Michael Jackson's Alleged Victims Request Sealed Police Records Including Nude Photos

Lawyers for Michael Jackson's production company are fighting back against his accusers' request to unseal some of the late pop star's police records.

Wade Robson, 41, and James Safechuck, 46, who both accused Jackson of sexually abusing them as children and were featured in HBO's 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, filed a subpoena last month requesting access to a number of documents as part of their ongoing lawsuit against Jackson's companies for allowing the alleged abuse to occur.

MJJ Productions asked the Superior Court of Los Angeles to deny their request, claiming that the documents they want include "photographs of Michael Jackson’s genitalia and naked body taken by police" that were "sealed by a court-entered protective order from the Santa Barbara Superior Court."

In a motion filed in court on Wednesday and obtained by RadarOnline.com, MJJ's attorneys argued that "the photographs Plaintiffs seek were not taken willingly by Mr. Jackson; they were the result of a court-ordered search based on a false statement in what became a discredited criminal investigation" and that the subpoena "represents an egregious violation of these privacy rights, and is simply beyond the pale."

"To allow Plaintiffs to exploit that series of circumstances to their benefit by obtaining those photographs now adds a second defilement to the first," they added. “Plaintiffs’ March 2024 Subpoenas are an appalling intrusion and violation of these privacy interests and have no legitimate purpose. These subpoenas seek, in relevant part, a highly sensitive and discrete set of documents."

"Here, there is no legitimate justification for Plaintiffs’ gross attempt to violate the privacy of a man who has been deceased for almost a decade and to disturb his family’s ‘peace of mind and tranquility’ with our 'sensation-seeking culture' ... Plaintiffs’ subpoenas must be quashed insofar as they are seeking these lurid images of Mr. Jackson. Indeed, allowing Plaintiffs to proceed with these subpoenas is particularly inappropriate given the circumstances surrounding the photographs."

The sealed documents, which MJJ argued are not "directly relevant" to the case, reportedly also include incident reports, recordings, and other investigative files from 1993, when the Thriller singer was accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy.

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Robson and Safechuck filed lawsuits in 2013 and 2014 accusing MJ of sexually abusing them for years. They were initially shut down because the claims were brought past the statute of limitations, but after two appeals and a new law allowing alleged survivors of childhood sexual abuse longer to file lawsuits, they won the right to combine their cases and proceed to trial.

Both men are suing Jackson's companies MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures, now run by his estate, claiming that employees “witnessed the sexual abuse” or “circumstances suggesting sexual abuse” and are thus liable for allowing the alleged abuse to occur. To be compensated, they need to prove that Jackson sexually assaulted him and that his companies were complicit.

Their legal team is hoping to go to trial early next year, ahead of the April 2025 release of the Antoine Fuqua-directed Michael biopic, which stars Michael's nephew Jaafar Jackson and was made in cooperation with his estate. An attorney for Jackson's companies said that her clients plan to waive a three-year speedy trial year because they believe the case won't be ready for jurors until after December 2026.

“They want the Michael Jackson biopic to come out before the trial. That’s what I think,” the duo's lawyer John C. Carpenter told Rolling Stone in February. “These corporations that facilitated the abuse in the first place, they’re rewriting the history.”