February, 1988 - Honolulu, Hawaii

Photograph by Alan Light - Permission is automatically granted under Creative Commons license for anyone to copy, publish or post this photograph, but please credit "photo by Alan Light" if you can. Thanks.

James "Jimmy" Safechuck was 10 when he and Michael Jackson met during the filming of a 1987 Pepsi commercial. Safechuck, now 42, had long denied rumors that he had been sexually victimized by Jackson, and even testified on Jackson's behalf.

In 2014 Safechuck changed his story and claimed that Jackson had molested him for several years beginning when he was 10 years old, beginning in late June 1988 in a hotel room in Paris, France. (June 27 and 28, the Bad World Tour played at the Parc des Princes to an audience of 64,000)

In the new 2-part four-hour HBO documentary film, “Leaving Neverland,” Safechuck gives very graphic details of the abuse and sex acts. The documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in late January, 2019, and will be shown on HBO in the spring of 2019.

Link to the 1987 TV commercial with Michael Jackson and Jimmy Safechuck: