Unsure. The original allegations against him were pretty dubious.
Some of the later stuff that's come out, like Leaving Neverland is more difficult to dismiss out of hand.
I actually think there is some gray area here, where there could have been inappropriate behavior that was not necessarily sexual predation, and childhood memories get filtered through adult sensibilities.
The principal I had in my Catholic high school 30+ years ago, a Franciscan friar, was in the last couple years accused of sexual abuse in the 1970s or 80s (before he was at my high school), and I know those allegations are both 100% true, but also at the same time, not quite true at all.
He was a very short man with some kind of leg deformity, but very, very tough. He was one of those guys that kept order by a a reputation and occasional feats of demonstration, just enough to keep people from messing with him. For example, at one of our high school dances there was some incident that had separate groups of guys squaring off for a brawl in the hallway. He was not on site at the dance, but somehow was called over from the rectory by someone seeing temperatures starting to rise. Right as the brawl was shaping up he limped into the middle of it with this old thick oaken cane, and bellowed for everyone to stop right now and go back to the dance or leave. Everyone just stood there kind of shocked by his appearance and not moving, and then he raised the tip of the cane about six inches off the floor, and snapped his wrist down to punctuate him yelling "NOW!". And just with the flick of his wrist he shattered this thick wooden cane into a bunch of pieces.
But the other thing the guy did, and this seems absolutely unfathomable looking back on it, is that he would agree to wrestle one senior every year in the wrestling room, with story being that this 5'4" had never lost. He didn't pick someone to fight, they basically had to pick him, and beg him to do it, and on very rare occasions, the principal would oblige. I remember him doing it twice in the two years he was my principle there. You would see like this 6'4" All-Catholic wrestling champion go into the room, shut the door, and come out all red and busted up and practically in tears. It was just very, very rare, enough just enough for the word to be out among the guys, mostly the athletes, that he was a bad mfer.
But my friend's older brother was one of the guys that fought him, and so I got the inside scoop on what was up. This kid, who was on good terms with the principal and everything, since he was a freshman was telling the principal that "I want to fight you when I'm a senior!" And the principal had always been like "We'll see." And finally, when he was a senior he goaded Fr. Mike into agreeing to wrestle him.
I was in the car with the kid after it was over, and he was beside himself mad and upset. The way Fr. Mike always "won" at wrestling was that he unabashedly did everything and anything to beat the hell out of the kid. I remember specifically him saying Fr. Mike gouged his eyes, pulled his hair, ripped at his ear, fishooked his mouth, and grabbed his balls and twisted them. Everything you could consider "dirty fighting" was done, and he would thrash these guys. My friend's brother was beyond mad and upset.
There is no circumstance where any of that was appropriate, and it most certainly was abusive. But at the time, the idea of it being sexual molestation was just never part of the conversation. It was nothing that was in any way hidden, he never groomed anyone to fight him, nobody ever ended up in the wrestling room without begging him over and over for a chance to take out the king. While its possible there may have been a sexual kink aspect to it, you would certainly expect it to have been a more a more common thing or perpetuated by him, but it was all perpetuated by students who thought they were tough and he only rarely and reluctantly agreed to it.
Well, sure enough, a couple years ago he got reported for sexual abuse of a student from way back (at a previous school). I was disappointed to hear it, and then as I'm reading it, its an account of this wrestling, including grabbing nutsacks, sticking his fingers in his mouth, the whole thing.
And yeah...it's 100% believable and accurate from what I know...and yet, kind of not? I certainly can't blame the accuser one bit, and the entire thing was entirely inappropriate, and it was absolutely sexual abuse by definition. But it also kind of wasn't the kind of sexual abuse as you perceive it. But especially, being 30 years down the line and recalling teenage memories, I'm not questioning anyone who looks back and considers themselves molested.
Sometimes I think that the Michael Jackson thing could be similar...super weird, totally inappropriate, while not being pedophilia in nature. But what other way is there to process something childhood memories of something so bizarre through the lens of adult consciousness decades later?
(by the way, lest anyone think I am looking at my old high school friars through some kind of rose colored classes, a second friar/teacher was accused of abuse some years ago, this time from my era at my school at the time I was there, and while I don't know who the victim was, I have zero reason to doubt that it happened as described and he was a pedophile deviant)
