Terry George
Terry George never filed a lawsuit against Jackson and in fact never reported his allegations to authorities but he was a frequent source for British tabloid stories in the wake of the 1993 Chandler scandal and has since been at their disposal whenever a fictitious story about Michael Jackson being inappropriate with children is required.
George, a disc jockey at the time, gained notoriety on August 29, 1993 when only six days after the Chandler case was first reported by the media, he appeared in British tabloids claiming that Jackson had been inappropriate with him in 1979, when Jackson was 20 and he was 13 years old.
George was a celebrity-obsessed teenager who regularly sought out celebrities, sneaked into their hotels to meet them, asked for their autographs and hoarded photos and taped interviews of them. As an adult George, who now amongst other businesses, runs a gay adult phone chat service, still likes to present himself as someone associated with celebrities. According to George, he met Michael Jackson in a hotel in February of 1979 while the Jacksons were on tour in the UK. He actually taped an interview with Michael and his brother, Randy, which was later aired on local radio stations. After the interview, George claimed, Michael Jackson asked for his telephone number and Jackson then regularly called him for about three months. George alleged that during these phone calls Jackson was once inappropriate with him, speaking about masturbation and masturbating while he was on the phone with him.
In the article it is claimed that the phone contact ended when George’s parents realized that he had run up a high telephone bill calling the US. George then tried to reach Jackson from a phone box but claimed that Jackson would not take his calls: according to one of the original 1993 tabloid articles
“it became clear his superstar friend didn’t want to know” [10].
George, however, kept stalking Jackson. According to the article,
“the final rejection came four years later when Terry tried to rekindle their friendship when Jackson came to London again. Terry tracked him down and was even photographed alongside his idol, but now the management were on hand to issue the polite brush-off.” [10]
In the article George concludes that Jackson rejected him because he was no longer a child, however this contradicts the earlier claim that Jackson actually refused to take his phone calls four years earlier, when George was still 13.
In a 2003 documentary made by British broadcaster, Louis Theroux, George spoke about his alleged “friendship” with Jackson. George proudly recalled his phone conversations with Jackson as a happy and joyful experience. It is Theroux who brings up his 1993 tabloid allegation that Jackson was inappropriate with him on the phone. George is reluctant to talk about that and claims what was printed
“came out really without my authority”. When Theroux asks him if the story was true, George claims
“parts of it are true” but adds that papers twisted and sensationalized it. Then, after stating he did not want to talk about that because
“it is well documented in the papers”, he tries to go back to discussing what a great “friendship” he had with Jackson. [11]
Unfortunately the contradiction between the story being
“well documented” in the papers and the claim that papers twisted and sensationalized it, is not resolved in the interview and George makes no attempt to make it clear what parts of the story, according to his current position, are true and what parts are not.
In the Theroux interview, George also says that it is unfortunate that the focus of the media has been on this small detail of the story, when they had such a great “friendship” otherwise. We are to believe that when George went to the tabloid media with these claims, six days after the Chandler allegations became public, he did not know what impact this story would have and what people would focus on. In actuality, it is safe to say that this hook, the masturbation claim, is just what George needed to include in his story to be picked up and printed by the tabloid media at all and to lend George national and international notoriety. Why did he make his allegations in the tabloids, which are known to pay money for such claims, instead of contacting the prosecutors in the Chandler case?
In January 2005, on his website George criticized tabloids for rehashing his story from 1993 and claiming that he would be a prosecution witness at Jackson’s upcoming trial. Despite this criticism and George’s claim to Theroux that the original story had been released without his authority, sensationalized by the media and that the “small detail” about the alleged masturbation had received disproportionate attention, in February 2005, shortly after Jackson’s trial began, George appeared in Martin Bashir’s slanderous documentary entitled
Michael Jackson’s Secret World and rehashed the original story that was printed in the tabloids in 1993, adding even more focus on the masturbation claim.
Although the tabloid articles in 1993 claimed that George was ready to help investigators in the Chandler case, he never did. Based on Jackson’s FBI files, the FBI monitored George’s claims in the tabloid media, but then the prosecution never used him. Either the prosecution did not consider him credible and/or he was not willing to repeat his claims under oath and subject himself to a cross-examination about them. In 2005, on his website, he vehemently denied media reports that claimed he would be a prosecution witness at Jackson’s upcoming trial. Instead of testifying at Jackson’s trial and subjecting himself to cross-examination he chose to smear Jackson in the media and in Bashir’s documentary. His platform to make allegations against the star was always only the media and mainly the tabloids which are known to pay money for such allegations. George never testified about his claims under oath and was never cross-examined about them.
In 2009, in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death, George once again made his rounds in the British tabloids, now posing as a “friend” of the star and recounting stories with very questionable credibility. According to a June 28, 2009
Mirror article, George conveniently claimed that just before his death Jackson called him to apologize and they made up.
“He phoned me out of the blue and we both made our peace about what had happened in the past. I’ve forgiven him for what happened” [12]. Not surprisingly, he had no evidence for this alleged phone call and once again we are just supposed to take George’s word for it.
George used the opportunity to make false statements in order to promote a website he set up in 2005,
Gone Too Soon, curiously bearing the name of a Michael Jackson song, although it has no association with the star.
“Terry also revealed that ***** had taken a strong interest in the website he’d founded, Gonetoosoon.org – where users post tributes to people who die young. “He had been on the site and said he was touched to see some of the messages,” he said. “It had left him very sad and emotional.” [12]
No other child has ever claimed that Jackson masturbated while on the phone. Several recordings exist of private phone conversations Jackson had with children, as people often taped their telephone conversations with him without his knowledge and consent, but no tapes have shown that Jackson ever behaved inappropriately with children. On the contrary, all of his taped phone conversations with children are very child-like and innocent. Terry George could never present evidence for his claims either (consider that he often taped his conversations with celebrities), though there is plenty evidence of his opportunism.