Siblings Who Say Michael Jackson Molested Them Appear in Court to Fight Arbitration

Siblings Who Say Michael Jackson Molested Them Appear in Court to Fight Arbitration Frank Cascio and his siblings allege Michael Jackson groomed, manipulated, and molested them for decades, from the late 1980s until his death in 2009. On Wednesday, they appeared in a Beverly Hills courtroom seeking to void a “purported settlement” with Jackson’s estate that they describe as “an unlawful agreement to silence victims of childhood sexual abuse.” Michael Jackson appears outside the courtroom at the Santa Maria Courthouse during a break in his child molestation trial May 23, 2005Aaron Lambert-Pool/Getty Images A judge heard arguments on both sides and declined to issue an immediate ruling on the estate’s petition to force the Cascios into confidential arbitration. Marty Singer, a lawyer for the estate, told the court that the Cascio family members signed an initial “deal” with the estate in January 2020, later re-negotiated it for “significantly more money upfront,” and now are seeking to file a public lawsuit that would violate the arbitration and confidentiality clauses of the original pact. “We categorically dispute these claims,” Singer told the court, referring to the claims Jackson subjected all five Cascio kids to sexual abuse. “The reason this case is going forward is because there was an extortion demand of $213 million last summer.” Mark Geragos, a lawyer for the Cascios, told the court he felt “passionately” that the judge’s tentative ruling, which was issued before the hearing and said the court was poised to compel arbitration, was “wrong on the law and wrong on the trend in the legislature.” In court filings leading up to the hearing, Geragos has argued that the Cascios felt coerced into signing the agreements. “The rushed process was intended to, and did, in fact, take advantage of the Cascio siblings’ shock and trauma upon realizing this had happened to all of them, unbeknownst to each other and contrary to what they had been told,” Geragos wrote in a filing last October. “During this vulnerable time and before the Cascios could fully process what had happened to them, the estate exploited their confusion and vulnerability by pressuring them into an unfavorable agreement, misrepresenting both the nature of their rights and the consequences of refusal.” Geragos says the deals are unenforceable because they included illegal nondisclosure provisions used to conceal sexual abuse. After the hearing, Geragos spoke with the family members in the hallway, with one brother appearing to be in tears. “They wanted to see for themselves the position that the estate has been taking, which is basically to call them liars,” Geragos told Rolling Stone when asked why the relatives traveled from the east coast to attend the hearing. He said the family would appeal if the judge adopts his tentative and forces arbitration with the estate. In a notable twist, Geragos previously represented Jackson when the pop star was under criminal investigation for child molestation in 2003. Jackson was charged and later acquitted at a trial in 2005. In declarations filed in October, siblings...

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