There’s a new documentary about two men who say they were sexually abused by the late Michael Jackson, and it’s premiering at the Sundance Film Festival to much criticism.
There is a heightened police presence as bomb-sniffing dogs hit the streets at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
Security is tight as cops respond to potential disruption by protesters at the world premiere of a documentary investigating child abuse claims against the late Michael Jackson, who died in 2009.
Officials in Park City said their primary concern is about an incident inside the Egyptian Theater screening of the Dan Reed-directed film, “Leaving Neverland,” Friday.
The documentary focuses on two Jackson accusers, including James Safechuck, who starred in Pepsi commercials with the “King of Pop.” Safechuck also toured with Jackson and says they had sleepovers. Safechuck claims Jackson began sexually abusing him when he was 10.
The second accuser in the documentary is renowned choreographer Wade Robson. He told Inside Edition that Jackson sexually abused him beginning at age 7.
“Every time we were together it happened," he claimed to Inside Edition in 2017. "There was no night that went by that I was with him that he didn’t sexually abuse me."
He says Jackson warned him they would both go to jail if anyone found out.
“It was not possible for me to tell the truth about what Michael Jackson did to me until I did because when I was younger, I was terrified by the idea of my life falling apart [and] him going to jail," he said.
Robson and Safechuck both testified under oath that Jackson never abused them, then later changed their stories and sued the Jackson estate.
“Michael was an incredible performer and was also a child predator," Robson told Inside Edition in 2017. "A child sexual abuser."
Representatives for the estate of the best-selling performer, who was acquitted in 2005 of seven counts of child molestation and two counts of giving a drug to a 13-year-old boy, slammed the documentary as "just another rehash of dated and discredited allegations."
Attorney Tom Mesereau, who represented Jackson when he was found not guilty of molestation charges, is slamming the documentary.
"I firmly believe that Michael Jackson was not a child molester and I firmly believe that he never abused any child at any time," he told Inside Edition.
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