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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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He was also a pedophile.
Here's a legitimate question...at what point, in your mind, does a child who's suffered years of sexual abuse deserve to lose every shred of empathy? In no way am I ever going to excuse what MJ might have done, but he himself was also a victim for so many years, and was set up to fail from the beginning by his family and the industry
It's a difficult question.
A very large percentage of paedophiles are victims themselves. Children don't have any characteristics that arouse me, and to dwell on the thought males me feel very uncomfortable indeed.
If a person is attracted to a child in a sexual manner, then for want of a better way of putting it, there has to be something wrong with that. Arguably that person needs help rather than incarceration.
But then there are the victims of the paedophile. They deserve justice, and children deserve to be safe.
Maybe MJ was a private and quirky troubled artist who was guilty of poor optics. Maybe he was a serial serial offender, who was enabled BT paid off security, parents etc.
We will never know what MJ did or did not do with those children, but they were failed by multiple adults, regardless. If you let your kid play on a main road you are a terrible parent, whether they get hit by a car or not. Every person that did not intervene, allowed that child to continue playing is as responsible as the parent.
And there are mountains of child-abuse victims who never abuse children. MJ was treated worse than most children can even imagine but the advantages he took on other children is unacceptable.
I didn't mean to suggest that all child-abuse victims went on to become abusers.
Thanks — and it didn’t come across that way
Nah, my friend used to hang out at MJ’s house all the time and he doesn’t remember any pedophilia. Or anything else.
You almost got me there...
The sleepovers were such a pain in the arse.