New allegations against Michael Jackson have emerged in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, with four siblings from accusing the late singer of long-term sexual abuse and accusing his estate of covering up their claims.
Cascio siblings claim Michael Jackson ‘groomed and sexually assaulted them’
The complaint, filed in February in federal court, centres on the Cascio siblings — three brothers and a sister — who allege they were abused over several years during their childhood. The case drew wider attention after the siblings spoke in detail to The New York Times about their experiences and their legal battle with the Jackson estate.
The lawsuit names the estate and its executors, John Branca and John McClain, along with private investigator Herman Weisberg. The siblings claim that individuals linked to Jackson’s legal team misrepresented themselves as acting in the family’s interests during discussions.
The complaint made by the Cascio siblings states the following:
Michael Jackson was a serial child predator who, over the course of more than a decade, drugged, raped and sexually assaulted each of the Plaintiffs, beginning when some of them were as young as seven or eight. Jackson’s attacks on these siblings went on for extended periods, including in locations around the world and when Jackson and his children were guests in Plaintiffs’ family home. Jackson groomed and brainwashed each Plaintiff, without the knowledge of the others or their parents, throughout their childhood years.
Jackson insinuated himself into the lives of Plaintiffs and their parents with obsessive attention, lavish gifts, access to his celebrity lifestyle, and declarations that he loved and needed each of them. After the abuse started, he isolated them emotionally, and sometimes physically, from responsible adults and from each other. He plied them with drugs and alcohol. He showed them pornography, including pictures of unclothed children, to normalize the abuse and desensitize them. He made them fear and distrust others by convincing them that not only his life, but also their lives and the lives of their family members, would be destroyed if anyone found out what he was doing to them.
Jackson insinuated himself into Plaintiffs’ family life. He spent holidays and special occasions, including Thanksgiving, Christmas and his own birthday, with Plaintiffs and their family, often during lengthy stays at their New Jersey home with his own children. Jackson gained Plaintiffs’ sympathy by complaining about his own childhood and telling them repeatedly that he lacked a bond with his own family and that they were his true family. Jackson secured Plaintiffs’ loyalty and acceptance of the abuse with rewards, including unique access to his celebrity lifestyle and increasingly extravagant presents. These included suitcases full of videogames and electronics, private shopping trips to toy stores, exclusive visits to theme parks, introductions to other celebrities, and interstate and international travel. The travel included extended concert tours during which Jackson’s organization assured Jackson the privacy he needed for his sexual assaults.
He made two young boys under his ‘care’ watch him abuse Marie-Nicole and told her that the abuse he inflicted on her was a ‘normal thing between a man and a woman. Jackson used child-friendly language to appeal to Plaintiffs and conceal the assaults and drug and alcohol use from others. ‘Can I have a meeting,’ ‘Yogi Tea,’ ‘Neverland,’ and ‘Go to Disneyland’ were his code words for encouraging the children to engage in extreme sex acts with him. Those acts were as bad as, if not worse than, anything that can be described or imagined. He called wine ‘Jesus Juice’ and hard liquor ‘Disney Juice.’ He associated alcohol with playing, including by encouraging Plaintiffs to drink with him while they were in the basement of his Neverland Ranch game room, which he called the ‘Wine Cellar.’
Jackson organization members constantly encountered evidence of Jackson’s sexual activities with Plaintiffs. They saw Jackson bringing victims, including Plaintiffs, to spend nights in his private bedrooms. They did the children’s bedding and laundry. They brought pornography and photographs of unclothed children to Jackson. They procured drugs and alcohol that they knew Jackson was going to give to Plaintiffs to make them comply with his demands. They saw Plaintiffs and other children inebriated and in alcohol induced stupors. They regularly witnessed Jackson’s inappropriate displays of affection to Plaintiffs, including Jackson fondling his victims in public spaces at Neverland Ranch and elsewhere. They followed Jackson’s orders not to disturb him when he was alone with Plaintiffs, knowing that he was sexually violating them. They installed security systems at Neverland designed to prevent outsiders from discovering Jackson’s crimes.
The legal dispute between the family and the estate dates back to 2019, after the release of the documentary Leaving Neverland, which examined separate abuse allegations. The complaint says the estate sought to settle with the siblings that year. Initially, each sibling was offered $100,000, but the agreement later changed to annual payments of $690,000 over five years, totalling $2.8 million per person, according to the estate.
The siblings now allege that during those negotiations, lawyers misled them into believing they were acting on their behalf. The complaint also claims that in 2024, the family was contacted with an offer to increase in exchange for continued silence.
Read the full statement by Jackson estate attorney Martin Singer of Lavely & Singer:
This lawsuit is a desperate money grab by additional members of the Cascio family who have hopped on the bandwagon with their brother Frank, who is already being sued in arbitration for civil extortion. The family staunchly defended Michael Jackson for more than 25 years, attesting to his innocence of inappropriate conduct. This new court filing is a transparent forum-shopping tactic in their scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael’s estate and companies.
Statements by the Cascios, including those appearing in dozens of passages throughout Frank Cascio’s 2011 book, as well as in interviews with Oprah Winfrey and others, directly contradict what is being alleged now. Throughout, the Cascios consistently and repeatedly asserted that Michael never harmed any of them or anyone else.
For example, in a 2010 nationally televised interview, Oprah Winfrey asked Eddie, Frank, and Marie Nicole, “Were there ever any improprieties with you and Michael Jackson?” and all three of them responded in unison, “Never, never,” and shook their heads. Eddie added, “Michael couldn’t, he couldn’t harm a fly. I mean, he’s such a kind and gentle soul.” When Oprah asked them what they thought when Michael went on trial for charges against him, Eddie responded saying “This is ridiculous,” adding that “You know, Michael was a target and unfortunately, he was targeted.”
With the Estate’s financial success growing, the Cascios, through two different attorneys, threatened to go public with heinous accusations that completely contradicted their previous statements defending Michael unless his Estate paid staggering sums of money. Last year, the Cascios’ attorney Howard King demanded $213 million. After Howard King was replaced for a time by attorney Mark Geragos, Geragos made a new but equally baseless $40 million demand on behalf of the Cascios. Still looking for their multi-million-dollar payday, the Cascios brought back Howard King and are grasping at straws through this frivolous filing.
This isn’t the first time the Cascios have tried to leverage their association with Michael for financial gain. Amid the media frenzy following a 2019 HBO documentary replete with false allegations, they threatened to make accusations that were the opposite of their decades of prior statements supporting Michael unless they were paid millions of dollars. Estate executors, under recommendation of counsel with respect to their responsibility as fiduciaries, reluctantly paid the Cascios $2.8 million each over five years to protect Michael’s family as well as future projects important to Michael’s legacy and fans, which were worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Estate for Michael’s beneficiaries.
The Cascio family’s former attorney Mark Geragos had been Michael’s defense counsel before being dismissed in 2004, spent years attesting to Michael’s innocence, including multiple statements in his 2013 book and in an interview that year with Huff Post in which he labeled accusations against Michael “a shakedown.
Michael was unanimously acquitted by a jury after a 5-month trial, about which Geragos wrote, “the only thing that surprised us was that it took them longer than fifteen minutes to reach that decision.” The Cascios spent decades defending and affirming Michael’s innocence. Notably, these shakedown attempts come more than 15 years after Michael’s death, thus carrying no risk of being sued for defamation. Sadly, in death just as in life, Michael’s talents and success continue to make him a target.
The case is ongoing in federal court.
