Joe Jackson And Abuse: Michael Jackson’s Childhood

Stories From The Other Jackson Family Members

#LaToya Jackson

September 1987, Japan, Todd Gold’s book
Katherine Jackson and LaToya visited and compared shopping tips; Michael preferred that his father, also in town, stay away. ”That’s a touchy situation,” said Latoya from her suite at the Akasaka Prince Hotel.
“Growing Up In The Jackson Family,” LaToya autobio, February 7th 1991
What began as a hobby quickly turned into work. Each day after school the guys rehearsed rigorously, first under Mother’s direction, then, after dinner, with Joseph. My father demanded absolute perfection, rarely praising, constantly criticizing, and often hitting. Long before the guys became a national sensation as the Jackson 5, their calling card was precise choreography inspired by their idols, Jackie Wilson and James Brown. I can still see my father standing in the living room, whip in hand. If someone missed a dance step, crack! Sometimes after Joseph had attacked one of the guys, leaving him gasping for breath and doubled over in pain, Mother cried, “It’s not worth it, Joe! Just forget it. The boys don’t have to be singers.”
But Joseph never answered. Even with school the next morning, he rehearsed the quintet to exhaustion. For up to eight hours straight, the same notes, the same words, the same moves, repeated until everyone memorized them. Step, dip, and spin. Step, dip and spin. Step, dip, and spin…
Because eight year old Marlon had a hard time learning the choreography, he suffered many beatings. Joseph hadn’t wanted him in the group at first, but Mother insisted, even though she would concede privately, “He doesn’t know his left foot from his right.” Marlon refused to quit though and practiced constantly. Today, of course, he’s a brilliant dancer.
For no reason I could understand, our father singled out his first born son for the most punishment. I used to ask Mother why Joseph treated Jackie so badly. All she’d say was, “I don’t know… he just never liked him.” As if that made it all right. One of the most talented Jacksons, my brother won many dance competitions as a child. As a young man, he had a warm smile and intelligent brown eyes that made women sigh. I truly believe that Jackie had the same potential to become a star in his own right. But endless psychological and physical battering wore him down.
As if my brothers didn’t suffer enough at their fathers hands, he forced them to don boxing gloves and fight one another while he watched. “Okay, Jackie,” he’d sneer, “let’s see what you and Tito can do.” The two selected halfheartedly punched each other right there in the living room, just to get it over with, while Joseph egged them on.
Another of his pastimes was frightening us. For as long as I can remember, he got the biggest kick out of lurking around our windows at night and tapping on the glass, or pretending to break in. When one of us tiptoed to the window to investigate, my father, wearing a gruesome latex mask, leaped up and growled like a beast. We screamed in terror, and Joseph laughed. It wasn’t done playfully or as part of a game. Why a grown man would deliberately scare his children out of their wits is beyond me.
Even worse was being startled awake by a hideous monster hovering just inches above our faces. While we shrieked, Joseph ripped off his mask and fell out laughing, as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. It got so where every night I pulled the covers tightly over my head and gently rocked myself until drifting off. Even now, that is the only way I can get to sleep.
[...]
Adolescence proved awkward for Michael too. He sprouted from just over five feet to five feet ten. Overnight, it seemed, he went from a cute little boy to a gangly teenager. Certain body parts outgrew others, and now Michael was the object of merciless ribbing, especially from his father. “Look at that big nose on your face,” Joseph used to taunt. “I don’t know where you got that from… Bignose.”
LaToya Jackson, Aug 31, 1991
“My father was deplorably violent, whipping smacking, and punching his children.”

 # Marlon Jackson

National Enquirer interview, 1988
In one altercation recalled by Marlon, Joseph held Michael upside down by one leg at the age of three and “pummeled him over and over again with his hand, hitting him on his back and buttocks.”
Marlon also said he himself would “get lit up like a Christmas tree,” by Joseph.
The Mirror, 29th August 2009
Michael loathed their dad Joe, accusing him of beating him as a child, which Joe, who lives apart from Katherine, has always denied.
But Marlon insisted: “My father beat us a lot of times. I felt resentful. That sort of discipline wasn’t abnormal in our neighborhood but it doesn’t mean it was right.”
And Marlon believes the beatings may have fatally damaged Jackson’s self-esteem and ability to fend for himself.
“It does a couple of things to you – it forms you into this person who is not able to confront people when they’re not satisfied with things. It also makes people able to take advantage of you. I found a lot of my siblings were that way.”

#  Jackie Jackson

The interview that still haunts me was one that came from Jackie. While all the brothers made references to Joseph’s temper and the beatings they would receive at his hand, Jackie as the oldest boy, saw and felt more than any of the others.
“My father used to hurt,” Jackie told Joyce. “I mean, if you knew you had a beating the next morning, you couldn’t sleep at night. We were scared of him – all of us. Especially when I was little. We would all try hard in school and if we got bad grades, he would line us up on our knees and hit us. I remember we studied the time tables on Saturdays and we’d be shaking. Even if we knew them, we’d be shaking ’cause you’re thinking about the beating if you miss one. And if you did, he’d get a switch off a tree and pull down your pants.
“He was hard on us, all right. Too hard. I always thought maybe he was upset ’cause he worked so hard and he was taking it out on us a little bit. My father was the type of guy, he never showed us love. He loved us, but he never showed it.”
“He never put his arms around us and said, ‘Son, I love you.’ My father never said, ‘I love you,’ ever, to any of us. I never got that from him.”
“My son knows that I love him. When I think about it, it brings tears to my eyes all the time ’cause my father just couldn’t say it. I know that he really wanted to, but he could never say those words, ‘I love you, son.’”
Jackie, the athletic talent of the family, became emotional when watching scenes in which he was depicted playing baseball with his school team. I watched as tears came to his eyes and he began to sob. “Do you know that my father never came to watch me play ball?” he said. “My father never believed in me.” His pain was hard to watch. I had hoped this miniseries would bring everyone together as a family. Instead it just seemed to be evoking painful memories.
With the memory of that interview and others in my mind, I watched as Joseph would repeatedly look the press straight in the eye and swear: “We never beat LaToya or any of the other kids.” He’d then retreat behind the gates of his home and watch all his children walk the opposite way.

#Tito Jackson

Each of the brothers had his or her own story of life with Joseph – some sad, some angry. They would come to me, one by one, and share something they had hidden from the scriptwriter. Of all of them, Tito’s was the most bitter. After watching some dailies, Tito came up with me an uncharacteristic steely look in his eyes.
“You were very kind, Margaret,” he told me. “The beatings, I mean. Joseph used to whip me with an ironing cord and then pour salt into the wounds.” Tito seemed to have neither tears nor forgiveness, just memories that didn’t go away

# Katherine

It was quite a paradox to watch Katherine deny in the press that Joseph had ever struck their children, then read transcripts of interviews with Joyce in which Katherine had spoken of such incidents.
Again, she told me a story of her own. She said one time Joseph had come after her, intent on hitting her. She said she picked up a glass ashtray and threw it directly at her husband. The edge of the ashtray slashed his arm. “Joseph took one look at the blood and from that point on, he never ever messed with me,” Katherine said

#Janet Jackson, Dateline, February 2011
MEREDITH VIEIRA: I think you open up about your dad a lot in this book.
JANET JACKSON: My father and I, we’ve gone through our moments, we’ve had a different kind of relationship… My father was never there the way I really wanted a father to be… I would see my friends interact with their dad and I would say to myself, “That’s what I want to do. I want to be able to sit on his lap. I want to be able to call him, ‘Dad’.”
MEREDITH VIEIRA: You called him Joseph, right?
JANET JACKSON: Yeah, he said, “That my name to you. You call me Joseph. You don’t call me Da—” I tried it once.
MEREDITH VIEIRA: To call him dad?
JANET JACKSON: Yeah.
MEREDITH VIEIRA: And what happened?
JANET JACKSON: He said, “I’m Joseph to you. You do not call me dad.” See, you’re gonna start me to going here. That affects you as a kid… I know my father loves me. He just has a very, very different way of showing it.
MEREDITH VIEIRA: You give your dad credit for activating your career. You’re also blunt, Janet, you — and Michael said this too, that you were scared —
JANET JACKSON: Of course.
MEREDITH VIEIRA: — of your dad and there was a time when you were, I guess, in the bath and he struck you with a belt when you came out?
JANET JACKSON: That was the only time my father ever whupped me.
MEREDITH VIEIRA: How old were you then?
JANET JACKSON: I was very young, very young. And I can’t even remember what I did, but I remember it happening. And I don’t think I deserved it. I don’t think it should have ever happened. A lot of times I felt that my father would take things out on us because of — I don’t know, issues outside of the home. But we were, we were afraid of my father, growing up.
Janet Jackson, “True You,” autobiography, May 2011
It was always difficult talking to my father, who made us call him Joseph, not Dad. He was a man of action, not words. And the truth is that we feared him. I was the last of nine children, and I believe that by the time I was born my parents had grown tired of disciplining. They were more lenient with me and Randy, the next to youngest, than with our older siblings. There was one time, however, when my father hit me. I can’t remember what rule I had disobeyed, but I had just stepped out of the bathtub when he struck me with his belt. It left marks on my skin. It’s interesting that I don’t recall the lesson my father was trying to teach, only the violence he used to make his point.
Violence has a way of overwhelming everything. I think my father is misunderstood. It’s important for you to know that my father loves all of his children and that his way of communicating his love was a result of his upbringing. I tell this story not to judge him, but to be open and to break the cycle. Fear can also be overwhelming.
Many nights my siblings and I would put on our pajamas and go to Mother’s room. We would tell jokes, read stories, and watch TV. We felt safe there.
In between our laughter, we’d sometimes hear the crunching sound of tires rolling up the gravel driveway. It was Joseph in his car, headlights turned off, windows rolled down, trying to sneak up on us to hear what we were talking about. The sound of his car stopped us cold. We’d scatter like roaches, off to our rooms, ducking down low so not to be visible through the windows. We didn’t know what mood Joseph was bringing home.
I know that my kind of story is not uncommon, and I know many have endured far worse. Through it all we always had Mother’s love as a constant, and so many people don’t even have that .
But it is important to remember that with an unstable foundation, you can’t find your own true you.
I’m certain I received less of his wrath than my other siblings did, but there were times when Joseph began screaming at me for reasons I didn’t comprehend. I now understand that he has an issue with anger management.
My father’s love for us, his passion for us to succeed, his burning desire to provide for his children, were sometimes communicated in anger. I wish I had understood then what I understand today. But as children, when we face anger— anger that strikes us unexpectedly, like a lightning bolt—we have no no real protection. We presume either that we did wrong or simply are wrong, through and through.