Exposing Charles Thomson’s Inaccuracies on Leaving Neverland

Jun 10, 2019

I’ll be honest: prior to the release of Leaving Neverland, I wasn’t particularly familiar with the name Charles Thomson (@CEThomson). Sure, I’d probably heard it crop up a few times in conversations about Michael Jackson, but I certainly hadn’t taken any interest in him or his opinions.

Unsurprisingly, he’s held in high regard within the Michael Jackson fandom. A quick search on social media reveals a substantial number of posts and videos featuring Thomson, many dating back years. The most recent, predictably, criticise Dan Reed’s Leaving Neverland and its subjects, Wade Robson and James Safechuck.

Like many Jackson apologists, Thomson doesn’t appear to possess much of a moral compass. His support for Jackson is so brazen that he’s seemingly comfortable associating with individuals like John Ziegler—a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and outspoken sympathiser of convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.

One contentious point in the documentary—now fully weaponised by Jackson truthers—is the Neverland train station and James’s stated timeframe of abuse between 1988 and 1992. The station didn’t receive planning permission until September 1993, and despite an inadvertent claim by Jackson’s former photographer, Harrison Funk, that Jackson built it without a permit, there is no evidence that construction began before September 1993.

Much like Mike Smallcombe, who aggressively pushed the story, Charles Thomson displays chronic misconceptions and a troubling ignorance about the complexities of child sexual abuse—particularly the inconsistencies in timelines and locations often reported by genuine survivors.

In a brief 1-minute 8-second YouTube video titled “Truth Be Told Panel Charles Thomson”, published on 6 June 2019, he drops several clangers. Despite presenting himself as a Jackson “expert,” he fails to grasp even the simplest facts from a four-hour documentary.

Watch the video below.

In the video he states:

What do you do when someone makes an allegation and the other side is not responding or not able to respond? There are two things you do. First, you investigate. Leaving Neverland did not investigate, because there are massive, glaring factual inaccuracies in that documentary. It's full of them. For example, you have a kid saying he was molested in 1988 or 1989, in a building that was not built until 1995.

Charles is then told that time is running out, but goes on to say:

I'm not going to list everything, but it's teeming with massive errors. So then, what do you do? If you haven't investigated, you go to the other side for balance. They didn't do that either. The filmmaker, Dan Reed, gave a ridiculous excuse, saying he included Michael Jackson's denials when he was alive. But Jackson never denied these specific allegations, because these guys never accused him until after he was dead. You have lawyers who have been litigating with these guys for five years

The video ends abruptly.

Charles Thomson—perhaps intoxicated by his own narcissism—appears to be the one making massive, glaring factual inaccuracies, rather than Dan Reed or James Safechuck.

First and foremost, in the four-hour documentary, James Safechuck makes no mention of when the abuse at the train station occurred. His exact words are:

At the train station, there's a room upstairs, and we would have sex up there too. It happened every day. It sounds sick, but it's kind of like when you're first dating somebody, right? You do a lot of it.

James is also describing other locations within Neverland in that sentence.

Watch the video below.

Secondly, the train station was already substantial in size by the end of 1993 and fully completed by the summer of 1994—at least according to Mike Smallcombe.

Thirdly, Leaving Neverland isn’t limited to allegations against Jackson alone. It documents how Jackson selected and befriended Wade and James, along with their families; how he became an integral part of their lives before eventually losing interest and moving on to newer, younger boys. These are claims substantiated by court documents, photographs, and video footage.

Dan Reed has consistently stated that Leaving Neverland is about Wade and James—how they met Jackson, how Jackson groomed and seduced them into sexual contact, and why they defended their abuser both publicly and under oath for so long. It’s not a case of failing to conduct research. In fact, Reed began the entire process by interviewing former detectives and individuals involved in the investigations into Jackson in 1993 and 2005.

If any Jackson apologists had been invited to share their views in the documentary, their contribution would likely have been the same scripted and limited refrain: that Jackson was a wonderful man, and all his accusers are motivated by money.

Anyway, let’s refocus on Charles Thomson and his glaring factual inaccuracies. This is a “journalist” who believes that James Safechuck—a man who alleges he was abused over a four-year period more than 25 years ago, in a location larger than most housing estates and comprising at least 50 to 100 buildings and structures—couldn’t possibly misidentify a site of abuse or misremember the timeframe of when the abuse ended by a year or two.

Well, guess what, Charles? You managed to screw up spectacularly and couldn’t even get your facts straight from a four-hour documentary that aired in March 2019. You, along with Mike Smallcombe, call yourselves “journalists”, yet you seem to be the only two who’ve never heard of inconsistencies in timeframes and locations made by genuine survivors of sexual abuse.

Here’s what Kenneth V. Lanning, former Supervisory Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has to say on the matter of inconsistencies when multiple sexual acts occur over an extended period:

"Allegations involving multiple acts, on multiple occasions, over an extended period of time must be evaluated in their totality and context. Cases involving longterm sexual contact with child victims who engaged in compliant behavior should not be assessed and evaluated by comparisons to cases involving isolated, forced sexual assaults. 

Indicators suggesting a false allegation in a typical rape case have little application to the evaluation of most acquaintance, child-molestation cases, especially those involving repeated access and prolonged sexual activity. Such child molestation cases are very hard to classify as either a valid or false allegation. Victim claims may include allegations that appear to be false, but that does not mean the case can be labeled in totality as “a false allegation.” 

In my experience, many valid claims of child sexual molestation, especially those by this type of child victim, involve delayed disclosures, inconsistencies, varying accounts, exaggerations, and lies often associated with false allegations. Inconsistencies in allegations are significant but can sometimes be explained by factors other than that the allegation is false. What is consistent and logical in these circumstances must be based on experience and knowledge of cases similar to the case being evaluated.

Any indicators of a potential false claim must be applicable to the type of case in question and not based on cases involving one-time, violent sexual assaults. There is a difference between an unsubstantiated/unproven allegation and a false allegation. There may be many reasons to believe the allegations are not accurate and should not sustain a conviction in court beyond a reasonable doubt, but that does not mean the allegations of sexual victimization can be labeled as totally “false.”

Labeling an allegation as false should mean nothing of a criminal/sexual nature occurred between the child victim and the alleged adult offender at any time."

Here’s a more simplified version why sexual assault survivors forget: bbc.com

CONCLUSION

The most hypocritical aspect of Charles Thomson is that he is no journalistic novice when it comes to historical child sexual abuse. Alongside colleagues at the Yellow Advertiser, a free weekly newspaper based in Essex, he claims to have obtained financial records released under the Freedom of Information Act, revealing ten compensation pay-outs by Essex Council for “alleged abuse” in the 1970s and 1990s. On his own website, he even states that “his investigation has inspired multiple victims to report their abuse for the first time and has led to at least one arrest.

Yet Charles exhibits persistent misconceptions about child sexual abuse—or at the very least, chooses to when it concerns Michael Jackson’s accusers. This is evident in the video above, where he not only attempts to distort the words of James Safechuck and omits key facts about inconsistencies, but also strongly implies that both men are financially motivated to lie due to their litigation with lawyers. This is despite his role as a “journalist” actively involved in publishing stories about cover-ups and compensation for genuine survivors of sexual abuse.