On Dec. 8, at a press conference held while on tour in Tel Aviv, Jackson's estranged sister La Toya alleges that the abuse accusations against Michael are true.
"This is very difficult for me," she says. "Michael is my brother. ... But I cannot, and I will not, be a silent collaborator of his crimes against small, innocent children." She claims that their mother, Katherine Jackson, has shown her checks that Michael allegedly made out to the families of some very young boys, at least one allegedly as young as nine years old. She says that the amounts paid out were substantial, though she doesn't specify any sums.
LaToya Jackson also repeats her claim that she and her siblings were abused, including sexually abused, by their parents. It's an assertion she first made at least two years earlier in her 1991 autobiography La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family.
Other members of the family, including Katherine Jackson, rally to Michael's defense. The Washington Post quotes Katherine as saying, "La Toya is lying and I'll tell her to her face she's lying," adding that her daughter was "trying to make money off of [Michael's] downfall."
In a follow-up interview with the Today show's Katie Couric, La Toya Jackson claims that their mother had shown her such checks as early as "around '84." However, she tells Couric she can't prove that the alleged checks were meant as hush money, nor has she ever seen him in bed with a boy herself.
In 2011, in a second autobiography called Starting Over, La Toya Jackson retracted her allegations against both her brother Michael and her father Joe, saying that she was forced to make them by her husband at the time, whom she accused of being abusive.
"My family and Michael knew that wasn't really me talking," the Daily Beast quotes her as saying in an interview. "I never believed for a minute my brother was guilty of anything like that."
