In June of 2005, after a very public trial, The People v. Michael Jackson, a jury acquitted the pop star of the charge of molesting a 13-year-old boy.  I knew Michael Jackson.  I worked with him on multiple occasions from the late ‘70s into the ‘90s.  He was an odd, soft-spoken, emotionally stunted, childlike soul.  He had been a revered entertainer since he emerged as the ‘front child’ for the Jackson 5 when he was only 10.  As an adult, he seemed to be developmentally frozen in time and openly sought out the friendship and companionship of children, some, twenty years his junior.  He named his sprawling, Disney-influenced estate Neverland Ranch, in deference to his never-grow-up, Peter Pan countenance.  Prosecutors had produced thousands of circumstantial documents and testimony from a litany of witnesses claiming improper, if not illegal, interaction with minors.  The media piled on.  People asked me what I thought and, sadly, (now, in hindsight, with some distance and a reevaluated inventory of my own history), I vehemently defended him, choosing to believe him incapable of ever harming a child.  Had he not done the truly awful things he is accused of by Wade Robson and James Safechuck in the documentary, Leaving Neverland, his publicly known behavior should have been considered anti-socially unacceptable, predatory child abuse.  He was, for all of his wealth, talent and privilege, a monster.  I can’t fully explain my need to defend him.  I am the one in six American men who have endured sexual abuse as a child and I should have known better how monsters behave and what they look like.  The scars of child abuse never fully heal and we should all be vigilant to identify and prevent it, whether in the name of deviant love, religion or Homeland Security, wherever it lurks.  I’m sorry.