I’m still curious why the hypothetical parent didn’t immediately go to the police about this . . . If he/she went straight to a civil case without trying to get a criminal case, it makes him/her look greedy.

Why?
If I was accused of something that horrible you can bet all the money on the planet that I would do everything in my power to make it go away FAST. If paying the liars off is going to do it, then that is what I am going to do.
Even though I am innocent there is no way I am going to risk going to prison just because there are some stupid people on a jury who will believe some good acting.
Damn right I’ll pay someone off to go away.

No amount of money would make me ‘go away’. You hurt my child then you pay the price of having your ass used daily in jail. Not the price of handing me some hush money.

The fact that those parents settled out of court is just one of the many, many reasons why I know MJ is no child molester.

In the end, I would want to know the truth, would want to get to that. And then decide what happens next.

I cannot imagine anything more damaging to a child than having to live with the fact that they did nothing to save someone else. Or that it is swept under the carpet. Not talked about. They have been bought off.

Trials are difficult. But eventually it is over and the right thing has been done.

Guilt is relatively more permanent and the reaction to it shapes the person you become.

P.S. Sleepovers are probably irrelevant to the essence of the question. These things happen to even the most protective of parents and don’t require sleepovers.

Well, you know, a decent parent wouldn’t have let their young son have sleepovers at some adult man’s house, no matter how famous he was. So the decent parent thing is kind of moot in this case, imo.

Absolutely. It’s the reason why I’ve never been convinced that Michael Jackson molested those kids–any parent who lets their child attend unsupervised sleepovers with an unrelated adult just because he’s famous is capable of instructing their child to lie about being molested.

Now, let’s say I lost my mind and naively let my son sleep over at the home of a famous guy with obvious mental issues, and my son tells me he was molested…I’m with KristieJ on this one. I’d do everything I could to make sure that he was telling the truth (I come from a family of social workers and psychologist–many kids lie about this stuff. A lot.) before pressing any charges. And it’d be a criminal charge. If we lose that one, THEN I’d consider a civil suit.

If the boy says ‘I don’t want to go through all that’, we take the money I guess. If he says ‘what he did was wrong and I’m willing to stand up…then on we go.

Sam