Thank goodness for that. From what I’ve read, mom’s a wonderful person. No wonder MJ wanted to be a girl, didn’t want to be like his dad.
Jackson said that he was physically and emotionally abused by his father [Joe Jackson] from a young age, enduring incessant rehearsals, whippings and name-calling.
Recalled by Marlon Jackson — Joseph held Michael upside down by one leg and “pummeled him over and over again with his hand, hitting him on his back and buttocks”. Joseph would also trip or push his male children into walls. One night while Jackson was asleep, Joseph climbed into his room through the bedroom window.
Wearing a fright mask, he entered the room screaming and shouting. Joseph said he wanted to teach his children not to leave the window open when they went to sleep. For years afterwards, Jackson said he suffered nightmares about being kidnapped from his bedroom. In 2003, Joseph admitted to the BBC that he had whipped Jackson as a child.
Jackson first spoke openly about his childhood abuse in a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey. He said that during his childhood he often cried from loneliness and would sometimes start to vomit upon seeing his father.
In Jackson’s other high profile interview, Living with Michael Jackson (2003), the singer covered his face with his hand and began crying when talking about his childhood abuse. Jackson recalled that Joseph sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as he and his siblings rehearsed and that “if you didn’t do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you”.
Well, from what I’ve read, mom’s not so nice either. Read the reviews on Amazon of La Toya Jackson’s book about growing up in that family. She later recanted some of what she wrote in the book, but I’m wondering if she was forced to recant what she had written b/c later on one of the brothers said that her hints at the sexual abuse were true.
One of the other brothers stated that when
the Jackson Five were doing gigs, Joe Jackson and the older brothers would bring women to the hotel room and get it on with them in front of MJ when MJ was just a little kid.