What were the sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson?

In 1993 Michael Jackson was accused of sexually molesting a 13-year-old boy he had befriended; a civil suit was settled out of court.

Ten years later, however, the singer was arrested and charged (in November 2003) with child molestation involving a different boy than the 1993 case. Among those who were called to testify in Jackson’s defense during the trial was actor Macaulay Culkin, who had become friends with Jackson when he was nine years old and Jackson was an adult. Culkin maintained that he had never experienced anything inappropriate with the singer. After a 14-week trial, Jackson was acquitted in 2005.

Jackson died in 2009, but more sexual abuse accusations emerged after his death. In 2019 the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland highlighted the claims of two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who said that Jackson sexually abused them when they were children. (Neither was a subject of the court cases in 1993 and 2005.) Jackson’s estate sued HBO and denied the men’s allegations. In 2024 the case against HBO was dismissed after a settlement that involved removing Leaving Neverland from the channel’s programming. Robson and Safechuck both pursued civil suits against Jackson’s estate.

New claims of abuse and child grooming arose after the release of the biopic Michael—this time from a family that included five children who had befriended Jackson in the 1990s. Although the family had publicly defended the singer on many occasions, including after his death, in 2026 they sued his estate. A lawyer for the estate denied the allegations and called the lawsuit “a desperate money grab.”