jacko was a wierdo, but TBH no more troubled than most Motown artists, and a lot of the bad things happened via those who were financially dependent on his success, such as the record company, such as a victims family getting a dead rat through the post (in the UK the cops would have treated that as serious witness intimidation).
I think he may have had “inappropriate friendships” with underage fans but probably on a lower level than many UK rock stars, certainly not on the level of Jimmy Saville and other such creeps. I’m not even sure if Jacko knew what age, ethnicity or gender he was by the time things were going downhill!
Plus it is more culturally acceptable amongst some non-white communities for teenagers and younger children to share bedrooms/sleeping areas (often well into their late teens) simply because they have big families, and less paranoia about child sexual abuse, as its believe (often mistakenly) that religion can prevent this (it can of course cause other problems!), so if he still thinks he’s 12 its not surprising he might have mistakenly invited a youngster of that age to hiis ranch.
I agree that Freddy Mercury and his band were also intelligent and talented, but bear in mind as an openly gay male the cops and the media would have constantly been on his case with regard to his behaviour, and it was still easy to stalk a pop star (close protection minders could be bribed to pass on info) and every communications device he used would have been analogue and subject to interception, and engineers within the Post Office, BBC and DTELS (these organisations all worked together) as well as individual radio enthusiasts did a certain amount of vigilanté data gathering operations completely outside the remit of their organisations. As these boffins were often more liberally minded than the Police and some were also LGBT they didn’t come across as judgmental but its often because of them that the evidence for todays court cases has been available.
