Dan Reed (centre) says Wade Robson (left) and James Safechuck were asked to go into explicit detail for Leaving Neverland. Photo / AP
Dan Reed (centre) says Wade Robson (left) and James Safechuck were asked to go into explicit detail for Leaving Neverland. Photo / AP
"People will have to listen to his music in the knowledge that he was a prolific child rapist," says Dan Reed, the director of Leaving Neverland.
We're in the 54-year-old's production office in central London. Reed's five Baftas, for hard-hitting films such as Terror in Mumbai (2009) and Battle forHaiti (2011), are sitting on the windowsill.
A handwritten letter on pink paper from an outraged Michael Jackson fan is pinned to the wall; "Leave the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, be! These so-called 'victims' have already testified that Michael never did anything to them. Now ... they decide to flap their gums to spew out lies."
Ever since the documentary first aired at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, amid a large police presence, it has stirred up strong emotions.
Fans from all over the world have subjected Reed to a torrent of abuse via email and social media, wishing him dead.
The singer's family have insisted that Jackson's "slumber parties" with young boys were innocent. His estate has launched a US$100 million ($148m) lawsuit against HBO, which has aired the documentary.
"This is a film about love and the betrayal of love," Reed says. "Jackson abused these boys not just physically but psychologically and emotionally. If you don't understand that they were in love with Michael, you can't understand anything they do: why would you not tell your mum? Why would you defend him in court? Society doesn't want to acknowledge that this can happen [but] it's the rotten love of the paedophile and the pure love of the child."
Both James Safechuck and Wade Robson, who detail sexual abuse by the singer, have previously said that they had not been abused.
Michael Jackson and Wade Robson in Leaving Neverland.
Reed explained to both men: "I need you to go into explicit detail about what happened between you and Michael ... because for so many years the contention has been that he just liked children and a kiss and a cuddle — and this wasn't."
The film is so explicit that Sundance had support on hand in case viewers were traumatised.
Reed, who studied Russian at Cambridge University before joining the BBC as an assistant producer to film-maker Adam Curtis, says he approached the documentary scrupulously and with an open mind, noting that his reputation is built on "forensically researched, exhaustively documented" stories.
After the interviews were done, he says, he and his team spent months cross-checking the stories.
Jackson supporters question the motivation of Robson, claiming that he has been trying to make money from his allegations ever since Jackson died, first by attempting to sell a book about his relationship with the singer and then by suing the estate in 2013 for millions of dollars.
Safechuck also launched a civil case, they point out, suggesting that he co-operated with Reed only after his and Robson's cases were dismissed by judges (on the grounds that only Jackson, not his estate or business interests, could be held responsible for the alleged abuse).
Fans say that the striking similarity of the sex acts in the testimonies of Safechuck and Robson comes from the fact that they share a legal team, and that boys such as Emmanuel Lewis and Macaulay Culkin have nearly identical stories of friendships with Jackson but deny abuse.
Dan Reed (centre) says Wade Robson (left) and James Safechuck were asked to go into explicit detail for Leaving Neverland. Photo / AP
"Jackson was prepared to go to pretty much any lengths to destroy and discredit a child who claimed that he'd been hurt by him," Reed says, "and the estate is doing the same thing today. Their first response to news of this documentary was to say, 'They're after money and it's all lies.'"
I ask Reed about the complaint that the estate is not given a right of reply in the documentary. Reed doesn't accept that, explaining that it includes clips of Jackson offering denials of sexual abuse, as well as footage of his lawyers saying that Robson and Safechuck are lying.
I can feel his anger rising as he mimics the recent "embarrassing interview with Jermaine Jackson" on Good Morning Britain.
"'Oh you're making this film about Michael, he's not around to defend himself, leave him alone ... ' Wade and James are alive [and] they have things they want to say about Michael."
Since Jermaine's comments, Jackson's other brothers, and Taj, his nephew, have told CBS: "We know our brother and he wouldn't do anything like that ... It's all about money. Not one piece of evidence corroborates their story."
Reed, in contrast, believes the case is "cut and dried. I defy anyone having watched the whole film with an open mind to come out thinking that Wade and James and their families are lying. This isn't forensic evidence, we're not analysing bodily fluids ... and there's no 'gotcha' videotape of Michael having sex with children. Short of that, we've got the most persuasive evidence you could possibly have, which is mutually supporting, harrowing and very consistent testimony of two families."
Why does he think the image of Jackson as almost a child himself has survived up to now?
"He put a huge amount of money and time and effort into embedding that into the public imagination," Reed says. "Neverland, this sort of playground for children — designed to be a playground for him as a rampant predatory paedophile — was a way for Jackson to hide in plain sight ... 'of course I'm walking along holding a little boy's hand every minute of the day' ... 'of course I do this, because I'm just a child at heart and I love children; of course I'm going to spend the night with your little boy because we just like to play, it's a slumber party'.
"It's rubbish. He was raping those children, night after night after night, in the next room to their mothers. It's the most appalling depravity covered up by this facade of angelic childlike purity — that lie was staring us all in the face for so many years."
• Leaving Neverland is screening as a two-part documentary on TVNZ 1 tomorrow and Monday. The full four-hour series will be available at TVNZ OnDemand from tomorrow.
