Paris Jackson Calls Leaving Neverland’s Allegations of Michael Jackson’s Sexual Abuse “Lies”

Upon the release of Leaving Neverland, in which two men allege that Michael Jackson sexually abused them when they were young boys, Jackson’s estate and several of his family members issued formal rebukes of the documentary. Though Jackson’s children have largely stayed silent about the allegations, his daughter, Paris Jackson, did briefly break that silence this week, when she shared a series of tweets alluding to the claims, while stopping short of addressing them head-on.

Jackson first seemingly responded to the situation on Wednesday, as anonymously sourced reports surfaced claiming that she was worried about how the accusations would affect her burgeoning acting career: “y’all take my life more seriously than i do. calm yo tittaaaaysss,” she tweeted at the time. Later that evening, she clarified that request, writing, “i know injustices are frustrating and it’s easy to get worked up. but reacting with a calm mind usually is more logical than acting out of rage and also…. it feels better to mellow out,” and suggesting everyone “smoke some weed n think about the bigger picture.”

The 20-year-old went on to repeatedly refer to the content of Leaving Neverland as “lies” in her responses to Twitter users who cited the media’s coverage of the documentary. And when one fan lamented the effects of the allegations on Michael Jackson’s legacy, Jackson replied, “they do that to everyone with a good heart and tries to make a dfference [sic] but do you really think that it’s possible to tear his name down ? like do you truly believe they stand a chance ?”

Jackson has taken a similar stance in the past, when asked about the other allegations of sexual abuse that her father faced while he was still alive. “My dad would cry to me at night,” she told Rolling Stone in 2017. “Picture your parent crying to you about the world hating him for something he didn’t do. And for me, he was the only thing that mattered. To see my entire world in pain, I started to hate the world because of what they were doing to him. I’m like, ‘How can people be so mean?’” She continued, “Nobody but my brothers and I experienced him reading A Light in the Attic to us at night before we went to bed.…Nobody experienced him being a father to them. And if they did, the entire perception of him would be completely and forever changed.”

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