talk show long before #MeToo ignited. “In 25 years of the Oprah show, I did 217 episodes about sexual abuse,” she said, noting that “Leaving Neverland,” directed by Dan Reed, successfully conveyed the message that she had “tried and tried” to get across — “that sexual abuse was not just sexual abuse, it was also sexual seduction.” In “Leaving Neverland,” which premiered at Sundance in January and will air on HBO beginning Sunday night, Wade Robson and James Safechuck recount allegations of sustained sexual abuse that they say began when they were 7 and 10 years old, respectively, and had devastating repercussions for both men and their families. The documentary is not merely an indictment of Jackson but also a damning look at the corrosive effects of fame as well as the blindness and complicity of many in the face of a pattern of widespread abuse and meticulous grooming. Advertisement “For me, this moment transcends Michael Jackson. It is much bigger than any one person. It is a moment in time that allows us so see this societal corruption; it’s like a scourge on humanity,” Winfrey said Wednesday. “It’s happening right now; it’s happening in families. We know it’s happening in churches and in schools and sports teams everywhere. If it gets you, our audience, to see how it happens, then, some good will come of it.” (She was not available for further comment.) Subject Wade Robson, director Dan Reed, and subject James Safechuck, from the documentary “Leaving Neverland,” photographed in the L.A. Times Photo and Video Studio at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) FULL COVERAGE: Michael Jackson documentary » The hourlong special, dubbed “After Neverland,” will air on HBO and OWN on Monday following Part 2 of “Leaving Neverland” and was taped in front of several hundred advocates and survivors of sexual abuse at the Times Center in midtown Manhattan. Before Robson and Safechuck sat with Winfrey, the audience at the Times Center had watched the documentary together. Many viewers responded with vocal emotion throughout its four-hour running time — breaking into applause, tears, gasps and a chorus of “mm-hmms” at numerous points. After, they greeted Robson and Safechuck with a standing ovation. (Perhaps the most enthusiastic whoops came when Safechuck’s mother revealed that she danced when Jackson died in 2009.) Onstage, Safechuck and Robson, who were joined by director Reed, were more contemplative and subdued but equally forthcoming, speaking with sometimes painful honesty about the alleged ways Jackson exploited their love and admiration for him. In their telling, he manipulated them so effectively that they defended him against charges of molestation in 1993 and 2005, and continued to fear speaking out against the pop star even after his death. Neither was willing to say they’d forgiven their mothers for allowing them to spend so much unsupervised time with Jackson, including overnight stays in hotel rooms and private residences. Robson said that his mother had watched the documentary but fast-forwarded through the graphic details of Jackson’s alleged abuse. Oprah Winfrey with Wade Robson, left, and James Safechuck, center, during the taping of “Oprah Winfrey Presents: After Neverland” airing on OWN and HBO on March 4. (Bennett Raglin / OWN Network) Advertisement ALSO: They spoke out against Michael Jackson in ‘Leaving Neverland.’ Now, they’re facing the fallout » Both spoke at length about how having children helped motivate them to come forward and how therapy is helping them heal. Though, by his own admission, Safechuck is less far along than Robson. He seemed more fragile and rawly emotional, visibly tearing up when Winfrey asked about how he and Jackson allegedly exchanged wedding vows. “It’s gonna be a lifelong journey for me,” he said. “This moment will end, and I still have a lot of work to do. I’m helping myself so I can be better for my kids and my family, and that’s the goal.” And they’ve both found it hard to overcome feelings of loyalty to Jackson, however irrational they may be. “I felt guilt this weekend, like I let him down,” said Safechuck. “It’s still there. It just creeps out.” Advertisement A theme throughout the conversation was the way that Jackson had allegedly groomed both boys through ingratiation, flattery, lavish gifts and attention, using his extraordinary fame and stratospheric wealth to cultivate unwavering, irrational loyalty. “The grooming had started long before we ever met him because he was such a massive figure and he presented himself as such an angel,” Robson said. “My whole family was already surrendered before we ever met him.” A still from “Leaving Neverland” of Michael Jackson, left, with a young Wade Robson, right. (HBO) ALSO: Watching ‘Leaving Neverland’ after a lifetime of loving Michael Jackson » Advertisement As Winfrey noted, in the 1980s and early ‘90s, Jackson “was a god… There is no one we can compare him to. Stars don’t shine that brightly anymore.” (Ironically, as she spoke, onlookers in the glass-walled atrium behind the stage pointed at Winfrey and snapped photos of her with their phones.) Winfrey asked Robson, Safechuck and Reed about the fierce condemnation the documentary has received from the Jackson estate, and read a statement saying the film’s creators were “not interested in the truth” and didn’t allow anyone from the Jackson estate to present its side. “This is not a film about Michael Jackson; it’s about what happened to Wade and James,” Reed said. “No one in the family disputes that he spent night after night with little boys,” he continued, dismissing the criticism that he hadn’t included Jackson allies or other dissenting points of view in the documentary. “What is at issue here is what happened when the bedroom door closed and the lights went off… What is the journalistic value of interviewing someone who says, ‘Well, Michael was a really nice guy,’ especially if that person has a gigantic vested interest, a financial interest, in smearing these two young men?” Advertisement Nevertheless, the Jackson estate has called the film “the kind of tabloid character assassination Michael Jackson endured in life, and, now, in death.” “Leaving Neverland,” the estate said, is “yet another lurid production in an outrageous and pathetic attempt to exploit and cash in on Michael Jackson.” Winfrey did not discuss her own impressions of Jackson, whom she interviewed live from the Neverland Ranch in a much ballyhooed special in 1993 that generated an audience of 62 million and included pointed questions about Jackson’s changing appearance and his sexuality. (Winfrey famously asked the pop star whether he was a virgin.) After Jackson’s death in 2009, Winfrey said she believed Jackson had been honest with her in the interview. Her opinion appears to have shifted since then, and she anticipated the criticism she’d probably face for giving a platform to Jackson’s accusers. “I’m gonna get it. We’re all going to get it. ‘You’re trying to take a black man down.’ ” (Though Robson and Safechuck are both white, the subject of race did not otherwise come up in the conversation.) Advertisement Though he said he’d received death threats from Jackson supporters, Robson added that he’d been overwhelmed and pleasantly surprised by the largely positive response to the documentary so far. “That’s not what I expected. I expected to be bashed and mowed over.” ‘Oprah Winfrey Presents: After Neverland’ Where: HBO When: 10 p.m. Monday Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14) Advertisement meredith.blake@latimes.com Follow me @MeredithBlake<doc-sep>Oprah Winfrey knows that she’s courting controversy with her new special “After Neverland,” an interview with two men who have accused Michael Jackson of sexually abusing them when they were young boys. “I’m gonna get it,” the talk show host predicted during a taping of the broadcast on Wednesday at the New York Times Center. But, Winfrey argued, the issue of sexual abuse is too important to remain silent no matter how much her program angers the “gloved one’s” fans. “This movie transcends Michael Jackson,” she told an audience of more than 100 abuse survivors. “It allows us to see societal corruption.” “Beware of people who just want to be around your children,” Winfrey added at another point during the hour-and-a-half long taping. The program will air on March 4 after the second and final episode of the upcoming HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland,” a four-hour investigation into the claims of Jackson accusers, Wade Robson and James Safechuck. Winfrey was joined on stage by the two men and by director Dan Reed for a talk that mixed moments of uplift with tears, stories of horror, and a series of final cathartic hugs. Winfrey made it clear that she finds the men’s allegations credible, but the Jackson estate has pushed back aggressively against Robson and Safechuck, dismissing them as “opportunists” and “perjurers.” Before going public with his abuse claims in 2013, Robson was one of Jackson’s most vociferous defenders, denying the pop star had ever behaved inappropriately and serving as a key defense witness in Jackson’s 2005 child molestation trial. Safechuck testified that he was never abused as part of the singer’s 1993 molestation trial, but declined to testify on his behalf in the follow-up trial. Both men say they were groomed by Jackson to stay quiet — he repeatedly told them that their lives would be ruined if they broke their silence. “He told me it was love,” said Robson. “He told me God brought us together.” Jackson’s supporters say Robson and Safechuck are trying to get rich. They cite as evidence the fact that the men’s lawsuits seeking damages from the estate were dismissed because of statutes of limitations issues. They denied to Winfrey that they were seeking financial gain, with Reed adding that the men are not being compensated for their involvement in the documentary. Reed also addressed criticism that his film is one-sided and fails to include interviews with friends and colleagues of Jackson. “It’s not about Jackson,” he said. “It’s about what happened to Wade and James.” Reed also noted that there are some points that Jackson’s supporters do not contest, namely Jackson’s penchant for sharing a bedroom with children. “It’s beyond doubt that Jackson spent the night with many young boys,” he said, adding, “”What is at issue here is what happened when the bedroom door closed and the lights went out.” “Leaving Neverland” isn’t just about Jackson’s alleged crimes, Reed said. It’s interested in documenting the ways that sexual predators groom young boys. In the case of Jackson, the pop singer’s celebrity and wealth allowed him to attract families with young children and to deflect their questions when he spent an inordinate amount of time with their kids. At the time of the alleged assaults, Jackson was one of the top acts in music, a money-maker who was never without an entourage of handlers and servants. Winfrey and others expressed disbelief that no one else knew what was going on. “It was very rare that Michael was alone,” Robson noted. Both Robson and Safechuck said it took them years to come to grips with what happened to them as children. Robson suffered two nervous breakdowns and Safechuck had insomnia and depression. And yet their feelings toward Jackson are complicated. They still admire his music and Safechuck, who seemed to be the more vulnerable of the two men, still grapples with guilt after going public with his claims. The documentary has thrust the two men and their families back into the public spotlight. They’ve not only had to contend with a combative Jackson Estate and angry fans of the singer — Robson has received death threats. However, Robson and Safechuck were warmly received by an audience that had suffered similar traumas. It was a crowd that included “ER” star Anthony Edwards, who has accused writer/producer Gary Goddard of molesting him, and former Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Al Chesley, another abuse survivor, as well as “CBS This Morning” host and Oprah BFF Gayle King. Robson expressed surprise at the audience response. “I’d never witnessed public support before,” he offered. “I expected to be bushwhacked and mowed over.” As for Safechuck, he’s still grappling with the aftershocks of the abuse he claims he suffered. “This moment will end and I’ll still have a lot of work to do,” he said.<doc-sep>
(CNN) — Oprah Winfrey conducted a sympathetic interview with Wade Robson and James Safechuck, whose allegations of sexual abuse by Michael Jackson provide the foundation of “Leaving Neverland,” the stunning four-hour HBO documentary that concluded Monday night. Winfrey’s hour-long special, “After Neverland” – which aired after part two of the documentary and consisted of interviews with the two men and director Dan Reed – is perhaps most significant for lending Winfrey’s seal of approval to the project. “For me, this moment transcends Michael Jackson,” Winfrey said at the event taped last week, in front of a studio audience that included more than 100 abuse survivors. She explained her interest in the documentary by applauding how well it conveyed the insidious nature of child sexual abuse that she endeavored to illustrate on her syndicated program. “This is a moment in time that allows us to see this societal corruption. It’s like a scourge on humanity,” she said, adding, “If it gets you, our audience, to see how it happens, then some good would have come of it.” The Jackson family has condemned the documentary, denying the allegations and his estate has filed a lawsuit against HBO. Winfrey guided Safechuck and Robson through a discussion in which they echoed what they said in the film, asking whether as children they understood the nature of the relationship and the way that Jackson was allegedly “grooming” them. “I had no understanding that what Michael did to me sexually was abuse,” Robson said. “I had no concept of it being that.” Winfrey also explored why the two men continued to associate with Jackson in the wake of what they say transpired. Winfrey pointed out that people need to recognize what she described as the “god”-like position that Jackson occupied until his death in 2009. “The grooming had started long before we ever met,” Robson noted, citing Jackson’s stardom and his image. Both men attributed their decision to speak out in part to having children themselves, which forced them to come to grips with a secret that Robson said he had intended to take “to my grave.” “I’ll be working on this for the rest of my life,” Safechuck said, adding later, “This moment will end. And I still have a lot of work to do.” The presentation incorporated members of the audience, including former “ER” star Anthony Edwards, who published an essay in 2017 saying that he had been sexually victimized as a youth. HBO Michael Jackson, James Safechuck Winfrey read the statement issued by Jackson’s family disputing the film’s allegations. Reed didn’t reach out to Jackson’s family but drew extensively in the documentary from interviews with the singer, including one conducted by Martin Bashir for ABC News in 2003. Reed reiterated that he didn’t see any journalistic value in having family members denying the claims when only the then-boys were with him when “the bedroom door closed.” He added that the estate has “a gigantic vested interest, a financial interest, in smearing these two young men, and in discrediting them.” On Feb. 21, the Jackson estate sued HBO, contending that by airing the documentary the network had breached a non-disparagement clause in a 1992 contract. HBO subsequently announced that it would air the Winfrey-hosted special to follow “Leaving Neverland” and further address issues raised by the film. The program ran concurrently on Winfrey’s OWN cable network. HBO responded to the lawsuit by saying that the network would air the documentary and “allow everyone the opportunity to assess the film and the claims in it for themselves.” “Leaving Neverland” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, garnering strong critical reaction. (Like CNN, HBO is a unit of WarnerMedia.) Both Robson and Safechuck had defended Jackson in the past, with the former testifying on his behalf at Jackson’s 2005 child-molestation trial, which ended in his acquittal. In the film, they talk at length about the way Jackson seduced them and later pressured them not to speak of the sexual abuse, which, they claim, went on for years. At the taping, Winfrey, who conducted a widely-watched live interview with Jackson at Neverland in 1993, before the allegations of sexual abuse were made public, acknowledged that her involvement in Monday’s special would open her up to criticism from Jackson’s die-hard fans, who have vigorously pushed back against accusations that they have long characterized as money grabs and attempts to cash in on the King of Pop’s legacy.