Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson review: questions remain but this update has no answers
Leaving Neverland was the 2019 film in which two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, alleged that Michael Jackson sexually abused them when they were young boys. For diehard Michael Jackson fans, they were liars out for financial gain. For others, the details were stomach-turning and evidence of a predator hiding in plain sight. How many people still buy the idea that Jackson shared his bed with little boys for innocent reasons?
Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson (Channel 4) is a follow-up, but it tells us nothing new. Robson and Safechuck are trying to bring a case against Jackson's companies, MJ Productions and MJ Ventures, but it has been mired in endless court hearings about whether or not corporations can be held responsible for such things. Lawyers for the Jackson estate, as you would expect, say they cannot.
Robson and Safechuck say that Jackson's nefarious behaviour would have been obvious to anyone working for him – a 'constant cycle of kids coming in and out'. 'He'd call them his 'special friend' and he would interact with these kids in a way that someone would interact with a boyfriend or girlfriend,' says their lawyer, Vince Finaldi. 'So I would find it very hard to believe that someone who was an adult employee of Michael Jackson would not at the very least have a suspicion as to what was going on.'
Finaldi also describes high-profile abusers who make a show of their charity work and acts of kindness, in remarks that bring to mind Jimmy Savile: 'Sexual abusers are not stupid people. They're incredibly intelligent, incredibly manipulative, and that's why they're able to do this for so long, for decades, right in front of the public.'
The legal wrangling has gone on for a decade, with a trial date finally set for 2026. We're shown the odd bit of footage from court hearings, all very technical, but otherwise this documentary has little to do except re-run some of the claims from the first film and to reassert that these two were certainly not the first to make allegations about Jackson. There are also interviews with Robson and Safechuck. The latter seems particularly weary of how long this is taking. Four years ago, he told the filmmakers that he was 'looking forward to letting go' if a court ruling went against him, but he's still going.
Finaldi says he is going to retire from child abuse work because it has taken such a toll. 'Generally speaking, I lose one client a year, sometimes two, to suicide or the ill effects that come from abuse – alcoholism, drug abuse. I get to deal with the ghosts of at least 20 or 30 clients that I think about all the time.' For Robson and Safechuck, the case continues, but this documentary doesn't advance their cause. It simply reminds us of the case, and prompts us to revisit a question which the first film addressed but this one doesn't: never mind Jackson's staff, what on earth were the parents thinking when they let their young sons have sleepovers with a grown man?
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