A fired-up Sean Plunket is praising the Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland, which covers claims of sexual abuse against the controversial pop star.
The documentary details the accounts of Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who claim Jackson molested them as children. Plunket calls it "compelling and true testament" and those who didn't believe them are "in denial".
- Michael Jackson squirms, laughs through interrogation about pedophilia
- Michael Jackson documentary leaves viewers 'shellshocked' with graphic child abuse allegations
- 'We're all worried' - Michael Jackson's son Blanket goes 'mute' after Leaving Neverland airs
"As someone who has, in the course of my childhood, let's say been closely associated with similar events, I have no doubt as to the veracity of those young men's claim," he said on Monday.
"Yes they've been inconsistent. Can I tell you most abusers of children, most paedophiles, most of those who practice abuse within a family are never found guilty in a court of law because their victims and the people around their victims find it too difficult to take them to court and to lay their accusations bare."
Robson and Safechuck claim Jackson befriended and then sexually abused them starting when they were just seven and 11-years-old respectively. Leaving Neverland goes into graphic details of their grooming and the sexual acts Jackson allegedly forced the children into.
Both men had been involved in the 2005 investigation into Jackson, with Robson testifying that the singer never molested him - something he now says he did because he was scared of what would happen if he told the truth.
Jackson repeatedly denied the sexual abuse allegations and was acquitted of child molestation charges in 2005.
Invited onto Magic Talk, national advocate manager of Male Survivors Aotearoa, Ken Clearwater, says the amount of money and fame Jackson had made it "really hard for victims to come forward".
"When it's people in power who we like we don't want to think they would do something like that," he says.
"At the time he was the most powerful man in the world and I think people forget that."
Plunket says more people would have known about Jackson's alleged abuse of young boys, and hopes it encourages more people - both survivors and people who witnessed it - to come forward.
"It would seem to me that what these two young men have done... they might have just opened a window for people who are stuck," he says.
"It struck me the documentary might be an opportunity, or circuit-breaker, for some people to stand up and tell the truth."
Newshub.
