I think it's possible that he molested children, but since it's never been proven, I wouldn't say he did beyond a reasonable doubt. Weird behavior? Sure. Would I let my kid spend the night at his home? Hell no. But I sure don't feel comfortable saying he was a molester.

Yeah, this is where I am, too. We don't know enough to say for sure that he ever molested any child. But his behavior around children was weird and inappropriate enough that I would not have let any child that I had say over spend time alone with him.

I'll also note that none of MJ's accusors had recovered memories. They were all still children, not people recalling it later by the discredited therapeutic method of guided imagery (which actually creates false memories).

It makes me wonder how many things in my life I remember might not have really happened or unfolded differently that I remember them doing.

Yeah, a friend of mine and I were talking about this once. She was talking about a dinner we had gone to, and I had no recollection of it. But then I went and found an old diary post, and sure enough, there it was. But even though I knew it happened and I was there, I couldn't really remember it. So she wondered whether that really counted.

We don't know enough to say for sure that he ever molested any child.

You know what? We do have enough information on that point. It wasn't proved in court because he paid off the best case with $25 million. But by journalistic standards of what is verifiable? There's plenty of corroborating evidence.

Wasn't the 80's the time of the recovered memories stuff?

Recovered memories and also planted memories. It's been demonstrated pretty often that, with kids under about 5 or so, if you ask them "Did X happen to you?" and they say no the first time, and then a little later you go back and ask again, once you do it enough times, the kid will not only say "Yes," but will actually believe that it did happen and be able to describe in detail how it happened.

(The study I remember seeing on this was, once a week, a researcher would ask each kid, "Did you ever get your hand caught in a mousetrap?" First week, kids say no. By the third week, kids say "I don't know." By the fifth week or so, kids were pretty much all answering "Yes," and within another few weeks telling about how it happened in the basement and hurt a lot and they yelled and daddy came running downstairs and mommy put a bandage on it and all kinds of stuff like that.)

It makes me wonder how many things in my life I remember might not have really happened or unfolded differently that I remember them doing.

Oh yeah, something like that came up recently with me and my sister with some situation or other years in the past that I remembered as clear as day - and she did too, only totally, completely differently.

I have an anecdote I'm quite partial to that a friend inserted herself into a bit of that she missed, and I don't even know where to start. She'd already gone home! She's only heard me talk about it! I know it was just the three of us, because she doesn't have the T-shirt.

At least, I think that's why she doesn't have the T-shirt. It's how I recall it.

I don't have Hec's certainty, but I think evidence strongly points to some measure of pedophilia. I also think he was a tortured soul and a musical genius.

Yeah, this is wriggly can of worms for sure.

When a family takes money rather than taking it to court (and possibly saving other children if the person is a molester), you have to wonder a bit about their intentions.

That goes both ways. $25 million dollars also buys a lot of therapy and keeps your family out of the media circus of a trial against the single biggest celebrity in the world. And I think it's just as human to take $25 million, call it even and let other families look out for themselves, as it is to decide no amount of money is worth your child's suffering and other families need to be protected from this predator.

I can see both sides of that, and feel like a family taking the money tells us nothing about the veracity of their claims.

I have only two or three memories from my young childhood that I trust, because I've heard so many stories that I can recreate them. Some of those memories are almost third-person, because I can see myself instead of just having the memory of seeing the event.