Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons Quotes

“Brett’s mother, Marie Lisbeth, added to the ever-growing picture of mothers around Jackson who struck trial followers as overly star-struck, trusting and uncritically devoted to their idol and benefactor.”
― Carl Toms, Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons

“Legal analysts said the entertainer’s significant support for the family would inevitably cast some doubts on their denials of any molestation.”
― Carl Toms, Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons

“The line of apologetics is unconvincing to anyone who has studied Michael’s career, in which he began to show himself as a feisty player in his own destiny even before his age hit double figures, and as an independent business negotiator by his mid-teens – in both cases in defiance of an overbearing father who totally dominated his older brothers. As we saw in Chapter Eight, smacked across the face by his father Joseph for failing to execute a dance step the right way, nine-year-old Michael knew just how to hit back. “Hit me again”, he said, “it’ll be the last time I ever sing.”[540”
― Carl Toms, Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons

“If they had instead been disposed to make trouble for the star there can be little doubt his fate would have been sealed. At the very least his career and reputation would have been damaged beyond repair. Pellicano is said to have been involved in paying off dozens of other potential witnesses, some of whom received fabulous gifts in suspicious circumstances.”
― Carl Toms, Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons

“indicates that we should perhaps not be too cynical about the many glowing tributes paid to Michael Jackson by Macaulay Culkin and many of his other boy friends. It is clear from Sandfort’s findings that boys can respond positively to grown-ups who take an interest in them and are at ease in young company.”
― Carl Toms, Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons

“Those who are without children, and without even the hope of having any, feel all too keenly what it is to be excluded from this great universe of human meaning. They feel themselves as outsiders to society and even to humanity, standing in the cold, condemned for ever to experience the warmth and fulfilment of family life at best through stolen moments with other people’s children, if at all. It may be that they rarely come nearer the real thing than seeing the idealised families of the TV commercials and sitcoms: their pain will be all the greater because they cannot see that real parenthood often has its agonies and disappointments too. The fact that their view of what they are missing may be unrealistic is neither here nor there. It is their feelings that concern us for the moment, their pain at being left out, sidelined, on the margins of life.”
― Carl Toms, Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons

“] In any case, however much Michael may have wanted to live the life of a child his hormones were those of an adult: he may have missed out on childhood, but not on puberty.”
― Carl Toms, Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons