New Book Rips The Lid Off Jackson Family Dysfunction

New a book about Michael Jackson details the torture Michael Jackson went through at the hands of his money grubbing family.

In the late summer of 2001, Michael Jackson’s family were after him again. It was two days before his scheduled departure for New York, where his 30th Anniversary concerts were to be staged at Madison Square Garden.

Performers would include Destiny’s Child, Ray Charles and Whitney Houston, and friends Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando had been recruited to deliver televised speeches.

Michael wanted his family in New York as well; his brothers to perform a medley of hits from their days as the Jackson 5, while his parents sat in special box seats. The Jacksons insisted that they should receive appearance fees and it was agreed that family members would get honorariums of $250,000, even those who would just be there to watch the show.

Just days before the first concert, though, Jermaine Jackson read an article that said his brother would be making as much as $10 million from the two shows and convinced his parents that Michael should pay the three of them another $500,000 apiece.

Jermaine and his father Joe drew up a contract and, with mother Katherine in tow, chased Michael around California to try to get him to sign.

Michael took refuge for several days at the house of his friend Marc Schaffel, co-producer of the event, then made a dash north to Neverland Ranch. He and his two young children, four-year-old Prince and three-year-old Paris, had barely set foot inside the house when Joe, Katherine and Jermaine appeared at the gate.

Michael told the security guards to tell his family he wasn’t there. Joe Jackson, though, refused to budge. ‘I’m his father,’ Joe told the guards. ‘I need to use the bathroom. His mother needs to use the bathroom. Let us in.’

Frantic, Michael phoned Schaffel. If they got through the gate, his family would hound him to sign this contract, he explained. But he couldn’t keep his mother locked outside when she was pleading just to use the bathroom.

He told Schaffel he would instruct the guards to tell his family again that Mr Jackson was not on the premises, but to admit them so that they could use the facilities.

But as soon as Joe and Jermaine were through the gate, they drove to the main house and pushed their way inside. ‘They literally ransacked the place,’ Schaffel remembered. Michael retreated with Prince and Paris to a hiding place concealed behind a secret door at the back of his bedroom closet and phoned Schaffel from there. He was in tears, literally whimpering into the phone.

‘You see what they do to me? Do you understand now why I don’t want anything to do with my brothers, why I hide from them and refuse to answer their phone calls?

‘I’ve supported my brothers, supported them all,’ Michael cried. ‘I’ve put their kids through school. But they still come after me, still wanting more. It never ends. And my father’s worse than they are.’

Michael choked up, Schaffel recalled, and then sobbed: ‘The worst part, the part that kills me, is that I have to lie to my own mother. Do you understand, Marc?’ Michael asked. ‘Do you understand now why I am the way I am? How else could I be?

For someone who so often professed his loneliness, Michael Jackson spent a remarkable amount of time avoiding people. He wore disguises, broke off relationships, and changed telephone numbers, but still paparazzi, delusional women, and desperate men pursued him. The saddest part, though, was that the people Michael took the greatest pains to elude were the members of his own family.

Jacked from The Daily Mail