This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Legal
Michael Jackson’s nephews sue RadarOnline over abuse claims
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 28 July 2016
Michael Jackson’s nephews Taj, TJ and Taryll Jackson – also known as the pop group 3T – have launched a $100 million libel lawsuit against Radar Online, over claims that they were abused by their uncle as children.
The lawsuit follows a series of reports published by RadarOnline last month, purporting to be based on documents from a 2003 police raid on Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch. Among various claims made in the reports, it was said that Taj, TJ and Taryll, the sons of Jackson’s brother Tito, accepted a gift of a car in exchange for keeping quiet about being abused by their uncle.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the lawsuit says: “Radar has tried to profit by launching a vicious and unrelenting attack on [Jackson] based on claims that, years ago, he was guilty of sexual abuse, even though, at the time, he was found ‘not guilty’ of that very charge. Radar represents its ‘reports’ as ‘new’ and based on official ‘detective reports’. Not only have those detective reports been available to the public for many years, Radar has misrepresented what the reports say”.
It goes on: “Radar falsely accused plaintiffs of committing a felony by participating in the concealment of criminal activity on the part of Michael Jackson and of being bribed to do so. Based on Radar’s libellous stories, the international media reported to the public that ‘Michael Jackson molested his own nephews … and silenced them with threats and gifts'”.
As previously reported, last month the Jackson estate published a statement in response to the reports, saying: “Everything in these reports, including what the County Of Santa Barbara calls ‘content that appears to be obtained off the internet or through unknown sources’ is false, no doubt timed to the anniversary of Michael’s passing. Those who continue to shamelessly exploit Michael via sleazy internet ‘clickbait’ ignore that he was acquitted by a jury in 2005 on every one of the fourteen salacious charges brought against him in a failed witch hunt”.
RadarOnline has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
