Inside Michael Jackson’s 2005 Trial

Wade Robson was a key witness for the defense. Now, in Leaving Neverland, he says he lied on the stand and that Jackson abused him for years. [ view in [browser](. add esquire@newsletter.esquire.com to your address book ] [Esquire]( [Sunday Reads] FOLLOW US [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Pinterest]( [Instagram]( [You Tube]( [Google Plus]( [Inside Michael Jackson's 2005 Trial Featured in Leaving Neverland]( Wade Robson was the lead-off witness for Michael Jackson’s defense team. In April 2005, Jackson’s housekeeper testified for the prosecution that she’d seen a 10-year-old Robson in bed with Jackson naked from the waist up. And she believed the two had showered together after recognizing Robson’s neon green Spiderman underwear on the bathroom floor. She was sure it was his underwear because doing the laundry was one of her responsibilities. When Robson took the stand in May 2005, he was calm and collected as he answered the defense attorney’s questions. He categorically denied the housekeeper’s story. “I’m telling you nothing ever happened,” Robson, then 22, said. Journalist Diane Dimond was sitting in the front row of the courthouse that day. "As I watched him testify, he was very confident," she tells Esquire. "He kept looking at Michael Jackson at the defense table for strength." It’s been 14 years since Jackson was acquitted of four charges of child molesting, one charge of attempted child molesting, one conspiracy charge, and eight possible counts of providing alcohol to minors. Now, in the explosive new HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, Robson, 36, and James Safechuck, 40, describe in detail years of abuse at the hand of Jackson. The horrific allegations in the documentary shine a new light on one of the most talked about trials of the last two decades. "Michael told me that I had to lie and that’s what I did," Robson says in Leaving Neverland. "I lied." 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