this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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My memory is fuzzy and Google-fu isnβt finding it, but wasnβt Neverland searched after he passed and they found lewd photos of children in his possession? I swear to god I remember reading something like that maybe a couple years after he passed.
No. He had pornographic magazines of (adult) women. A complete zero evidence incriminating him, see here. But it was a cottage industry to make shit up. It's pretty sad example of media malfeasance / racism / greed / hatred against freaks.
"evidence found at neverland ranch" turns up a lot of results, admittedly, with far too much commentary and speculation describing "must have been used for..." rather than what may actually have been the case.
Yeah, I was trying to find something more concrete than what was showing up in Google, but I could also just be misremembering that bit.
In hindsight...
How it was all reported in the media, commented on... was pretty fucking gross. Especially since the kid who made the allegations admitted to lying.
Nothing was held back on for the court of public opinion. Police statements amounted to "We found creepy dolls that only can be used for grooming..." "He had [this] because [he's definitely that]..." Later on the same police were caught giving adult magazines from the raid to one of the kids they claimed Michael molested... several months AFTER the raid... and then bagged the magazine for fingerprints. The way everything was handled, even if generously... we could admit that Michael was a bit of a kooky freak... the way the raid, reporting on evidence gathering (and apparent manufacturing of it) and prosecution was handled, that part of it seemed straight up corrupt.
There was always a tinge of ick about it all.
At best, Michael was a deeply damaged person who did whatever he could to cope with the loss of his childhood and... we'll never know what truly happened at the Ranch.
You shouldn't repeat rumors you heard without any actual evidence at hand to back them up. That's just baseless gossip. It's poison spewing from your mouth to the ears of anyone who hears you.
I can't back it up either, but I remember reading that he had thousands of books of photographic collections and one magazine went through them all and found a couple dozen photos that would been extremely suspicious if that's all he had.