Michael Jackson accused of child sex trafficking in new lawsuit

Four siblings, longtime friends of Michael Jackson, accuse the late pop star of being a “serial child predator” who preyed on them when they were just “seven or eight” years old, in an explosive new lawsuit filed last week in California.

Edward, Dominic and Aldo Cascio and their sister Marie-Nicole Porte called Jackson a “serial child predator” who “for more than a decade drugged, raped and sexually assaulted each of the plaintiffs,” according to their complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

The plaintiffs met Jackson through their father who worked at a hotel where Jackson often stayed, according to the lawsuit.

The Michael Jackson Company and individuals associated with the late artist’s estate, trust and production companies have been named as defendants.

“Plaintiffs reject the morally bankrupt efforts of the Jackson estate to control and silence them,” plaintiffs’ attorney Howard King wrote in the federal lawsuit filed Feb. 27.

“Plaintiffs bring this action to hold the estate of Michael Jackson, his affiliates, and those who control or work on their behalf, accountable for Jackson’s conduct and their own wrongdoing.”

Veteran entertainment industry attorney Martin Singer, representing Jackson’s estate, called the lawsuit a “desperate cash grab.”

“This new court filing is a transparent forum-hunting tactic in their plan to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael’s estate and companies,” Singer said in a statement.

Singer pointed out that Edward Cascio’s 2011 book, “My Friend Michael: An Ordinary Friendship with an Extraordinary Man,” contained family statements that “consistently and repeatedly asserted that Michael never harmed any of them or anyone else.”

Singer also noted during an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, Edward, Frank and Marie-Nicole Cascio all agreed that Jackson never harmed them, Singer said.

“The Cascios spent decades defending and affirming Michael’s innocence,” Singer said. “Notably, these extortion attempts come more than 15 years after Michael’s death, thus carrying no risk of being sued for defamation. Unfortunately, in death as in life, Michael’s talents and success continue to make him a target.”

“Jackson’s years of brainwashing prevented Plaintiffs from seeking help during his lifetime and for years afterward,” King wrote.

It wasn’t until the documentary “Leaving Neverland” was released in 2019 that the four siblings were “deprogrammed” and forced “for the first time, to realize the reality” that Jackson’s “abuse was wrong and had seriously damaged them,” the lawsuit says.

That year, the Jackson estate offered the family $690,000 “as compensation for the many years that Jackson abused each of them and that the Jackson Organization enabled and covered up,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs signed that agreement without being allowed to retain an attorney to review it, King wrote.

“If the plaintiffs had understood the full meaning of the document, they would not have signed it,” he wrote.

Jackson was found not guilty in 2005 of all charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor in Neverland in 2003.

Jackson was 50 years old when he died on June 25, 2009 from acute propofol poisoning. The singer used the powerful anesthetic as a sleeping pill and his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, was convicted of manslaughter.