Michael Jackson’s estate has initiated legal proceedings against a former associate of the late pop icon, who threatened to raise fresh allegations of inappropriate conduct before the release of a film the executors hope will quell the child sex abuse claims that shadowed his later years.
The man and four others told the estate in about 2019, a decade after the singer’s death, that they might go public with allegations that he had acted inappropriately with some of them when they were children.
In 2020, the estate quietly struck a previously unreported settlement worth $16.5mn, under which the man and the other accusers agreed instead to defend Jackson’s reputation.