Media outlets blasted Jackson as a baby-dangling lunatic when he appeared on a balcony in Germany that year and held the infant Blanket up for a crowd to see later on, when tabloids snapped Jackson’s kids wearing masks in public, he was labeled a creep rather than a father hoping to preserve his children’s anonymity.

This image seeped into coverage of his own kids: Prince, born in 1997, and Paris, the following year-both to Jackson’s second wife, Debbie Rowe-followed by Blanket, in 2002, to a mystery mother. The popular caricature of Jackson during his later years was that of an eccentric and possibly depraved superstar stunted by a traumatic childhood. You saw a very caring, giving father who wanted to be simple and quiet and teach his children about the world.” You really watched him with his kids and you didn’t see a selfish narcissist or a celebrity. “Absolutely loved his kids, and they loved him. “I never saw a more doting father in my life,” Mesereau told me. Rather than send them off to a nanny so that he could sneak in some much-needed rest, the King of Pop gamely stayed awake and showered them with hugs. One of Mesereau’s clearest memories: watching Jackson’s three children jump on his bed as he lay recovering from a particularly grueling day. Throughout the trial, Mesereau spent countless hours preparing with Jackson at the singer’s Neverland Ranch, 35 miles from the courthouse. courthouse where he’d been tried-one for each charge of which he was cleared.Īmong his biggest boosters was his attorney, Tom Mesereau, a Harvard grad known for defying orthodoxy, exemplified in everything from his novel courtroom approach to his lightning-white shock of shoulder-length hair. Moments after Michael Jackson was vindicated at the conclusion of a molestation trial that trained the world’s eyes on him for much of 2005, a group of his most devoted fans released 14 white doves into the sky outside the Santa Maria, Calif.

Becoming Dad by M.A. Jackson