Sad and bizarre case

If any other 46-year-old had been so open about his friendships with young boys, how he enjoyed inviting them to sleepovers and…

If any other 46-year-old had been so open about his friendships with young boys, how he enjoyed inviting them to sleepovers and, ultimately, sharing a bed with them, then his behaviour might have seen him face the law years earlier.

However, there is no other 46-year-old quite like Michael Jackson. No one else who has so traded on the persona of an emotionally stunted man-child; whose life, from childhood to middle age, has been viewed by the public as a bizarre soap opera; and whose questionable habits were so often interpreted by the public as forgivable eccentricities.

Jackson has been acquitted of child molestation charges, and to a global television audience the sight of his convoy taking him past cheering fans to freedom will have played out like the final scenes of a fictional drama.

Although cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, this was as much a media event as it was a legal case. It began with Jackson holding hands with his eventual accuser, Gavin Arvizo, during a television interview; it ended with the verdict being announced live to the world. It meant that, as with so much in Jackson's life, this episode occurred in an air of unreality.

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The case was centred on circumstantial, not physical, evidence. It was about one person's word against another's. As Jackson drove away, it is likely that people across the world will have been making their own judgments on his character. As for his future, has the world become so enthralled by the outrageous and often distasteful details of his life that he will continue to be at the centre of a soap opera for years to come? Is there any chance of career-reviving redemption?

As he struggles with his reputation and reported financial difficulties, he is unlikely to slide into anonymity, just as it is unlikely that the public will grow bored of such a singular personality. Yet, the unsavoury details revealed in this trial also reminded us that behind the hype, headlines, celebrity, excess and grotesqueness of both Jackson's life and this case, there are real human stories. The singer has returned to his three children, even after testimony revealed the sad details of how the mother of two of them has signed away her parental rights. Jackson himself is someone whose childhood has quite obviously left him psychologically damaged.

And regardless of whether Gavin Arvizo was a victim of sexual abuse or of an exploitative mother (as the defence argued), he will suffer the consequences of such a public trial for years to come.

Jackson may have had his happy ending, but this was a sad tale nonetheless.