DAPHNE BARAK vs. AARON CARTER in a beastly game around Michael Jackson
PART 1. WHAT WE KNOW
The situation with Daphne Barak and Aaron Carter has turned into such a mess that tidying it up is rather difficult. To tell you the truth I know what to say to you but I am having a problem with how to say it. It is a somewhat sensitive issue where not only the truth about Michael Jackson matters but the well-being of other people as well. Therefore I wouldn’t want to present here my ready-made conclusions but rather take you on the road I’ve taken hoping that you will arrive at the same point.
If this arrangement is agreed on then you will have to start where I started.
I first learned of Aaron Carter when I came across a video where he, at the age of 16 or so, spoke about Michael and women. His account about Michael’s love for girls was so genuine, so sincere and so typically boyish that you could almost feel being part of the boys’ gang where they discuss girls between themselves:
– I know it for a fact that he likes women. Trust me.
– How do you know for a fact that he likes girls?
– Because I’ve seen him with girls! I’ve seen him walk up to a girl and get her number, and call her up and talk to her and say “Hey, baby, what’re you doing?” [ ]
– Were there children there [in Neverland]?
– There were five or six kids there.
– And you never saw anything inappropriate?
– No. I NEVER saw anything.
The same idea was expressed by Aaron in an article from which we also learn lots of details about him and his family affairs. What makes this story special is the date of it – Aaron is justifying Michael in the midst of the Arvizo allegations:
February 14, 2005
Jacko’s Straight, Says Singer Aaron CarterDespite rumblings from his mother to the contrary, 17-year-old pop singer Aaron Carter says Michael Jackson is straight and that nothing inappropriate ever happened between them.
Carter, who is estranged from his mother, also told me that his brother Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys did indeed hit pop tart Paris Hilton, as was intimated in many tabloid reports late last year.
“He hit her,” Aaron told me on Sunday night at the big Grammy celebration party following the awards show, “and he hit me.”
Aaron Carter plays BB King’s in New York this Friday, and has all the aplomb and polish of a kid who’s been working since he was five years old.
Sporting blond highlights and a 42-carat diamond-studded watch popular with rap stars, Carter also told me that he continues to be estranged from his mother and former manager, Jane Carter. He’s just finished a new single for release later this month and is working on a new album due in June.
I liked Aaron Carter, which was unexpected. Being forced into the adult world at an early age has made him self-assured, opinionated and not a bit clueless. He told me that he did complete his G.E.D. for high school, but that brother Nick “is a drop-out.”
He said of Jackson that the charges against him are false. “He lives in isolation,” Carter said. “He would never touch anyone.”
However, Carter insisted that he thought Jackson liked women. “He’ll see a girl and comment on her,” Carter said, “or want to touch her [bottom]. He likes girls.”
The next two videos were made in 2006 when Aaron was eighteen and gave an interview together with his brother Nick to Howard Stern and two other clowns whose names I don’t know. These three TV hosts think themselves to be very clever and loosen their tongues over a man whose little finger they are not worthy of. They enjoy themselves greatly mocking at Michael Jackson, snubbing Aaron and continuously making all sorts of nasty hints about their friendship.
Aaron clearly dislikes the tone of the conversation but keeps smiling and firmly stands up to all the innuendos. Assuming the same tone and going along with their jokes would have been much easier for him – but no, both he and his brother keep taking this horrible talk to the right track again and again.
Howard Stern, who most probably never met Michael and knows nothing of him, insists on his highly negative point of view (this seems to be a pattern with all of them – the less they know the more they gossip, hate and vilify). Watching this talk makes you realize that the only normal people here are Aaron and Nick Carter:
(my many thanks to Suzy for all the transcripts)
Nick: I was there with him and Mike. So I saw what happened.
Aaron: Yeah, it was actually me and Mike and –
Howard: Did you have sleepovers with Michael Jackson?
Aaron: No, never. You know what, actually, Chris Tucker was there too and Rodney Jerkins, he was producing his album [interrupted].
Howard: Wait, Nick, how does your brother end up at Michael Jackson’s place?
Nick: We had gone there with…
Aaron: It was his birthday party.
Nick: It was his birthday party and Mike Tyson was there and…
Female host: How do you get invited?
Nick: Him and Aaron were friends.
Howard: Now how do you become friends with Michael Jackson?
Aaron: Well, we met him through Rodney Jerkins, he was in the studio and he wanted to meet the both of us.
Howard: Now when Michael met you he was VERY interested in you, wasn’t he?
Aaron: No, I don’t think he was interested like everybody portrays him to be. He’s definitely – he’s definitely – [makes a symbolic gesture and is interrupted]
Howard: Did he give you a car?
Aaron: No, never.
Howard: Is he viewing this situation wrong, Nick?
Nick: No, no, I’m gonna defend him –
Aaron: You don’t even need to. You don’t even need to. Because it really pisses me off that people would think about Michael like that because… [interrupted]
Howard: I do.
Aaron: Well, you’re wrong. You’re wrong, Howard. You’re wrong, you’re WRONG, Howard!
The interrogation goes on:
Howard: How old are you now?
Aaron: Eighteen.
Howard: How old were you at the time Michael Jackson was hanging out with you?
Aaron: Fifteen.
Howard: Okay, you were fifteen. How old was he, in his forties?
Aaron: I don’t know, fifty something? [LAUGHTER. It was Michael
’s birthday party and he turned 45 in 2003]
Howard: Why is he buying you a car? [Aaron already said he hadn’t given him any]
Aaron: He never did.
Howard: Did he buy you a lot of expensive gifts? Be honest.
Aaron: No. He gave me a jacket that he wore for the 2001 anniversary that he did with his brothers.
Howard: Would you ever hang out with him at his house?
Aaron: Yeah.
Host: Does he want to hang out with you now?
Aaron: No, I haven’t spoken to him for…
Male host: He is too old, he’s too old [for him]. He’s getting a beard. [LAUGHTER]
Aaron: That’s so mean.
Nick: I went there and saw what happened. But I got some slack later from my mum because she was like “Why did you leave him at that house?” and stuff.
Host: Oh you left him there?
Nick: No, let me explain. What happened was we went there, we hang out, we literally hang out with all these people and I’m not going to lie… it’s a little awkward, a little weird, a little different, you know, it’s not like everyone else’s life, but he’s a nice guy, nice – [interrupted]
Howard: Did you smoke weed with Michael Jackson?
Aaron: No, never, nu-uh.
Howard: Tell the truth, raise your right hand and swear to God “I never smoked weed with Michael Jackson”.
Aaron: (raising hand) I swear I never smoked weed with Michael Jackson.
Howard: Did you drink wine with Michael Jackson?
Aaron: No, it’s not true, none of this is true.
Howard: Why did you leave Aaron alone with Michael Jackson? What happened that night?
Aaron: Not a damned thing.
Nick: It was fine, he hang out, Chris Tucker was there and Rodney Jerkins –
[LAUGHTER]
I left because it was a little weird at that point, I had to go – to be honest, there was a girl I took home from that party back home and I couldn’t stay long.
Aaron: I saw Michael take a girl home from his own party too.
Female host: Really?
Aaron: Yeah. And I stayed in the movie theatre…
Stern: You were blond, you were young, you were not hairless. I mean, come on – [LAUGHTER]
Aaron: Chris Tucker was staying in the movie theater and I stayed on the other side of the movie theater.
Howard: Did he put his arms around you, did he touch you?
Aaron: Never, never. NEVER.
Stern: Never suggested a sleepover?
Carter: Never. Never heard anything like that.
Female host: I begin to agree with Aaron – he was too old [LAUGHTER]
What I also managed to hear in the above conversation was something like:
Howard: Aaron’s sister said that Michael and you smoked weed together.
Aaron: [with some disbelief] Which sister of mine would say something like that? [He has three sisters]
Howard: I don’t know.
… Male host: I have an article here about a lawsuit and it says that Bruce Willis bought you over a million dollars worth of gifts – [end of video 1]
The “gifts from Bruce Willis” will be discussed later, while now we are more interested in a remark about Aaron’s sister. It sounds rather serious and implies that Carter is lying about not smoking weed at that party.
Frankly, knowing some teenagers’ ways, I do not rule out that Aaron could have smoked weed before he went home. However it was not necessarily in Michael’s presence. According to a girl who was at that party Michael stayed in the centre of attention all throughout the night (as if we ever doubted it!) and left them only in the morning when he either went to bed as the girl thought or took one of the girls home as Aaron told us. This gave the rest of them ample opportunity to do whatever they liked in Michael’s home.
Roger Friedman says that the party was arranged on September 13, 2003 and was more of a family affair than a wild party for some teenagers – the ranch was packed with the family members, kids and their parents:
Roger Friedman’s column on November 10, 2004:
There’s a little fallout from Access Hollywood’s big “scoop” the other day regarding Michael Jackson. Teen singer Aaron Carter’s mother, Jane, told the syndicated show that she was very concerned last year when 15-year-old Aaron stayed overnight at Neverland following Michael’s 45th birthday party.
Well, not exactly. Michael’s birthday celebration was held at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles on Aug. 30, 2003. Access Hollywood was actually there and filmed it, but somehow all that got lost in translation. If Carter had been there, he was not caught on camera by the paparazzi.
Jane Carter, who’s been on the outs with her son for several months and no doubt received compensation for her story, may have been confused about the dates and events. Her two sons, Aaron and Nick, were at Neverland on Sept. 13, 2003, for a charity fundraiser. That event resulted in Neverland being jammed with guests, lots of kids, parents and Jackson family members. One insider who was there told me she remembers Carter, but finds it unlikely that there was an opportunity for him to spend time alone with Jackson.
Calls to Jane Carter and her husband, Robert, were not returned.Source: FoxNews; Fox411 Roger Friedman by special permission / MJFC
According to Aaron and guests’ accounts Michael, Aaron and Chris Tucker rode four-wheelers in Neverland until five o’clock in the morning. The girl mentioned earlier said that after Michael had washed himself (there was a food fight before that) he was always in view of all the guests who had a lot of fans among them:
- I saw Michael leave for just a few minutes to wash off that cake, he was later zipping on a glass of wine, and he never finished it. They were out driving around the ranch with the fourwheelers and we were many out there having a laugh about it. .. Michael said he didn´t even know half of the people being there but he loved that the fans could be there.
When he finally left the party after driving around the ranch, he was alone except for one security guy. He invited a few (I was among them) into the house, we were there for about an hour.
Aaron and Chris Tucker were not seen in the house as they slept in the Movie Theatre that night. It is No.24 on this map and is across two roads to the left of the main house
He left for his bedroom and didn’t ask us to leave, it was more like “enjoy yourself, I trust you”.
And there were no Aaron Carter anywhere to be found in that house during that night. He was taken care of by Tucker I think, I didn´t see him after the drive around the ranch.
So much more happened, but not a single minute was Michael out of sight except when he cleaned up himself.”
It is no wonder Aaron was not seen in Michael’s house after that drive. It was five o’clock in the morning and Aaron and Chris Tucker went to the Movie Theatre to have some sleep there. The Movie Theatre is a totally separate building on the premises (see No.24 on the map – it is across two roads to the left of the main house which is in the center).
Returning to the “weed thing” let me repeat once again that even if Aaron did smoke something he absolutely didn’t need Michael’s presence for that – Michael was in the centre of attention of the whole crowd, so if anything like that had taken place we would have had a hundred people’s account about it and not just one from someone’s sister who wasn’t even there.
So what about Aaron’s sister? Out of his three sisters those words are attributed to Leslie (the oldest) and the crucial point about her is that by the date of the party she and her mother had been estranged from Aaron for a year due to a rift in the family.
This makes it highly doubtful that Aaron would confide in Leslie about his alleged weed activities in Neverland (or anywhere else) – telling his sister about it would have only added more fuel to the fire which was already burning within the family.
The People Magazine says the estrangement began sometime in 2003:
Estranged Carters Feud Over Michael Jackson Concerns
19/11/2004
Pop star Aaron Carter and his former manager mum have launched a new media war of words after she questioned her son’s friendship with Michael Jackson on American TV.
The estranged pair split after the singer accused his mother of stealing from him a year ago (03) and they’re fighting publicly again in the pages of the new PEOPLE magazine after Jane Carter told TV show ACCESS HOLLYWOOD she still had her concerns about what happened at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch home after the pop superstar’s 45th birthday party.
Jane Carter told the show that she spent a sleepless night worrying for her teenage son when she heard he was spending the night with Jackson – just months before he was arrested on child molestation charges.
But now Aaron, 18, has hit back, claiming “it’s all about money and publicity” for her.
He explains, “Michael and I have been friends for three years. I went to Neverland for his birthday bash. We were smashing cake in each other’s faces. It was really cool.
“Until 5am, me, him and Chris Tucker were out on four-wheelers, riding around in the mountains. Nothing happened between me and Michael.”
But his mum is standing by her decision to make her concerns public, telling People, “I was concerned like any parent would be.”
This was rather informative. We learn from the above that Aaron’s mother was his former manager and that their feud was over money issues (what an old story!).
We also learn that Aaron spent only ONE night at Neverland after which his mom created all this havoc.
Aaron spent only ONE night at Neverland and this was in a glass-wall room behind the Movie Theatre. There are two beds there on different sides of the room (for ill children to watch films) and this is where Aaron stayed with Chris Tucker that night. Daphne Barak insinuates that Paris and Prince were “next door” to Aaron – but this is physically IMPOSSIBLE! They couldn’t be sleeping next to the movie hall and in a separate building at that! Daphne’s tape is obviously a cut and paste job.
And finally, we learn direct from Aaron that he spent his time in Neverland with Michael and Chris Tucker riding four-wheelers until five o’clock in the morning.
This “five o’clock in the morning” fact is getting the crucial, utmost and never-ending importance for us.
The thing is that Daphne Barak’s tape #2 (where she claims that Aaron talks about Michael though he never mentions his name) tells us that someone wanted Aaron to sleep in his bedroom, and at 5 o’clock in the morning Aaron woke up and found him sitting at the foot of his bed to which he gasped something like “what you are doing?” and the other said “ Oh no, I didn’t!” , and so on and so forth.
All of it is very interesting of course, only it cannot apply to Michael Jackson AT ALL for the simple reason that at 5 o’clock in the morning Aaron, Michael and Chris Tucker were riding four-wheelers in Neverland and this was happening in full view of the other guests at the party.
So if now Aaron is intentionally lying about Michael Jackson this lie is an extremely ridiculous and amateurish one because each of us can thrust his own words about the four-wheelers in his face and demand an explanation why he is refuting his own words and the fact everyone else was a witness to.
But Aaron doesn’t look like a complete fool to me, so the only other logical explanation for this absurdity is that he was speaking about someone else. Finding out who this person is would be an interesting direction to pursue, however since this factor is of lesser importance to us I suggest looking in another direction first – at Daphne Barak who was the author of the tape and presented it to the public as if it were about MJ:
Video 2
If you listened to the tape you’ve noticed that Aaron Carter never said that it was Michael. However since the scandal has acquired gigantic proportions we are expecting him to give the real name (the reason for his unwillingness to do so will be examined in the second part of this post).
But irrespective of whether he gives the real name or keeps silent about it, it is clear that the tape cannot be about Michael Jackson. The timeline simply doesn’t allow for it and it is only Daphne Barak who wants everyone to think that way.
Daphne Barak has a long history of harassing Michael Jackson which is done in an extremely shrewd way. Whatever interview she does and whatever subject she discusses we can be sure that it will end up with some innuendo about Michael. I remember an interview she did with Charlie Chaplin’s son – exclusively for a Russian newspaper, which also finished with a story called “The King and children” about Michael’s relationship with “boys” in which she “innocently” repeated all the allegations from the 1993 case and the resulting “pay-off” . In that article all of them lamented over the poor fate of his poor children who were forced to wear masks and seemed to never had fairy tales read to them at night (according to Daphne Barak it was so rare an occasion that Chaplin’s wife had to read fairy tales to them).
Knowing Daphne Barak’s strange obsession with Michael Jackson it doesn’t surprise me that back in 2004 it was Daphne Barak who did an interview with Aaron Carter’s mother and sister Leslie about his single overnight stay in Neverland and it was in that very interview that Leslie allegedly said that “she thought she remembered” Aaron speaking about smoking weed there. “She thought she remembered” – what a wording indeed!
The story was filled by Daphne with all the horror and suspension required for a fantasy story. It was repeated by every tabloid:
A NITE WITH JACKO
Monday, November 8th 2004
TEEN POP SINGER Aaron Carter spent a wild unsupervised night with his “idol” Michael Jackson last year, and Carter’s mom is still haunted by fears of what may have happened, she says.
Aaron was only 15 when his big brother – former Backstreet Boy Nick Carter – ditched him at Jackson’s 45th birthday bash at Neverland Ranch in California, triggering a night of sheer panic for Aaron’s mom, Jane Carter.
And when Aaron came home about 24 hours later, he never gave his mom a full explanation of what went on, she reveals to celebrity interviewer Daphne Barak on tonight’s “Access Hollywood.”
“I don’t know if he was alone with Michael. I don’t know. I don’t know what transpired that night!” Jane Carter says.
Aaron’s sister Leslie Carter says he told her some things about his night with the King of Pop – but she’s not sure how much was true.
“I think I remember him saying that he had smoked some marijuana with him or something like that. That was a really wild story he told me, but I don’t know if I should believe it or not,” Leslie Carter tells Barak.
Just a few months after Aaron spent the night at Neverland, Jackson, 46, was charged with molesting a 13-year-old cancer patient.
After that, Jane Carter says, prosecutors called her and later grilled Aaron about his night at Neverland. But she says she has “no idea” what he told them.
“. . . Even if nothing happened, which probably nothing happened, that I know of, it just doesn’t look good,” she said.
Aaron told his mom he spent time in Jackson’s bedroom and “that he had a crystal bedspread,” but mostly described innocent fun like “dance lessons” and “riding around” the ranch, she says.
The mom says she agreed to let Aaron attend Jackson’s birthday bash only after giving big brother Nick “strict instructions” to stick with him all night and bring him home early for a scheduled audition the next day.
But when she couldn’t reach either son on their cell phones about 11 p.m., she got frantic.
“It was 3 a.m. I was lying awake in bed, worrying sick, wondering, where the heck are they?” Jane Carter reveals
When she finally reached Nick on the phone and found out he’d left Aaron alone at Jackson’s home, the mom blew her top. “I was furious with him. You should have heard me at 3 o’clock in the morning chewing my oldest son out. I was furious, furious!” she said.
Nick told his mother Aaron “refused” to leave with him, so he left him there.
Aaron also told his mom and sisters that Jackson gave him an expensive Bentley car, but Aaron never brought the car home, and Jackson later denied giving it to him.
The mom said she doubts her son’s credibility at times “because Aaron lied about me on national television, said that I stole money from him, when he knows that’s not the truth.”
Aaron did show off one big present from the King of Pop – a glittery jacket Jackson wore on stage at his Sept. 10, 2001, reunion concert at Madison Square Garden. She said Aaron was so proud of the jacket “he carried it all over Japan” when he went on tour last fall.
After she was contacted by prosecutors, Jane Carter phoned Jackson and warned him, “Aaron is telling everybody you gave him a Bentley, and the prosecution has called me, and they’re wondering what is going on.”
She said Jackson told her, “Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing happened. All we did was hang out. . . . I didn’t give him a Bentley!”
But the whole episode haunts the mom.
“Not because I believe anything about Michael one way or another,” she told Barak. “Just because, as an adult, as a parent, I was responsible. . . . I trusted Nick to bring him home, like he promised me he would.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2004/11/08/2004-11-08_a_nite_with_jacko.html
The informative value of the above article is close to zero as all it is boils down to is “probably nothing happened” and “I don’t believe anything about Michael one way or another” but the story is so heavily loaded with various innuendos that it is still doing all the damage Daphne Barak was aiming at.
One of the most loaded pieces in the article is “the crystal bedspread” which seems to be mentioned innocently but is meant to convey to the reader that Aaron was probably sleeping in Michael’s bedroom. Well, firstly, Aaron slept in the movie theater and secondly, the detail Daphne Barak fails to mention is that going to Michael’s personal quarters was no big thing for his guests – it was part of the excursion over his home and many people preferred exactly those quarters for hanging out in the house. In fact, as Macaulay Culkin said at the trial, raking through a closet adjoining Michael’s bedroom was the favorite pastime of many of his guests.
Ten days after Daphne Barak’s non-story Aaron made a kind of a rebuttal to it. He confirmed a rift within the family which was so serious that after reading about it you immediately start wondering how much the mother and daughter (who were living apart from Aaron) could know about him at all, let alone hearing his revelations about “smoking weed with MJ”. It turns out that they didn’t know as much as his telephone number at the time!
Aaron Carter Bashes Mom, Defends Jacko
By Steve Helling and Marisa Wong
Wednesday November 17, 2004 04:40 PM EST
Teen pop star Aaron Carter is speaking out to PEOPLE about his troubled relationship with his mother and sister – and about his friendship with Michael Jackson.
After Carter’s mother Jane told “Access Hollywood” that her son had spent an unsupervised night with Jackson at his Neverland Ranch, and Carter’s sister Leslie, 18, implied that drug use may have been involved, Carter told PEOPLE: “I don’t do drugs. I didn’t do them with Michael Jackson and I don’t do them with anyone else.”
Carter, 16, had a lot more to say in a frank discussion.
On his mother and sister: “I really don’t like being around them. All I hear is ‘You need to go on television and make me look better.’ I just think, ‘Just be my mother, just be my sister.’ It’s all about money and publicity for them. My last word to (my mother) is that she’s the adult, not me. But it seems to be switched around.
On his playdate at Neverland with Jackson, who has been charged with child molestation: “Michael and I have been friends for three years. I went to Neverland for his (45th) birthday bash. We were smashing cake in each other’s faces. It was really cool. Until 5 a.m., me, him and Chris Tucker were out on four-wheelers, riding around in the mountains. Nothing happened between me and Michael. We didn’t sleep in the same room, we didn’t share a bed. We have a normal friendship. There’s nothing sexual to it.”
Meanwhile, Carter’s mother Jane stands by her decision to go on television and question the night her son spent with Jackson [why should anyone go on TV to question it?]“I told the truth,” she says. “I don’t know what happened at Michael Jackson’s house, but I was concerned like any parent would be.”
Jane does admit to a rift between mother and son: “I don’t have a regular phone number for him, I don’t see him like I would like to.” But she hopes to work things out.
“I will say that I love Aaron with all my heart,” says Jane, 45. “I want to be a loving mother to him. I am on his side. I want what’s best for him. I know that he may not believe it at this moment, but it is true. I would do anything for him.”
Aaron says that there is a fairly easy way to end their family squabble. “I would forgive my mom,” he says, “but she’s going to have to admit she did some things that were wrong.”
Full story here: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,784076,00.html
Frankly, I find it difficult to believe Aaron when he says that he doesn’t do drugs at all. He looks older than the age of twenty three – and this is only seven years after that 2004 interview. So knowing about his present drug problem, it is hard to believe that he hadn’t tried drugs by the time of that interview and this, unfortunately, undermines his credibility. However the one who takes drugs usually lies about himself and his specific problem only.
Aaron’s mother had a reason to be worried about Aaron as her other son Nick went through a very hard time with drugs too. One of the articles dated February 2009 speaks about it in the past tense as Nick managed to overcome it, but the article tells us a lot about the ten-year period prior to that.
Among many other things we learn is that the family ran a bar and the children tasted wine at a very early age – Nick Carter, for example, first had it at the age of 2 (!). So if some Michael’s haters are still weeping over poor 15-year old Aaron who drank a little wine at Michael Jackson’s party – where it was served to all guests – I suggest they should please wipe their tears and admit that the boys had a drinking career of their own and most probably with full consent of their parents too.
Here is a story about Nick Carter – only please remember that we are reading a tabloid, so let us divide everything written here by a hundred and remain skeptical about its veracity even after that:
Nick Carter Gets Buff
By MARISA LAUDADIO
Monday February 16, 2009 01:00 AM EST
During the decade boy-band heartthrob Nick Carter spent abusing drugs and alcohol—typically downing half a bottle of hard liquor a night, often followed by what he calls “a bump” of cocaine—there wasn’t anything that could make him stop. Not a 2002 arrest after a Florida bar brawl or a 2005 arrest for DUI. Not his ballooning weight, which shot up to 224 lbs. in 2006, or the self-loathing he felt after a May 2008 trip to Russia, when he competed with locals to see who could down the most Sambuca. “There were things that were happening, proving that maybe what I was doing was out of control, all sorts of crazy stuff,” Carter admits. “But every time those red flags would come up, I’d appease people in my inner circle and make them think everything was all right.”
Even when it became clear that everything was most definitely not all right—last spring, during the European leg of the Backstreet Boys’ tour, he began experiencing a mild discomfort in his chest—Carter would not stop partying. “I was thinking, ‘Something is physically wrong with me,'” says the 29-year-old singer, who in June went to Ft. Lauderdale cardiologist Richard Polakoff for two days of medical testing. But the night before his results were due back, “I went out and I just went nuts,” he recalls, staring out at the Pacific Ocean through the windows of his high-rise condo in Santa Monica. “I drank so much and did a bunch of blow. I felt like I was trying to kill myself—because I didn’t want to get the results.”
Carter had good reason to be afraid: The years of abusing his body had left a buildup of toxins in his heart, weakening the muscle so that it had difficulty pumping blood. This condition, known as cardiomyopathy (see box), is the same one that led to the death of singer Andy Gibb and killed actor Chris Penn—and Carter learned it could kill him as well if he didn’t get clean and sober. “My doctor said, ‘You need to change your lifestyle. I don’t want you to end up like that,'” Carter says. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to end up like that either.'”
In the eight months since his diagnosis, Carter has indeed taken dramatic steps to turn his life around. He has lost more than 30 lbs. and—with the exception of a few slips early on—stopped drinking and doing drugs. “I don’t want to die,” he says. “I don’t want to be that person people read about and think, ‘That’s sad that he couldn’t stop it and killed himself.'”
Yet Carter admits that committing to a clean lifestyle remains a daily challenge, perhaps because his self-destructive behavior was a lifetime in the making. The oldest of five children born to Robert, 56, and Jane, 49, Carter says alcohol was always around when he was growing up in Jamestown, N.Y., where his family owned a bar called the Yankee Rebel. “If you want me to be honest, I had my first drink when I was 2 years old,” says Carter.
Easy access to alcohol was only part of the story. As revealed on the short-lived E! reality show House of Carters, family life for Carter and his siblings—Bobbie Jean, 27, Leslie, 22, and twins Aaron and Angel, 21—was tumultuous. “There was a ton of fighting between my mother and father,” he says. “The kids would be thrown into the middle, to choose sides.” The dysfunction only intensified after Carter found success as “the cute one” in the Backstreet Boys, which he joined at age 12. “Fame is a lot of pressure, especially when you’re responsible for your entire family,” he says. “Financially, emotionally—everything.”And while he was out touring the world, his home life was falling apart. Not only was his parents’ marriage breaking down, but rumors—never proven—had started to surface that the Backstreet Boys’ former manager Lou Pearlman was behaving inappropriately with some of his boy-band charges. (In 2007 Jane Carter told Vanity Fair that “certain things happened and it almost destroyed our family” but stopped short of specifying how it affected Carter, who did not want to discuss Pearlman with PEOPLE.)
By 2003 Carter’s parents had split, and a tug-of-war over Aaron, a teen pop star, ensued; at one point Aaron considered filing for legal emancipation. He also accused his mother, who co-managed him for 10 years, of stealing $100,000 from him. (She denied the charge and they settled the dispute a month later.) “We tried to make it seem like there weren’t problems,” says Aaron, “and then when there was some sort of argument or fight, it really showed.”
Looking back, Carter refuses to point fingers. “It was never a one-way street. You can’t just blame one person,” he says. Yet the turmoil led to Carter being estranged from his parents and siblings at various points throughout the years. To cope, he drank himself into a stupor; he also took up marijuana in his late teens before entering what he calls “my Ecstasy phase,” eventually moving on to abuse pills, particularly the prescription painkiller Vicodin. Then, in his mid-20s, friends on the Hollywood party scene introduced him to cocaine, which he would take to get through all-night clubbing. “I would get tired because we were partying so much, so I would do a bump [of cocaine] just to wake myself up,” he says. “I would be that person who would stay at these clubs till the lights come on and they’re playing “Don’t Stop Believin.'” People are looking at me going, ‘Is that Nick Carter?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s me, gacked up.'”
Yet in a way, his life had never been better. In 2002 he released a solo album that went gold; a year later he embarked on a high-profile relationship with Paris Hilton. But that relationship unraveled seven months later amid accusations from her friends that Carter had hit Hilton (a charge he vehemently denied to PEOPLE at the time), and by the time the Backstreet Boys reunited in 2004, it was clear, say his bandmates, that Carter was struggling. “Sometimes the last people you want to take advice from are the people closest to you,” says bandmate Howie Dorough, 35. “Nick was on a journey to find himself. When he was scolded, rather than motivating him, he curled up and crawled into a darker hole.”
Carter’s drinking wasn’t the only thing out of control: Although a teenage diet of fast food and candy meant Carter had always been “a little bit overweight,” in 2006 he hit an all-time high of 224 lbs., a direct result of his partying. “Healthwise, I was feeling gross, getting bigger,” says the 6-ft. Carter. He recalls a particularly raucous night of partying in Hollywood that fall, during which he and a friend “did a bunch of blow” before deciding to take a bus back to his place. “We were walking past a school the next morning, and we look like zombies, and I just remember these kids looking at me, and I felt so disgusted.”
The episode prompted Carter to seek help, enrolling in an outpatient treatment program. He then stayed sober for six months before relapsing; over the next 18 months, Carter found himself trapped in a wicked pattern where he would quit drinking cold turkey for a few months, followed by a few months of “hardcore drinking. It was off and on, off and on,” he says. “I thought it would show people that I did have control over it, that I wasn’t an alcoholic.”
Even after his cardiomyopathy diagnosis, Carter struggled to accept that if he wants to live, he can no longer drink alcohol. Although he is in therapy to help cope with his addictions, there have been a few times, he admits, “where I started to drink, like, a couple of glasses of wine, and I couldn’t control it.” A blunt talk with his cardiologist set him straight. “Once you get this condition, it can get progressively worse until the heart is extremely weak,” says Dr. Polakoff. “But if he abstains from alcohol and other substances, I think we can get his heart back to normal.”
Today Carter is sober, living in a two-story, colonial-style home just outside Nashville (“I had to get away from the temptations” in L.A., he explains) and in the best shape of his life. And while he has not spoken to his father recently, Carter says their relationship is intact, and he is repairing the rift with his mother. “It’s a process, and something that’s going to take years to mend,” he says, “but we’re moving forward.” Things with his younger brother have also improved, so much so that Aaron moved in with Carter last summer. “I tell him all the time, ‘You’re a completely different person than a year ago,'” says Aaron. “Then he was irritable, unhappy. And now he’s happy, fun to be around.”
The biggest change, however, is that Carter is looking to the future instead of at the past. About to complete a Backstreet Boys world tour, Carter and his bandmates are also recording a new album. And although his parents’ divorce proved scarring enough to lead Carter, who has been dating a salesgirl for the past few months, to say, “I don’t believe in marriage,” he could see himself starting a family “someday, a little ways down the line.”
For now Carter’s focus remains squarely on himself and his recovery. “I’m trying to make myself better,” he says. “But I don’t regret anything that I’ve gone through, because it makes me who I am.” http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20258140,00.html
There are lots of things in this article which are quite a revelation. The first thing which makes us shudder is a nasty suspicion about the strange inclinations of Nick’s impresario – Lou Pearlman who created a number of highly successful boys’ bands back in the 90s.
Another revelation is that alcohol was always in easy access to the Carter boys.
And thirdly, it turns out that it is customary for Hollywood party-goers to smoke weed, so if such a thing is so widely spread, the public’s feigned shock at hearing the news about Aaron looks to me very hypocritical.
I understand that the shock is mostly connected with Daphne Barak’s presentation of this alleged activity allegedly taking place in Michael’s presence, but let me repeat it that this lie is hard to believe as Michael was monitored throughout the night by guests surrounding him, never left the party until morning time and Aaron said to Howard Stern raising his hand in a solemn oath: “I swear I NEVER smoked weed with Michael Jackson” (which could mean that he probably did smoke it sometimes but not with MJ)
This phrase – same as that “5 o’clock in the morning” evidence, has a crucial importance for us and not only because this way Aaron Carter refutes Daphne Barak’s version of the events, but because it was most probably this very phrase that was used by this fraudster in tape #3 of her so-called interview with Aaron Carter.
Considering that we don’t see Aaron speaking and all we hear is a clatter of tableware and singing of birds it would be a matter of one minute to do a little cut and paste job and take the word “never” out of the above phrase and turn it into its complete opposite.
Unfortunately the English language grammar does allow a tricky thing like that, turning “I never smoked” into “I smoked”, and here we are – Aaron says exactly the opposite of what he said before.
I know that many took that tape at its face value, however all previous Daphne Barak’s exploits (see this post, please) are proof enough that she would not stop at anything to get her five minutes of fame. Tampering with the tape can easily be expected of a woman who shamelessly slandered Grace Rwaramba and Salom Bhutto in much the same way.
However even despite all the care that went into working that alien phrase into the real talk with Aaron Carter there is still a noticeable difference in its intonation and volume in comparison with the remaining part of it. The phrase was tampered with so much that it became nearly incomprehensible and it was while trying to understand what was said that I noticed how different it was (I am actually surprised that you didn’t see it – in my opinion it is the first thing which catches the attention there):
Video 3
In short now we have exactly two versions of one and the same phrase – only one of them sounds plain and clear and we see Aaron saying it: “I swear I never smoked weed with Michael Jackson” and the second sounds like a redacted version of the same, only with an opposite meaning: “I smoked weed with Michael” and is of extremely poor quality, is heard on tape only and is being presented by an author who has quite a reputation for falsifying things.
Out of these two variants Michael’s haters will naturally select the fake one, but I will ask everyone else to remember that Daphne Barak has a history of fabricating things – from a ruthless massacre of trust and confidence of people like Kit Culkin and Grace Rwaramba to the sister of Pakistani former Prime-Minister Benazir Bhutto who spoke about Daphne Barak’s fabrications at a special press-conference in London and with a vehemence and anger which are rarely displayed in public.
Listening to Aaron speaking about we don’t know who and not having an opportunity to make sure that the tape is real, would be giving too much confidence to a woman who doesn’t deserve a single grain of trust from those who have some shreds of sanity left.
Out of the three tapes Daphne Barak presented for our scrutiny only the first one is more or less worthy of attention. In video 1 we are able to at least see him – though the phrases are cut and taken out of context and are compiled in a way to create the impression that Aaron talked only about Michael’s alleged addiction. However even in this heavily tampered version of the tape he is not saying anything bad.
Video 1:
Many blame Aaron for saying that some things were “different” and “weird” about Michael. However Nick Carter is saying absolutely the same in their earlier interview with Howard Stern and nobody pays much attention to it because in that context it doesn’t sound horrible and the impression produced by that video is actually very good. Let me repeat Nick Carter’s words from part 1 of that video:
- “I’m not going to lie… it’s a little awkward, a little weird, a little different, you know, it’s not like everyone else’s life, but he’s a nice guy”–
What difference was Nick talking about? He definitely wasn’t talking about anything sinister, otherwise he wouldn’t be saying that “Michael is a nice guy”. What he most probably meant (quoting Aaron’s words) was that “Michael lived in isolation” and “he was a very timid person”. Or he could be speaking of the fact that at the age of 45 Michael was ready for food fights or ride four-wheelers like a wild teenager – which really does make him different from all of us, doesn’t it? But even if Nick called him weird and different from others what does it matter if all the rest of the interview was fabulous, just fabulous!
And how do know that Aaron didn’t make a similar fabulous interview this time too? Probably he did and it is only Daphne Barak who does not allow us to hear the whole thing? That interview is supposed to last for hours (according to Daphne’s assistant) while all we hear is a couple of minutes of selected phrases cut out of context. And what would happen to Nick Carter’s interview if only his remarks about “weirdness” remained? We would immediately label him and his brother Michael’s haters, wouldn’t we?
To prove once again that the interview with Howard Stern was indeed fabulous let us listen to the second part of it. My transcript may be slightly inaccurate and not covering the full conversation – but this is all I managed to decipher. It starts with mentioning Bruce Willis who allegedly bought Carter over a million worth of gifts. This is another of the nasty innuendos in respect of Aaron Carter which he answered with much dignity despite the tabloids reporting the following:
“Bruce Willis bought Aaron Carter $1 million worth of gifts, a recent lawsuit by the teen heartthrob against his mother revealed. Willis’ rep didn’t return The Scoop’s calls wanting to know what prompted Willis’ generous bouts of gift-giving. . . .” http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/4065772/ns/today-today_entertainment/
The host: Is that true?
Carter [incredulously]: That’s NOT true! […]
Carter: Bruce Willis flew me to Animal Kingdom where Rumer was having a birthday party and I stayed with him for a couple of days.
Stern: Nice.
Carter: And I learned a lot about industry from him.
Howard Stern is apparently not very much interested in Bruce Willis so he quickly goes back to Michael Jackson once again:
Stern: So you need to tell me, you need to tell me. Nick split from Michael Jackson’s house and you spent the night there. And nothing happened.
Carter: Actually nothing.
Female host: Where did you sleep? [It is astonishing how they keep sticking to that subject – hadn’t Aaron told it to them already?]
Carter: In the theater. I slept in the theater.
Male host: Is it a movie theater?
Female host: Yeah. There were kids bedrooms [There were hospital beds there for crippled children so that they could watch movies from their beds]
[The male host makes a face. Laughter. Stern in a tiny voice, “Where are we going to sleep today?”]
Carter: [closing his face with his hands] IT WAS NEVER LIKE THAT! STOP IT! PUNCH YOU IN YOUR ARM!
Sorry that I didn’t understand everything, but what I did understand is enough to see that the Carter brothers are the only sane people in this shameless circus:
The same words of support for Michael Jackson were said by Nick Carter when he was speaking on TV as part of the Backstreet boys band. He makes it totally clear that when interviewed by police investigators both brothers spoke of Michael’s innocence:
– Nick, you are very nearly a defense witness at the Michael Jackson trial?
– Honestly, my brother and myself hang out with Michael a couple of times, on occasions. I didn’t know him as much as my brother did and didn’t know enough to make a kind of a statement about him, how he was, or address at the trial.
– You were on the list?
– We were on the list.
– Everybody was on the list [LAUGHTER]
– Yes, and the thing about Mike what I know is that he is a great guy. He really is a great person, he is a good person….
After Michael’s acquittal Aaron Carter said that he always believed Michael was innocent:
- June 13 2005. “I’m glad everything worked out for my friend Michael Jackson. I always believed that his innocence would be proven. I will continue to support Michael and wish him all the best.”
And when Michael died Aaron said exceptionally wise and appreciative words about Michael and his desire to see people more positive and ridding themselves of hatred and negativity. Unfortunately these words have a direct bearing upon some Michael’s fans too:
7/18/10
http://www.sandy-lo.com/aaron-carter-talks-new-music-michael-jackson-struggles-in-new-interview/SS: I know that you and Michael Jackson were friends and I’m so sorry for your loss as well as the rest of the world’s loss. Have you taken any comfort in reflecting on your relationship with him and knowing he is now at peace?
AC: I kind of have some animosity. I knew Michael personally and we grew up very similar. His death, for some reason, made people realize, but only for a minute—that their negativity in this world is what brings everybody down. It’s a very touchy subject for me. Michael was a very timid person. The world made him timid, but he also felt he had to continue to keep himself out there and show his face because he had all of those fans. He really did love his fans. That was the only thing that kept him going—was his fans and that he wanted to make the world a better place. When he said that, he wanted to help people be more positive and be more caring and giving. It didn’t really happen. People just mourned over the fact that he died instead of realizing what he did. That’s pretty much all I have to say.
All of the above is surely not new to you since you are the ones who provided me with the major part of this material. But I thought it necessary to post it here for our inventory about the Carters to be full and accurate. Aaron and Nick Carter won my wholehearted support by standing for Michael in a sincere, courageous and outspoken way. It was all the more valuable to Michael since the support came in the very midst of the Arvizo allegations, at a time when he needed it most.
The brothers showed themselves decent people and real men who despite their young age had the courage to go against the tide and stand up to all the nastiness they had to endure from the beastly media and totally unfunny guys like Howard Stern.
Things like that should not be forgotten. Firstly, what is being said or attributed to Carter now does not eliminate all the good he did to Michael in the past, and secondly, since things about him are said by an avid hater their value to us should be close to zero.
And it is from this point that I suggest we only start analyzing this situation. I know that this post is too long already, but this is what lies and the truth are all about – a lie is quick to tell and run with it, while the truth takes time as first you need to scrape off all the dirt and only then are able to go any further.
PART 2. WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW
Daphne Barak had an interview with Aaron Carter in 2011, on the eve of the 2nd anniversary of Michael’s death.
All the circumstances came in extremely handy – Carter was straight from a rehab and was working on a new album (which naturally needed promotion). This was very convenient a pretext for a conversation which could cover up for the real goal of the conversation – to extract from him as much as possible about Michael Jackson and create a smear story right in time for the anniversary.
Besides all the harm she previously did to Michael Jackson Daphne Barak has been consistently pursuing this goal for the last three years. She marked every May or June since Michael’s death with a regular story about him being “a lost soul” in terms of narcotics.
Daphne’s first big lie about Michael, told in June 2009, was a big success and was about the co-called “regular pumping of Michael’s stomach for drugs”. The lie was attributed to Grace Rwaramba, nanny of MJ’s children and effectively smeared Michael’s name, trashed Grace Rwaramba, devastated Michael’s fans and is delighting Michael’s haters even to this day (for more on that story please go to this post).
The second lie, told in mid-May of 2010 came in the form of highly dubious tapes where someone remotely resembling Michael and allegedly being under the effect of drugs, spoke to an answering machine of some unnamed “friend” of Michael Jackson. The tapes looked hardly credible and many people thought that the man didn’t sound like Jackson at all – but for want of anything better Daphne still presented them to the public on the occasion of the 1st anniversary of Michael’s death. The name of her informant, the so-called friend of Michael Jackson, was undisclosed and was left untainted.
Now we know who this “friend” was – it was Dieter Wiesner, so all Michael’s supporters, attention please, Wiesner’s association with Daphne Barak and his providing her with some dubious tapes is reason enough for us to place him among the many opportunists around Michael and not his real friend.
The 2011 second anniversary of Michael’s death brought another ugly story from Daphne Barak – this time in the form of Aaaron Carter’s “interview” devoted to smearing Michael and accusing him not only of drug-addiction but adding a couple of hints about his “inappropriate” behavior with youngsters.
The story is extremely ugly from whichever angle you look at it. First the Australian “OK! Magazine” screamed with excitement that Aaron allegedly said that MJ had given him wine and cocaine . Then Aaron refuted it through his representative and in a TV interview, and said that Michael had never given him cocaine and that he only drank a little wine there. Then Frank Cascio wrote on his twitter account that during the 25 years of their friendship he never – not a single time – heard or seen Michael taking cocaine or offering it to anyone.
I am totally unwilling to spread lies here but for the sake of comparing Daphne Barak’s fabrication with real life I decided to repeat the trashy story by the OK! magazine:
‘MICHAEL GAVE ME DRUGS’
Date posted: June-23-2011 17:30
Opening up for the first time about his controversial relationship with Michael Jackson, fellow child star Aaron Carter shares some shocking truths with OK!
On the second anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death, his former friend and confidant, Aaron Carter, 23, has come clean about his close – and controversial – relationship with the pop singer, revealing all to internationally renowned interviewer Daphne Barak during a charity visit to Marbella, Spain.
Exposing their most intimate moments together, Aaron tells OK! how MJ gave him drugs and alcohol when he was just 15.
‘I never talked about it… This is the first time. I do… I miss Michael… I have spent such incredible times with him. I did things with him that nobody else did… But I was also troubled about what he did to me,’ Aaron says.
When asked whether Michael gave him alcohol, Aaron tells Daphne, ‘Yes, he gave me wine. I mean, I could have refused, but I was 15.’ As for drugs? ‘He gave me cocaine. I felt weird about that and other stuff… We spoke afterwards, hours and hours, on the phone. I admired Michael, but his behaviour bothered me a lot. Then my mother called the police…’ http://www.okmagazine.com.au/insider/michael-gave-me-drugs.htm
Michael’s fans froze in horror expecting the actual video to confirm the revelations. But when it finally came the content didn’t suggest anything of the above. Fortunately you have provided me with a transcript so you can make sure yourselves that the actual interview had nothing, absolutely nothing which could suggest all that hysterical screaming:
AC: The only other person who knows about this is Chris, so… and it was a great time. It was fun, ’cause I don’t think Michael ever really got a chance to do stuff like that.
Fame is for me, it’s nothing, you know. A person is a person, that’s how I look at it. People are people. That’s how I looked at Michael. If I had a feeling or a question, I asked him. I never had a filter with him. I think he respected that.
Daphne: Did you see him doing drugs or anything?
AC: I mean, there was definitely things that happened, you know, that were just different, you know, weird. He drank around me a little bit.
Daphne: And you were like what, 14, 15?
AC: Yeah. I was around 14 years old. [He was 15]
Daphne: Did you have a drink?
AC: Yeah, a little.
AC: I personally didn’t see any drug addiction issues. You know, I never saw any injections, nothing like that.
Daphne: [Illegible]
Aaron: The time that I spent with him, yes, he was fine. But who knows, human body builds tolerance for things you know. The human body, it’s just how it is. So who knows, I mean he could’ve been doing something I didn’t have a clue, so.
Daphne: But you spent a short time with him actually. He could’ve been taking pills and you wouldn’t know?
Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. Go in the bathroom [mimes snorting]. It takes two seconds. You know.
I wanted to express a message to him so that he could hear it. I want to protect his legacy. It’s funny because a lot of the things that Michael did that I want to do. This is a tribute [starts playing a piano song]
The above shows that Daphe Barak is a professional provocateur. Each of her questions is heavily loaded with innuendo and is leading Aaron into saying things which he wouldn’t have said on his own. Here are all her questions in the order they came:
- Did you see him doing drugs or anything?
- And you were like what – 14, 15?
- Did you have a drink?
- But you spent a short time with him actually. He could’ve been taking pills and you wouldn’t know?
Funny how explicitly provocative it looks when you see only the questions? It seems that it is only due to Daphne Barak’s extraordinary ability to pose herself as the best friend of the interviewee that she manages to get away with so loaded questions and still produce the impression of being a friend. I told you that she is someone special….
The author of the article below explains the ugly way Daphne Barak twisted Aaron’s words and is absolutely correct in pointing at her as the true mastermind of the fraud:
6:17 pm – 06/30/2011
OK Lied: Aaron Carter NEVER Said Michael Jackson Gave Him Cocaine, Alcohol
Over night, the internet exploded with the news that, in a recent interview with OK Magazine, former teen idol Aaron Carter claimed that Michael Jackson had once given him cocaine and booze — all when he was only 15-years-old.
Yet today, the audio of Daphne Barak’s interview with Carter was posted online — revealing that Carter said no such thing!
According to a transcript of the audio, the now 23-year-old instead told tabloid-journalist Daphne Barak that he once attended a party at Neverland Ranch with his older brother Nick, actor Chris Tucker, and many other guests. During the party, Carter witnessed Jackson drinking alcohol. “It was fun,” he said, “’cause I don’t think Michael ever really got a chance to do stuff like that.”
“Did you have a drink [at the party]?” Daphne asked.
“Yeah, a little,” Carter replied.
When later questioned about Michael Jackson having an alleged addiction to prescription drugs, Carter plainly stated: “I personally didn’t see any drug addiction issues [with Michael].”
“I mean, there was definitely things that were just different, you know, weird,” he said of the singer’s behavior, before again conceding that “the time that I spent with him, yes, he was fine.”
The interview ended with Aaron playing a Michael Jackson song on piano, as a tribute. “I wanted to express a message to him so that he could hear it,” the singer said. “I want to protect his legacy. It’s funny because a lot of the things that Michael did that I want to do.”
There you have it. No cocaine. No adult purposefully supplying a minor with alcohol. No phone calls to the police.
So how did this massive twisting-of-words come about? The answer may lie with the article’s author. . . .
Tabloid-contributor Daphne Barak, some may recall, interviewed Michael Jackson’s former nanny, Grace Rwaramba, shortly after the King of Pop’s death in 2009. In video footage of the interview, Rwaramba expressed her frustration over being fired by Jackson’s team — understandable and in no way controversial. Yet Barak’s later publication of the interview suddenly had Grace the Nanny claiming that she had pumped her former employer’s stomach for drugs, several times!
Rwaramba quickly fired back: “I am shocked, hurt and deeply saddened by recent statements the press has attributed to me. […] The statements attributed to me confirm the worst in human tendencies to sensationalize tragedy and smear reputations for profit.”
“I don’t even know how to pump a stomach!!” she added.
The former-nanny’s close friend, Mallika Chopra (daughter of Deepak Chopa), then took to the blog-o-sphere, defending Rwaramba and explaining the full situation of how “so-called journalist” Daphne Barak had acted as a confidant, baited for information, and then manipulated it for her subsequent article.
Grace the Nanny was not the first to accuse the platinum haired “journalist” of such dirty dealings, either.
Shortly after the late Princess Diana‘s tragic death, Barak ran afoul of the law for breaching an agreement with Mohamed Al Fayed, regarding an interview he’d given. A judge subsequently ruled Barak “in contempt of court for being evasive about her whereabouts when attempts were made to serve papers on her.” Instead of sticking around to see whether she’d end up in the slammer or not, Barak reportedly fled, living “on the run” for four months.
And in 2008, after writing an exploitative article about Benazir Bhutto (the late former leader of Pakistan), Barak again found herself bombarded by heavy criticism. Here, she was accused of “blatantly manufacturing details that cannot be independently verified about Bhutto’s life.” (Are you beginning to see a pattern?)
“While biased journalism may be tolerated in many circles, Daphne Barak crossed the line into complete fiction,” wrote the Daily Kos. “Barak could best serve the public by ceasing her shameful, tabloid-style writing, and blatant manufacturing of hurtful lies.”
All of which begs the question: Is this what happened with Aaron Carter’s comments about Michael Jackson? After all, the recently released audio of the interview between Carter and Barak is quite vanilla. So where did the juicy quotes about cocaine and frantic phone calls to the police come from?
We’ll just have to wait and see, when an official response from Carter and/or his PR team pops up. . . .
UPDATE: Frank Cascio (who attended the same party at Neverland with Aaron Carter) just Tweeted his two cents: “I knew Michael for over 25 year and NEVER once did he use cocaine or suggest to anyone else to use cocaine. Never!!!!”
Aaron Carter publicly refuted the story about cocaine:
07/01/2011
Aaron Carter: I NEVER Said MJ Gave Me Coke
Aaron Carter’s rep claims the singer NEVER told an entertainment reporter Michael Jackson gave him cocaine and alcohol when he was 15 years old … and says the reporter COMPLETELY FABRICATED the story.
The controversy stems from an article that ran in OK! Magazine in Australia, written by international journalist Daphne Barak. In the article, Carter was quoted as saying, “Yes, [MJ] gave me wine. I mean, I could have refused, but I was 15. As for drugs? He gave me cocaine.”
But Carter’s rep tells TMZ, “Nothing was said that was reported” … and directed us toward a YouTube video of the interview with Barak … which seems to back up Aaron’s side of the story.
We’ve reached out to Barak for comment — so far, no response.
***** I’ve been in contact with Daphne Barak’s assistant since last night, and she tells me that not only did Aaron say these things, but he made some “more disturbing claims” and that they will release two more clips onto their website in a “matter of days.” She also forwarded me a text Aaron sent to Daphne on June 15th. He seemed very nervous about the repercussions of his interview.
Another article says that Aaron is considering suing the OK tabloid over that fabrication:
6:04 am – 07/02/2011
Aaron Carter – Aaron Carter Considering Suing Tabloid Over Michael Jackson Misquotes
04 July 2011 01:40Former child star Aaron Carter is considering taking legal action against a U.S. tabloid after he was quoted suggesting Michael Jackson had offered him cocaine when he was a teenager.
Carter, a longtime pal of Jackson’s, reportedly told OK! magazine’s Daphne Barak the King of Pop had offered him wine and drugs when he was 15 in an interview that recently ran in the U.S. and Australian issues of the publication.
The young singer angrily blasted the allegations, insisting he did not make the remarks and now Jackson’s older brother, Randy, claims Carter is looking at his legal options.
In a series of Twitter posts on Saturday (02Jul11), Randy Jackson wrote, “I was suspicious about the Aaron Carter comment… From what I understand, Aaron Carter has already denied ever making that statement & is considering suing ok magazine.
“When negative things like this surface, it is hard not to have an emotional reaction. But the truth eventually comes out.”
However the ugly story has not ended there. In reply to Aaron’s refutation Daphne Barak struck back by releasing tapes in support of the idea that Aaron Carter had indeed talked to her and presumably told her various bad things about Michael. And this is where the story becomes even more interesting than ever.
The first thing which attracts out attention is that we no longer see him talking – all we see is a slide show of pictures of Aaron Carter rehearsing, singing, Daphne Barak taking photos of him, some girls screaming (presumably at Carter’s rehearsals) and so on and so forth – all of it distracting us from the idea that the video of the conversation is actually missing. The cutlery clatter shows that they are having a meal and the extremely poor quality of the tape suggests that the tape was most probably made secretly – without Aaron Carter knowing it.
This horrendously unethical way of obtaining “information” from Aaron will be surely overlooked by Michael’s haters – they will justify it by the need to get “raw information the way it is” which is usually got from people when they don’t know that they are being recorded. However, in view of the recent scandal with Rupert Murdoch and the criminal ways in which his press obtained their information, I hope people will understand that in journalism such things are totally unacceptable – journalists are not allowed to treat normal people like criminals and use methods employed only by the police towards suspected criminals, and that betraying ordinary people’s trust in such a ruthless manner is actually a crime.
However even if we disregard the above highly unethical practice the main point about Daphne Barak’s tapes is that she says that Aaron is speaking about Michael Jackson while Aaron doesn’t give the name of the person he is talking about.
We are waiting for him to say that he didn’t mean Michael – however he is keeping suspicious silence about the identity of that person and this makes us wonder and feel resentful towards him and his silence. Indeed, why does he keep silent about this matter if the man is not MJ?
We know that someone who allegedly sat on Aaron’s bed was NOT Michael as it was physically impossible for Aaron to be asleep and ride a four wheeler at 5 o’clock in the morning – so why is Aaron not naming the real person who said on his bed?
If you listen to that tape you see that Daphne Barak is again leading the conversation in the direction she wants to. A mere couple of words here and there, and a part about children most probably added there artificially (it surprised many by a sudden change of the subject) is taking the conversation into the direction she wants us to follow:
Aaron: He wanted me to stay in his room, so he got a cot and I stayed on the cot in his room, and it must have been like 5 o’clock in the morning.
Daphne: Well, that’s a story from you nobody knows?
Aaron: 5 oclock in the morning. He’s on my bed. He’s on the foot of the bed and I wake up –
Daphne: this is King –
Aaron: I [gasps] What are you doing? like you know …15 years old .. you know. What are you doing? And he says Oh my god I didn’t .. I didn’t know. He went to his bed and I’m like –
Daphne: You’re scared what are you going to do?
Aaron: Yeah
Daphne called this man “King”. Who else could she call that way and Aaron wouldn’t pay attention, I wonder? Of course he could have simply overlooked it, but for the sake of accuracy everything should be examined, including this remark. And it looked like a big question to me, but only until I came across the headline of an article which called “king” another person in Aaron and Nick Carter’s surrounding – only King of music this time.
This person was their former manager Lou Pearlman, with whom Nick Carter started working at the age of 12 and Aaron Carter at the tender age of 10.
Lou Pearlman was universally called King of Music
It seems that Lou Pearlman was indeed quite a celebrity in his prime time. He managed several boys bands which enjoyed much success – his first pop group was the Backstreet Boys, created in 1992, followed by subsequent hitmakers including *NSYNC, Aaron Carter, O-Town, and the German boy band US5.
However beside a talent in making boys bands Pearlman showed a great talent in swindling people out of their money and it is for this talent that he is currently serving a prison term of 25 years.
But what is even more horrendous about Pearlman is that the members of his boys bands (mostly those who left or never made it into the bands) spoke of the manager’s strange ways with boys who were in his charge. To be fair to Pearlman none of the boys ever accused him of molestation (the only thing they did was non-stop suing him for machinations with their money, all of which was settled out of court) and it was only the mother of Nick Carter who was rather outspoken with a Vanity Fair correspondent, Bryan Burrough.
His article is damning and it really surprised me by its serious 9-page approach to this and other problems about Lou Pearlman (see the article here ).
The short of the story is probably best reported in this account where the situation is partially described by one of the boys’ lawyers:
Article Alleges Lou Pearlman Molested Boy Band Members
Posted: 11:17 pm EDT October 2, 2007
ORLANDO, Fla. — Eyewitness News obtained a copy of a tell-all article in Vanity Fair that will go on sale nationwide next week. The article contains allegations that former music mogul Lou Pearlman molested young members of boy bands.
In the article, titled “Mad About the Boys,” the strongest allegations come from Pearlman’s assistant and aspiring singer, Steve Mooney, who said during the late 1990s he witnessed teenaged singers walking out of Pearlman’s bedroom at his Windermere home late at night.
Mooney also described what happened when he once asked the boy band creator what it would take to get into a music group. He said Pearlman “leaned back in his chair, in his white terry cloth robe and white underwear, and spread his legs. And then he said ‘You’re a smart boy. Figure it out.'”
“Certain things happened and it almost destroyed our family. I tried to warn everyone. I tried to warn all the mothers. I tried to expose him for what he was years ago,” the mother of Backstreet Boy member Nick Carter is quoted saying.
An original member of the Backstreet Boys, Phoenix Stone, said in the article that Pearlman was definitely inappropriate with Nick Carter. Eyewitness News spoke with Phoenix Stone’s attorney, Clay Townsend, who works in Orlando.
“The suggestions are pretty darn serious and I’m sure Pearlman is going to be livid,” said Townsend.
Townsend also said his client believes while Pearlman was inappropriate with young boys, it never turned sexual, but the allegations are still serious.
“There’s some things that will concern some folks and aggravate others. It’s tragic all the way around, the personal and business side,” said Townsend.
Townsend said, at this point, it’s all hearsay and charges are only possible if a victim goes to the authorities. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said it was not aware of the allegations.
Lou Pearlman is set to stand trial in March. He has been held in the Orange County Jail without bond since July on federal charges of bank and mail fraud. Pearlman is accused of stealing $317 million from investors and another $130 million from banks.
The above are allegations only and none of them said that inappropriate behavior ever turned sexual – however even if it went only as far as “touching”, “sitting on their bed”, “making uncomfortable advances” or “rubbing their muscles” it should have been still disgusting to stay beside this person for years and years on end – so it is no wonder that many of the boys who were in his charge had to seek therapy or turned to drugs trying to cope with their emotional problems.
It is only Lou Pearlman who is enjoying the game
Since some of the boys did speak out, their accounts struck me by their similarity with the labels Tom Sneddon and the media constantly tried to stick to Michael – like statements that they are a “family”, forcing them to live in his home, questions like “Do you trust me?” or requests “not to tell their parents”.
If you come to think of it all those issues were a constant talk only by the media and prosecutors and not something typical of Michael Jackson himself – witnesses for the defense were very surprised when they were interrogated over all that “family” stuff.
In fact what the media said about Michael was like an echo of what was really taking place in Pearlman’s home – only Michael didn’t do anything but was for decades railroaded for his non-existent “crimes”, while the King of Music probably did something ugly, but easily got away with it and only several journalists went after him.
Burk Parson who left the boys’ band to become minister in church described his short time with Pearlman as follows (if Pearlman exerted so much pressure on boys before they joined the band, we can imagine how much more of it came later):
- Two weeks later I got the call that I was officially in the band. That next weekend my mother, sisters, and I drove to Orlando. My sisters swam in the hotel pool with Nick Carter and his brother, Aaron, and I was picked up in the nicest limousine I had ever seen—myself along with the other guys hopped in with Lou Perlman and went to eat. I didn’t quite know what to make of it all, and I was skeptical from the outset, yet I went along with it for the time being. It was January 2003, and for the next several months the other guys and I met in Orlando for voice lessons, rehearsals, dance lessons, and conversations about private tutors for school and about our future together.
- I walked into Lou’s office one week before contracts were to be signed and told him that this wasn’t what God had for my life. I explained to him as he sat behind his desk, breathing heavily, that I believed God had other plans for me and that I believed I would be in ministry some day. That’s really about all I said; it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life (even to this day). Lou Pearlman, a lapsed Jew, first cousin of Art Garfunkel (kind of ironic), and self-made millionaire (or so it seemed at the time), looked at me, smiled, and said, “We love you Burk, you can’t leave us; we’re you’re family.”
-
Lou Pearlman kidding with Chris Kirkpatrick of N’Sync, 1996
He then stood up and said, “you must do it, Burk.” His face turned red and he huffed and puffed. He then proceeded to remind me of all he had invested in me and in the rest of the group. By this time the rest of the guys could hear what was going on as they sat in the game room outside Lou’s office. He was yelling, and he was beyond upset. In tears, I thanked him for all he had done and said how sorry I was for letting him down and leaving. I walked out, said goodbye, and waved to the guys whom I dearly came to love and care for and drove home to Sarasota. It was one of the longest two-hour drives of my life.
http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/challies/to-backstreet-and-back-part-2-11607166.html
- It was during this period, in 1997 and 1998, that the first allegations of inappropriate behavior involving Pearlman appear to have surfaced. One incident centered on the youngest of the Backstreet Boys, Nick Carter, who in 1997 turned 17. Even for many of those closest to the group, what happened remains unclear. “My son did say something about the fact that Nick had been uncomfortable staying [at Pearlman’s house],” Denise McLean says. “For a while Nick loved going over to Lou’s house. All of a sudden it appeared there was a flip at some point. Then we heard from the Carter camp that there was some kind of inappropriate behavior. It was just odd. I can just say there were odd events that took place.”
Neither Nick Carter nor his divorced parents, Robert and Jane Carter, will address what, if anything, happened. But at least two other mothers of Pearlman band members assert Jane termed Pearlman a “sexual predator.” Phoenix Stone says he discussed the matter with both Nick and his mother. “With Nick, I got to tell you, this was not something Nick was comfortable talking about,” says Stone. “What happened? Well, I just think that he finally, you know, Lou was definitely inappropriate with him, and he just felt that he didn’t want anything to do with that anymore. There was a big blowup at that point. From what Jane says, yes, there was a big blowup and they confronted him.”
- In a telephone interview, Jane Carter stops just short of acknowledging Pearlman made improper overtures to her son. “Certain things happened,” she tells me, “and it almost destroyed our family. I tried to warn everyone. I tried to warn all the mothers.” Told that this article would detail allegations that Pearlman made overtures to other young men, she replies, “If you’re doing that, and exposing that, I give you a big flag. I tried to expose him for what he was years ago.… I hope you expose him, because the financial [scandal] is the least of his injustices.” When I ask why she won’t discuss it further, Carter says she doesn’t want to jeopardize her relationship with Nick. “I can’t say anything more,” she says. “These children are fearful, and they want to go on with their careers.” http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/11/pearlman200711?currentPage=5
Rich Cronin of LFO spoke of the same to that nasty Howard Stern guy (source: MTV News). Chronin died of leukemia in 2010 at age 36.
“He wanted to [seduce] everyone. He wanted to [seduce] everyone there … he’s disgusting,” Cronin told Howard Stern on his radio show on Wednesday (January 21), when he stopped by to promote his new album, Billion Dollar Sound. “He needed you to sing a little bit, but really he just wanted you to be good-looking.” - “I’ve had to go to therapy … he’s really a creepy guy,” Cronin said after describing Pearlman’s “wonderland for guys” mansion, which was full of Star Wars memorabilia. He added that Pearlman’s attention was invasive to say the least.
- “He goes, ‘You could be a star … take off your shirt.’ Then he’s like, ‘Turn around,’ ” Cronin recalled. “He’s massaging my shoulders and he’s like, ‘You wanna watch “Top Gun”?’ “
- “Eventually he did [try to do it] … some other dudes went for it. And if you did, he took care of you. He’d buy ’em cars.” Rich jokingly added that one of the guys is now very famous because of it.
- “Lou spelled it out one day. He lost his temper on the phone and told me what he wanted: He told me he wanted to touch my dick.”
It seems that Pearlman liked games
The article about Steve Mooney, whom Pearlman recruited as a 20-year-old to work as his assistant, says:
- Pearlman enjoyed hugging him, rubbing his shoulders, and squeezing his arms, usually in conjunction with one of his odd pep talks. “He would say, ‘Do you trust me?’ [And I would say], ‘Of course I trust you, Lou,'” Mooney recalls. “He always said, ‘I want to break you down, then build you up, so we can be a team together.’ Then he would say, ‘Your aura is off,’ so he begins rubbing my back. I was like, ‘Whoa!’ And he’s going, ‘It’s O.K., we’ve got to get your aura aligned.'” It got to the point, Mooney says, where every time they were alone Pearlman would rub his muscles. “As soon as the elevator doors close, he would grab you and rub your abs,” he recalls. “The first few times, it’s O.K. But it gets to be too much. It’s like you have this creepy friend who’s always touching you.”
- Mooney also says, “There was one guy in every band—one sacrifice—one guy in every band who takes it for Lou. That’s just the way it was.” And Pearlman’s publicist, Jay Marose, says, “You’d see Lou kind of moving in on one of them, and you’d just tell someone, Get that kid away from Lou before it’s too late.” http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/making_the_band/2007_Oct_05_lou_pearlman
Tim Christofore, a member of Take 5, recalls:
- “During a sleepover at Pearlman’s house, the music czar swan-dived onto his and another boy’s bed and wrestled with them wearing only in a towel, which came off. “We were like, ‘Ooh, Lou, that’s gross.’ What did I know? I was 13.” http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/15987175.html
The ABC News:
While Mooney and some of the older band members accuse Pearlman of outwardly looking for sexual favors in lieu of advancing their careers, the younger boys remember Pearlman more as a “sleazy uncle.”
“Lou’s house was a fun place to hang out,” Tim Christofore, 24, told ABCNEWS.com. “There was a pool table and slot machines.” Christofore moved to Florida from Minnesota at 13 as part of the band Take 5. Christofore recalls two incidents in which Pearlman exposed himself in front of him.
“There was one time where he answered the door naked,” he said.
Another time Christofore and band mate Jeff “Clay” Goodell, then also 13, had fallen asleep at Pearlman’s house. They woke up to Pearlman jumping into bed with them.
“He jumped into the bed in his towel,” said Goodell, now 23 and a senior in college. “He rolled all over us and the towel fell off.”
Goodell said that when he was 13 or 14, Pearlman took him and his brother Ryan, then 17 and also a member of Take 5, to a strip club.
“It was one of those days where we had gone through our normal routine and ended up hanging out together at Lou’s,” he said. “The strip club came up and we ended up going ? That was weird, but it wasn’t happening all the time.
On another night, Pearlman screened a Star Wars film, but the movie was interrupted with a pornographic video. “Because we were minors there was always at least one parent at the house. That night was the only night I ever stayed at Lou’s house,” said Ryan Goodell, 27 and now a second year law school student in Los Angeles.
“We were watching Star Wars and all of a sudden a porno came on. It was literally 10 seconds and then it got turned off. We were all teenagers snickering and he made some excuse,” Ryan said.
“Who knows what he was thinking. Was he trying to be the cool ‘Big Poppa’ uncle?” asked Ryan referring to the nickname Pearlman used for himself. “Or was he trying to get a sense of how we would react?”
Ryan said that despite the incident with the pornography and the strip club, he is skeptical of some of the stories he has heard.
“Maybe it’s just that Pearlman was only willing to take that extra step with guys like Mooney who were older than 18, which is why I never saw it. But some of these guys always wanted to be in bands and never got into them and you have to question their motives ? If the things they say they saw happen are true, and they didn’t say anything at the time, that is just wrong.”
Many of the boys interviewed by Vanity Fair and ABC News said that Pearlman would often offer them massages that he said would “balance their aura” or “help build bigger muscles.”
“The aura massage thing,” said Christofore. “He always said he had a way to feel up on your arm or bicep so that when you curled your arm it would make your muscles look bigger. He was a weird, touchy guy and would sometimes rub kids’ abs.”
The boys from Take 5 resent Pearlman for other reasons, however. They said that when the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync, backed by their record companies, sued Pearlman to get out of their contracts and collect moneys owed them, Pearlman switched tactics in promoting Take 5. In an effort to keep the bands making him money, but not enough that the labels would support them in a protracted legal battle, the members said Pearlman never let them get too big and barely paid them after five years of extensive touring in Europe and Asia. They sued Pearlman before breaking up the band and leaving Florida.
None of the members of the Backstreet Boys or ‘NSync would speak to ABC News or Vanity Fair. http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=3709785&page=1
And Tim Christofore’s story strikes you by its vivid similarity to what Aaron Carter said to Daphne Barak in that private conversation of theirs:
- Tim Christofore was 13 when he joined the Pearlman-guided band Take 5. During sleepovers at Pearlman’s place, Christofore told Gray, “[Lou] would let us watch porn.” Once, Christofore said, he awoke to find Lou standing at the foot of the bed, wearing only a towel, which came off when he dove on the mattress to “wrestle” with the boys.
Lou Pearlman and Aaron Carter at a ‘Family Day’ in 2005
So they woke up and Lou was standing at the foot of his bed?
But this sounds too close to Aaron Carter’s words to be just a coincidence! Aaron said that he woke up and someone was sitting at the foot of his bed.
And after all we’ve heard about Lou Pearlman’s ways I personally have little doubt that the “king” Aaron was speaking about was Lou Pearlman and not Michael Jackson.
And who knows how much Aaron opened up to Barak about his former manager in a talk which he thought was private and carried with a person who presented herself as his friend?
And since many boys say that Pearlman showed porn to them can we rule out that it was him who also introduced them to weed and cocaine or something else which Aaron talked about in tape 3?
The impression I got when reading all those accounts was somewhat surrealistic – it was like recognizing that ALL allegations they made about Michael were actually taken from Lou Pearlman’s life. It was like playing some cruel game where the things done by one person were told about another and where the innocent was meant to suffer while the guilty was allowed to walk away free.
Backstreet boys cd cover
As a result of the Carters’ association with Lou Pearlman Nick Carter’s emotional state was so bad that he had to undergo therapy.
The tabloid tells a story about it which should naturally be divided by a hundred, but it may still have some grains of truth to it:
Justin Timberlake and Nick Carter have been dragged into a gay scandal so far up that Nick has even had to undergo therapy to deal with it.
The two pop stars, along with other members of their former boy groups NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, were exposed to the corrupt sexual surroundings of boy band kingmaker Lou Pearlman.
This all started when an obese Pearlman convinced the parents of aspiring singers to let their children live in his Florida mansion.
An insider said that once the boys were in his home, the 350-pound Pearlman would prance around naked in front of the young boys, and hop into their beds.
Nick’s mother, Jane, was so convinced that Pearlman was molesting her son, that she dragged him to a psychiatrist, according to Nick’s father.
“Jane made the accusation when Nick was just 15.” said Nick’s dad. “She took Nick to a therapist because of it. The therapist decided that Lou never touched Nick, but Jane was still convinced of it.”
Backstreet boy A.J. McLean’s mother said she was unaware of Pearlman’s behavior, but nevertheless, she still did not allow him to stay over at his home.
According to Nick Carter’s former high school tutor, Pearlman acted especially affectionate towards him. “When I went to Lou’s mansion to tutor Nick, I saw Lou put his arms around Nick and massage him.”
“There were security cameras filming the boys, and Lou had this ornate bathroom with a shower that had a zillion shower heads. He was a strange person.”
“Some of the band members would stay at Lou’s house when they were under his umbrella. But there came a time when they refused to stay there anymore,” claims the tutor.
http://celebtrashtalk.com/justin-timberlake/justin-timberlake-and-nick-carter-in-gay-scandal.html
To be fair to Pearlman there were never any charges made against him and as regards Nick Carter’s mother Pearlman gave the following answer:
- “Jane Carter has been in and out of settlement agreements with my company. I’m sure her boys, like I, have no idea what she is talking about. She’s just trying to get attention, as usual. Just look at her problems with her family. After Aaron left his mom as his manager, he came back to me for management until recently. Not only are Nick and I still friends, he was in our studio recording a duet with Aaron.” http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/news/Hold_The_Phone%3A_Lou_Pearlman_Might_Not_Be_a_Child_Molester
All the allegations could be disregarded as nasty innuendos if the boys, who are now grown-up people, did not more or less admit it that they indeed experienced some kind of inappropriate behavior from Lou Pearlman.
The following article puts the final touch to their attitude to Pearlman:
Oct 31 2007 7:31 PM EDT 12,965
Backstreet Boys Open Up To John Norris About Disgraced Boy-Band Mogul Lou Pearlman: ‘Karma’s Karma’
As the Boys drop a fifth album, their former manager awaits trial on fraud charges and is accused of being a sexual predator.
It was a difficult moment in an interview ostensibly to mark the release of a new album, and, in searching for the right comment, the Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean turned to a lyric from a onetime boy-band rival.
“One of the radio stations asked us about this, and Brian and I started singing Justin [Timberlake]’s ‘What Goes Around … Comes Around.‘ I mean, you can’t run from these things forever. You know if you’re doing something bad from the very get, it’s gonna come back around and bite you in the ass. There’s no way around it.”
The person in question — indeed, a guy Backstreet would just as soon not be talking about in 2007 — is Lou Pearlman, the impresario once known as “Big Poppa,” the man who helped turn Orlando, Florida, into the late-1990s capital of boy-band teen pop-dom, and a man who has seen better days. Not only is Pearlman presently sitting in an Orange County, Florida, jail awaiting trial on charges of bank and investment fraud, accused of bilking investors nationwide of millions of dollars through what amounted to a Ponzi scheme, he is also the subject of a damning article by Bryan Burrough in the November issue of Vanity Fair.
The VF piece not only exhaustively chronicles Pearlman’s years of financial shenanigans and tall tales that landed him in his current hot water, it also alleges that Pearlman was a habitual sexual predator — harassing, abusing or worse — the teenage boys in his charge.
McLean continued, “I mean we thankfully got out of that whole situation when we did, and you know we don’t wish bad upon anybody, but karma’s karma.”
The karma that has apparently caught up with Pearlman on the financial front can hardly be considered surprising. His tendency to play less than fair — signing the teen groups he launched to awful deals from which they made next to nothing — has already been well-documented, most recently in Lance Bass’ book “Out of Sync.” Years ago, both ‘NSYNC and Backstreet sued Pearlman in order to get money owed them and to finally be free from his financial grasp. Bass, in his book, called it a “stab in the back; Justin Timberlake has called it “financial rape.”
Whatever other kind of grasping was going on behind closed doors in Pearlman’s boy-band-chocked world is still anybody’s guess. But the creepy allegations made in the VF piece are troubling — from former LFO singer Rich Cronin’s saying that Lou had a penchant for “massaging” his young dudes, to an Abercrombie employee-turned-personal assistant named Steve Mooney alleging that Pearlman once full-on propositioned him and implied that sexual favors would land him a spot in a band. Mooney tells Burrough, “There was one guy in every band — one sacrifice … who takes it for Lou.”
According to a onetime singer and co-manager, Phoenix Stone, that guy was Nick Carter in the Backstreet Boys. Stone claims in the VF story that Pearlman was “inappropriate” with Carter, leading to a “big blowup.” Nick’s mother, Jane Carter, is even quoted in the article, saying, “Certain things happened” and calling the financial scandal “the least of [Pearlman’s] injustices.”
Needless to say, none of this is anything that now-27-year-old Nick Carter is keen to talk about, especially in what ought to be an interview heralding the release of a new record, but he did have a comment for those people speaking out.
“There’s a lot of people who maybe were involved in our stuff in the past who want to take an opportunity maybe because they are a little bitter, you know, maybe because of where they are right now,” Carter said. “And they tend to, like, throw us under the bus, you know what I mean? Because of where we are right now. I mean, I’m not naming anybody but … any attack on any one of us in this group is an attack on the whole entire group.”
When I suggested that if anyone is being “attacked” it’s Pearlman and not Backstreet, Nick would only offer, “Well, not necessarily an attack, but it does affect the whole entire group. Because we’ve all gone through stuff together, and it just feels like, it’s unfortunate that people have to talk, ’cause they have nothing else to talk about.”
As for whether they knew of sexual abuse by Pearlman, McLean said Backstreet were somewhat out of the loop. “We were the first group that started with Lou, so once we kind of took off, there was so much going on in our lives that there was no time for us to focus on or really pay attention to what was going on, if there was anything going on, behind closed doors, and now, obviously he had group after group after us, and now it’s like these things are coming up. And who knows?”
But if the alleged sexual harassment and/or abuse of these boy-band members was as habitual and widespread as is suggested in the Vanity Fair story, why have we heard nothing until now? Backstreet believe it may well have to do with the fact that “Big Poppa” is behind bars.
Says AJ, “I guess it’s just the perfect opportunity now because of his situation and where he’s at and people are like, ‘Well, he can’t really defend himself. He can’t do anything, and so let’s just go.’ … And maybe they feel comfortable saying whatever they’re saying.”
Brian Littrell agreed, and suggested it’s also a case of time, and distance, emboldening Pearlman’s alleged victims. “You don’t necessarily come into this business with a backbone. You have to grow a backbone,” Littrell said. “We love music, we’ve always been about music and touring and traveling and making the fans happy, and at the same time you can get walked all over in this business. Financially and in all kinds of ways. So people coming out now would be like somebody growing a backbone. You know, ‘He can’t do anything to me now, so it’s the time.’ ”
It’s the time, as far as the Backstreet Boys are concerned, for the group to focus not on unsavory stories about Pearlman, not on last year’s departure of Kevin Richardson (who they insist they remain on “great” terms with) but on their fifth album, Unbreakable (which hits stores Tuesday), the one that certifies that they, alone among their vocal-group peers (please, let’s not call ’em a “boy band” anymore), are still around.
“There’s so much laundry that’s been aired out in the past,” Howie Dorough said. “I mean, everybody knows about us from lawsuits to, you know, everything that’s happened, so I think we’re at the point in our career where we’re just trying to move forward, not look back.”
A final rejoinder, AJ? “Again, what goes around comes around, and we’ve been the ones to not succumb to anything, and that’s why we’re still here because we’ve always focused on what’s most important to the Backstreet Boys, which is the music.”
Here is the VIDEO of AJ McLean’s interview – WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND:
http://www.mtv.com/videos/news/185834/aj-mclean-what-goes-around-comes-around.jhtml#id=1573185
Over there the musicians say it clearly – they do not want to look back. They are trying hard to move forward despite all the dirt they had to see or possibly go through under Pearlman’s management – though it seems that the Backstreet boys band managed to get out of this loop as they were the first in Pearlman’s charge and he couldn’t go too far with them yet.
And I am very much willing to respect their desire to forget about it.
I am pretty sure that Aaron Carter could speak about Lou Pearlman in his private conversation with a highly “sympathetic” woman Daphne Barak and could say something about their common and dreary past which he doesn’t want to share with the rest of the public.
He could have mentioned some other performers who wouldn’t want their skeletons in the cupboard revealed as this may ruin these people’s life and career (and potentially land Aaron in a series of lawsuits).
In fact there are many reasons why he may be now unwilling to have the names named and have these highly private tapes disclosed.
And it is absolutely not his fault that he opened up his mind and soul to this beastly journalist who not only betrayed him by making a secret recording of his revelations, but is slandering another innocent person now – Michael Jackson – by forging the tapes and manipulating the public into thinking that Aaron was speaking about Michael.
If Aaron Carter had been speaking of Michael he wouldn’t be defending his innocence in all other tapes except those from Daphne Barak and he would certainly not be saying that Michael was his biggest teacher and inspiration in life like he says it in another of his recent tapes.
Here is a video of it and let us make a note that we’ve never heard him speak like that about his former manager Pearlman. Considering Aaron’s unique childhood experience he seems to know the difference between a real predator and an innocent person, so his opinion may be trusted:
However I haven’t yet answered why Aaron Carter is not making a clear statement that the man he was talking about wasn’t Michael Jackson.
Given that Daphne Barak has already tried to intimidate another person (Grace Rwaramba) by threatening that she will disclose the tapes of their private conversations if Grace doesn’t do what she wants her to do, I think that Daphne Barak is now blackmailing Aaron Carter by threatening to disclose his private tapes too.
He is afraid that she will do it.
It’s possible that this is the reason why.
Vindicating Michael 
Carter never said that he slept in the same room with MJ. The only one time he stayed at Neverland overnight he slept in the theater at Neverland together with Chris Tucker, after MJ’s birthday party in 2003.
But he did say that he had been to Michael’s bedroom and seen its crystal bedspread. This sparkling bedspread covered the bed on the second floor of MJ’s private quarters and all guests saw it as it was part of a routine tour around MJ’s quarters given to most of the guests. So there is nothing usual about it at all.
The allegation that he slept in one room with MJ is taken from Daphne Barak’s tampered video. The speed at which another so-called journalist/editor wanted to publish Carter’s unfinished book, which Carter certainly didn’t have a chance to review before his death, shows that its publication was done solely for grabbing attention and money, of course, by exploiting this and other old lies about Jackson.
When Carter was still alive he was initially lured into this project but then said he didn’t want to have anything to do with it and its editor. Obviously he began to realize that this “journalist” was just using him for his ugly ends.
I will look into this matter as it shouldn’t be left as it is.
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In a book of Carter released posthumously is written history with bed and connected with Michael. Either Aaron was lying or the co – author added. The new Version- he slept with Michael in the same Room.
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he cant be talking about lou pearlman because lou pearlman had no kids. They were talking about michael, did you see the video where he said he smoked weet with michael? it was also during this ” lunch” they were having, you can hear the knifes and forks as well. The pot thing he even whispers.
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Sorry, but these are not the tapes I am talking about. Here they talk about wine, pot, etc. but those tapes were about “sitting on the bed” and “King” and were on Daphne Barak’s own Youtube channel only. They were really remarkable as they produced a clear impression that they were tampered with. But those short tapes didn’t stay for long there and were rather quickly removed. I didn’t even have time to download them on my computer.
Actually I didn’t expect them to disappear at all as they were ‘the best part’ and I thought she would give them her best promotion.
In my opinion she could remove them herself only if Aaron Carter threatened her with a lawsuit for slander. I have no idea whether he did, but this disappearance act is rather telling in and of itself.
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Here are backups:
Hope this works for you.
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Mjjcritic, unfortunately by the time I had an opportunity to watch them they had already been gone. Sorry I did it so late.
Is there a chance to reload them once again?
I’ve had some problems with my Internet traffic, but hope to make a new post tomorrow night. If the amount of traffic available to me allows it of course 🙂
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Here are all the videos Daphne posted:
They definitely sound edited to me.
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Unfortunately now Daphne Barak’s tapes are no longer available as she took them down from her You tube account (by the way, does anyone have copies of them?). But when I was listening to her tapes they struck me as a compilation of various episodes pasted together and with a terrible sound too.
I was absolutely sure that she took Aaron’s words about someone’s children (presumably Michael’s) and combined them with a story about someone sitting down on his bed. And then she called this person “King” to create the impression that the conversation was about MJ, though it was about a different “king” – Lou Perlman. Lou Perlman was also called King, King of Music.
As to Bruce Willis, Aaron didn’t say he was ‘invited for a sleepover’ – he said that Bruce flew him to a birthday party of his daughter Rumer and he stayed there for two days. And Aaron was genuinely incredulous about any innuendoes in this respect.
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I wish you had gone more into Aaron’s relationship with Bruce Willis, there was an article I read in 2000-2001 in Teen Beat or Tiger Beat or some such magazine, and Aaron was asked about many things, about his time at the olsen twin’s 13th birthday party, and about his sleepover with Bruce Willis. The interviewer asked Aaron why Bruce invited him for a sleepover. They asked if Bruce’s kids liked his music and Aaron said No, Bruce just invited him to hang out with him. I remember thinking it was really weird and that it made bruce willis seem like a creep. Also in the recording Daphne asked Aaron where ‘His” kids were at the time, and Aaron said “they were right in the next room”. Lou Perlman didn’t have kids so this doesn’t make sense with your theory.
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Some of the best words I’ve heard about Michael Jackson lately – very true and sincere:
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Some media took the chance to repeat the old lies about MJ:
Bullshit.
In his interview to eonline Aaron absolutely disproved this story.
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The latest news about Aaron Carter, the media and some Michael Jackson’s fans who are incapable of thinking on their own.
On November 23, 2015 Aaron tweeted that “Michael passed down the torch to him” and the media took this news in the only cynical way they are capable of understanding things – they thought that Aaron proclaimed himself to be another Michael Jackson. However Aaron was talking of something different and had to rebuff the tide of ridicule from Michael’s fans who were foolish enough to believe the media.
Aaron made his point very well:
<img src="
” alt=”” />
Full story: http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6770391/aaron-carter-michael-jackson-passed-down-torch-twitter
Aaron is right, only when will Michael’s fans understand it and take over the torch from Michael’s hands too? And stop hating each and everyone who is not to their liking?
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Maybe. Since this isn’t a proper interview but something recorded from under the table it is almost impossible to understand what she is saying. But I’m actually happy that I understood it as “king”. It helped me to trace the whole thing to Lou Pearlman, and I don’t have a single doubt that Aaron was talking about him and it was only Daphne Barak who made it look like it was told about Michael.
Also some other people can understand her words like I did, so it is better to leave everything the way it is. I’ve only just shortened the post a bit.
Since it suddenly went into the top list, I looked it up again and found that some of Daphne’s fake videos are missing, at least the grossest of her fakes. Well, this is the best proof that we did get to the bottom of her lies, and she doesn’t want others to check them up.
I’ve managed to find one of those videos but am reluctant to place it in the post as the author of it of course does not allow any comments in support of Michael Jackson. I tried to leave two, but both were deleted.
Why are Michael’s haters absolutely incapable of handling the truth?
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In the recording where aaron talks about waking up to someone at the foot of his bed, she does not say “this is King” she says, “this is scary”. so your focus on the work ‘king’ is a waste of time. it would be hard to know who he’s talking about because it could have been someone who wasn’t even famous. Or it could have been bruce willis.
the videos here are all private now and can’t be listened to, but some of the videos here work: xxx and the transcripts are correct for the video about the bed story. She says, “This is SCARY” not “This is KING” You can tell by the way she says it, the way she laughs in a nervous yet reassuring manner to try and get aaron to keep going. If she was saying ‘this is king” you’d think she would sound more shocked or something, not laughing nervously about how scary it must have been for aaron.
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Oh ,I forgot to post the link, sorry hehe. So here’s the video where he completely denies it. So haters can eat it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwNoWMKKB4o
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Hello guys! Here’s a video where Aaron Carter denies the OK Magazine rumor 🙂
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Moi, I don’t remember any high-pitched voice there. What I do remember is the terrible quality of the tape. I think Aaron spoke in his usual voice, only it sounded stifled for some reason.
I would have thought so myself if it were not for one problem – Aaron stayed the night in Neverland only ONCE (though he did hang out there often), so there was NO other occasion. It was after that night that Aaron’s mother made all the fuss over it.
And Aaron stayed the night in the MOVIE THEATRE which was a totally separate building in Neverland, far from the main house.
I doubt very much that Paris and Prince had their rooms next to the movie hall and in a separate building at that. The movie theatre had a room behind the chairs with a glass wall down to the floor with two beds on both sides of the room (for ill children to watch films). This is where Aaron stayed that night. The other bed was taken by Chris Tucker and he confirmed it.
That settles the matter of Paris and Prince “being next to Aaron” – right? – but leaves us with two possibilities. Either Aaron did mention Paris and Prince in this connection and is therefore telling a deliberate lie, or he mentioned them in another connection and Daphne Barak simply did a cut and paste job. Given Aaron’s earlier and later support for MJ I think it was Daphne who tampered with the tape.
I’ve inserted some more photos into the post to illustrate my points:
This map shows where the Movie Theatre was – it is No.24 on the map and is across two roads to the left of the main building.
And this photo shows the inside of the Movie Theatre. Aaron stayed only one night in Neverland and it was in a room behind these chairs. I doubt very much that Prince and Paris were sleeping in the room next to this theatre.
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Great summary of events. Lord, that was one big mess . . . Couple things, though:
I don’t think Aaron was talking about Lou Pearlman in the tapes. Granted, he never says the person’s name . . . but he does imitate the person’s voice (in a high-pitched, very-common way of imitating MJ). Aaron also mentioned that “his kids were in the next room” and that this person didn’t like others around his kids much, but he let Aaron play with them and hang out, etc. I think it’s pretty obvious that he was talking about MJ and Prince and Paris.
And re: the story of MJ at the foot of the bed . . . I don’t think it was implied that happened during the Neverland b-day party. I believe Aaron said in the tapes that he stayed at Neverland before, that he hung out with MJ “a lot,” and played with his kids often, etc. Seems to imply it was a different occasion. *shrug*
Honestly, that part of the audio is so quiet and vague, it’s hard to understand what Aaron even meant by telling the story. MJ was a known insomniac, after all . . . Lisa Marie said he used to pace around the room like a “little gnome.” He could’ve just been pacing around his two-story bedroom, thinking, mind racing — all the while Aaron was asleep on the cot. Who knows! Like I said, the convo is very vague. (Plus, keep in mind, Prince and Paris were next door the whole time.)
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One thing- To me, it sounds like Daphne Barak was not saying “this is king-” but actually saying “that’s scary-” She seems to say it again later.
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http://mjmyinspiration.blogspot.com/2011/09/chris-tucker-and-shana-manghatal.html
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http://mjmyinspiration.blogspot.com/2011/09/aqaron-carter-and-hisrespect-for.html
THE MOST FALSE PERSON I EVER SEEN
HIS BEST FRIEND IS HIS MANAGER…HUUHH…AGAIN..I UNDERSTAND…
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@ Hana
Why should we check it out? Frankly, I don’t understand why people keep obsessing about that crazy person’s opinion. I, for one, stopped caring long time ago and I wish people stopped advertising her blog over here.
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Check out Desiree’s new blog entry regarding Aaron carter.
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Daphne Barak is a parasite. A parasite literally NEEDS to live off and inside a living breathing host..She and people like her forgot their essence of humility, of empathy.so they are only acting on their limited abliities. Unfortunely, she has brainwashed so many who have a pre-desposition of envy/jealous, greed, of prejudices, and of racism who will take her twisted words, and blunt lies..as gospel. Michael Jackson was a transcendant being, a messanger of love, I cannot find the words to truly describe him. God was kind enough to give us an extraordinary gift for 50 years…Michael has changed billions of lives for the better, through his creative genius, his healing powers, and his giving heart..the Darkness cannot stand the Light..this is the story of our human experience..it is nothing new..only the methods may have changed..When Joan of Arc and others with extraordinary gifts who were leaders, who spoke against inhumanity, who taught love and truth, who were guided by higher beings, or angels, or God himself..The Powers of Be tortured them or were murdered, or both.. Instead of burning at the stake, our modern means of torture is the media…fueled by fear, greed, and prejudices-these things-remain the same.
Do not think Daphne Barak is alone in her actions..there are people in higher positions who not only knew but supported and even was part of the propaganda. TRUTH will always be prevailed..I am grateful that Aaron Carter had enough courage to speak the truth..and F..Howard Stern and his ‘crew’ of inmature little boys-playing grown up. Howard Stern is nothing but self-serving ignorant-human being.who has not grown-up-himself. And because of his huge physical pressence-he is the leader of the pack of ‘little minds’.. He is still highly upset with all the mean kids in the schools he attended as a child, who made fun of him..He cannot stand men of honor like Mihcael Jackson..so he attacks him the only way he knows how..verbal abuse. He never evolved. He is so far away from Michael’s light..not even close. In conclusion–Daphne Barak and parasites like her..it is their duty to destroy the light..they can try..they can twist words, paste and cute tapes, words, articles, mix and match..names, for the purpose to destroy..yet, TRUTH will always win in the end..I used to hate people like her–I should say hate their actions-I do not do so anymore–because they are only being themselves..they are only telling of their own characters. NO ONE can destroy Michael’s legacy–because Michael was and IS about LOVE..RIP, my king, you are my beloved 4Ever..I will see you in paradise..
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I imagine Daphne Barak´s outfits to be studded with concealed micrphones, never to miss a word that can be used in one context or another.
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David is right when he wrote “let’s not get carried away with this Aaron Carter/Daphne Barack non-story. When it gets to the point that people are attacking each other, it has gone too far. ”
In a way I understand why the talk went on and on for a while. For my part, I give some more time to Carter before I make up my mind about him. But Barak, there is no doubt about who she is and how she works.
A “score” has been mentioned, “1:0 in favor” of Barak and other haters. In my opinion, it seems that is the case. But the question is how? How she did it? It’s very important to understand that and I’m sure you know why. Here is my thoughts from a technical point of vue.
When VG wrote his BS book, he used horror movie techniques. He describes his lies in a disgusting and horrifying way that the readers take the whole of the BS as it is.
However Barak doing it in a more sophisticated manner. On the one hand we have all the tales that the haters have fabricated during several years, the “young boys” stories. On the other hand, Barak recalls these stories by her compiling and editing tricks in the videos.
First, she shows clip nr.1 where apparently there are some talks about coke-alcohol and Michael. The clip brings back to mind the 2005 case and the Arvizo family. In the clips 2 and 3, the story happens around a “bed ” “at 5 o’clock” and some “king” is involved but there is no other names. Here, Barak recalls the 93 case and the Chandler family.
Above all, she knows that the viewers will automatically consider the clips nr. 2 and 3 as a continuation of Nr. 1. And having all the “boys stories” in their mind + the 2 cases recalls the viewers are pushed to associate the “5 o’clock” “bed” “king” man with the person named in the first video. And this shows all her malice. Actually, she might be technically cleaver. It’s possible that someone more professional had helped her too.
For the fans, the clip nr. 1 was an “Ouch time”. Everybody was very angry and hurt but also scared. We feared how far the rest of the clips would go. When she came with more, she got us. It’s true that we need to get ready for the trial. However, it’s almost a must to take all we have learnt during these years with us.
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“shouldn’t it be better to make just an impassionate dissection of their lies and showing to everyone their infernal deeds? And leaving them after that – to be poisoned by their own venom and devoured by their own demons? Exposing them for what they are and allowing the Heavens to deal with these people?”
Yes, my mom calls this, “giving them enough rope to hang themselves”.
VMJ you do a great job. I don’t comment much but I am always here and amazed by your intuitive sense, skill and love.
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“It ought to be an axiom that any DB interview is fake and to keep away from her like the plague”
Kaarin, very well said. FULLY AGREE.
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“I think AC is just not very credible and i think he is a bit of an idiot actually. i suppose its just inevitable with the myriad nature of information, stories and voices about Michael Jackson and the strength of feelings he inspires, that one day there would be disagreement over something EVEN HERE”.
Alison, thank you for the words of encouragement and wisdom. I fully understand that Michael’s supporters cannot be of one and the same opinion about everything but there is one important thing all of us need to share – understanding that the road to Michael cannot lie through hatred. Neither can it go through harassment of other people, especially if we are not sure that they are guilty. We can feel sadness, sorrow, bewilderment at someone’s actions, annoyance with their mistakes, stupidity or immaturity (Aaron Carter) but not hatred. Trying to reach love through hatred is as senseless and impossible as ‘fighting’ for peace.
Creatures like Daphne Barak, Martin Bashir, Diane Dimond and Victor Gutierrez of course deserve stronger feelings and assessments and frankly, I don’t know how to go about them – I myself fly into a rage each time they confront me with their lies and shrewd ways of manipulating people. But even here – shouldn’t it be better to make just an impassionate dissection of their lies and showing to everyone their infernal deeds? And leaving them after that – to be poisoned by their own venom and devoured by their own demons? Exposing them for what they are and allowing the Heavens to deal with these people?
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“another reason AC could be keeping quiet may be not blackmail, tho you do give adequate reason to think that, but equally he may just not wish to drag other people into it and betray them. Or maybe he is afraid to do that and end up instigating legal proceedings.”
Alison, this is exactly what I meant by the word “blackmail” – most probably it is the word itself which is wrong (I just didn’t know of another one). I would willingly correct the word itself but not the meaning of what I’ve said.
“Can the vids of the tape be kept independently before they are all removed?”
Yes, they can – if you register your own account on Youtube and then download them under your name using Realplayer or Download Master. You can make them private (seen to you only) or public (seen to all) but preserving them is a very good idea. The fact that they are now disappearing from public view is the first sign that someone who posted them is probably afraid that they will be examined by experts and determined to be fake.
If anyone has a chance to copy those videos please do so, as my mobile internet is too slow and does not allow it at the moment. I will be very grateful to you if you kept those copies or sent them to me via mail. This is our evidence of Daphne’s “games” with the tapes.
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“I don’t want us to get distracted with Lou Pearlman now, too.”
David, I understand your good intentions but you see it yourself that when we refute the accusations thrown at Michael we inevitably find ourselves discussing all these molestation issues.
And I also think that we are not getting “distracted” by talking about guys like Pearlman. There is a very big chance that he did abuse children and concern for children’s well-being was Michael’s whole meaning of life. While supporting Michael we naturally turn into defenders children and their right to innocence.
So it is probably Michael who sort of left to us the job of ridding the society of this scum.
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Mmm! very thought provoking.
pity but one of the DB videos will no longer play, says its private whatever that means, i think its one you can see them as well as hear the taped conversation.
I also had never heard of carter until this, and tho i had heard of the backstreet boys it was just a name of a band for the younger generation, i wasn’t interested, and i certainly couldn’t have named anyone. so i have no knowledge about what these boys are like other than what i’ve read here and in the comments.
But what i will say is i don’t get a sense of any integrity or truth from AC in these later vids, and i watched a couple of the others near them on youtube as well, as opposed to the vids from a few years ago when they were defending Michael – those seem truthful. the more recent ones seem to be just saying whatever will get him attention. however to me Nick seems different, he seems more honest.Having said that, whilst i think the ?2005 vids were truthful in defending MJ, i still don’t like AC in them, he still seems to be courting attention and whilst his words are defending there are times when he is laughing in a more ‘collaborative with the interviewers ‘ way than i like, he seems to be at the same time trying to be friends with them and there is some mockery of Michael in his laughter at the same time as he sincerely defends him.
so basically, i can’t tell if these tapes are cut and pasted or not but what i can hear of what ac says is not at all convincing, there is nothing that he says that says its about Michael, its implied by Barak’s presentation of it but its not actually there. but actually whoever is really being talked about i still doubt the truthfulness of it, it just sounds off to me.
Having said that, i do think this is an important thing, this reference by barak to ‘king’. its what she DOESN’T say thats crucial, she doesn’t say “The”.
in any and every reference to Michael Jackson as the King of Pop, i have never heard anyone ever miss out the “the” unless he is named first eg ” Michael Jackson / Jackson, King of Pop, …” and really it usually still would have THE in front. never is it ever said ” …it was King of Pop”, but always “…it was THE King of Pop”.
also when she says ‘king’ on the tape, her voice just doesn’t sound as if its about the ‘King of Pop’, the word ‘king’ is said too flat, too factual, almost it is someone named King being referred to or even an ACTUAL king ( LOL i know thats unlikely but grammatically it would fit) and the name is left off. and i just do not think in the type of conversation the reference King of Pop would be used, his name would have been used. King of Pop is a ‘title’ that is used for some sort of public presentation, its not something they would use in a conversation, particularly this type of conversation.
I think there could be something in some of the information here but I did feel that still a lot of the reports about Pearlman were gossip / slander that might be true but then again also could have as little foundation as some of the tabloid stories about Michael. You may well be correct about your conclusions but I think we would need to do as detailed a search as for Michael to establish the truth about them.
If they are true, which they may be, then another reason AC could be keeping quiet may be not blackmail, tho you do give adequate reason to think that, but equally he may just not wish to drag other people into it and betray them. Or maybe he is afraid to do that and end up instigating legal proceedings.
I think AC is just not very credible and i think he is a bit of an idiot actually, and just having those tapes shows the weakness of the story. Beyond that its probably best to leave it be and move on. Can the vids of the tape be kept independently before they are all removed?
Thanks Helena. Don’t be too despondent about the comments and the tone of some of them. this is a wonderful site and i suppose its just inevitable with the myriad nature of information, stories and voices about Michael Jackson and the strength of feelings he inspires, that one day there would be disagreement over something EVEN HERE.
Keep up the amazing work you are doing on the site and I know that one day the full truth will be revealed and MIchael will be vindicated.
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“I’m truly sorry to hear about your abuse, and it gives me a deeper respect for you and your desire to vindicate MJ of the false allegations against him.” (Same thing with Raven Woods, who wrote a post on her blog last year about her desire to vindicate MJ, despite being a victim of abuse herself at the hands of her father. Unfortunately, her blog is down at the moment.)”
Raven was in a much worse situation as it was her father and it went on for some time. This kind of damage is almost irreparable and scars a person for life. As for me fortunately it was only one occasion (and it didn’t go very far). Lynette, by the way, also has a history of being abused as she once told us here in the comments.
What is important is that this kind of experience gives you a unique feel for seeing when the so-called victim tells the truth or not, as you can always compare his story with your own emotions. Mine – though very short and not too harmful – was a feeling of something strange, unreal and unnatural going on. This is what I still vividly remember fifty years later, and the feeling was so strong that when they say to you (like Ray Chandler about Jordan) that the “victim” got over it fairly easily or doesn’t remember some details of it, I know for a fact that it is a lie – a flat and blatant LIE!
You don’t think about it all the time as you tend to thrust it into the back of your memory (sometimes it feels like it happened to someone else) but when you do recall it every detail of it comes back in a bang and the same feeling of fear and sickness comes over you like a wave – as if you were still five.
Despite my little age I knew that it was all wrong. I vividly remember the strange, disturbed look on the face of that man’s wife – she was busy with her own son but kept throwing at me looks of concern. This made me fearful even more – and I felt some kind of bewilderment and guilt and had the acute feeling that now I was different from the rest of the people. And it was this difference which I was afraid to confess. Also my grandmother suddenly got very agitated and demanded details when I said I had been sitting on this man’s lap and her reaction frightened me even more. So it was guilt, guilt, guilt and fear, fear, fear all throughout the whole thing.
That is why when I compare my persistent silence with the silence of Jordan (for example), I see a big difference though on the face of it it may look the same. It was such a sick animal feeling of fear, shame and bewilderment that I could never utter a word of praise for this man. Even if he were a star or the most handsome man in the world (which for a child has no meaning at all). Never could I have spoken well of this person!
And all those boys – Brett Barnes, Wade Robson, Kit Culkin, Corey Feldman, Aaron Carter when he was 16 – did speak well of Michael, looked genuinely resentful of the accusations, tried to remember some episodes which could be connected with molestation, but couldn’t think of any (Corey Feldman) and spoke about it as complete BS and in a most natural manner too!
The point I am trying to make is that it is impossible for a real victim to do an interview and speak well of his abuser! IMPOSSIBLE!
And do you remember (according to VG though) that when Jordan learned there would be no charges against MJ he dived in his clothes into a pool and said to his brother that “everybody didn’t understand but it was the best day in his life“?
Gutierrez explained it by the “love” he had for MJ.
BS! Total and complete BS!
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“do you know Desiree? the despicable villain who run this site “Desiree speaks…so listen… ” Funny when I contact her she Quickly Identified herself as the Black girl who fancy Michael Jackson but has her own thing to as she said to me “give the story another bias or unbias shear ” !!!”
Sara, of course I know of this despicable person. We have a long history of D. forcing on us various hateful stories about MJ and us (not) communicating with D.
In the first place I doubt that D. is black and secondly, that D. is a woman at all.
D. has written so incredible letters to us privately, describing details of Brett’s “penetration” with so much relish and in a manner so untypical for a woman, that I sincerely think that D. is a man.
D. is also the one who posted and re-posted all those Carter/Daphne Barak’s videos on Youtube.
She (he) pretends to be a former fan of MJ but is actually one of the worst of his harassers.
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It really is amazing when you think about it…the feelings Michael invokes in us.
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@VindicateMJ
In case I did not make myself crystal clear previously. I hold absolutely no ill will towards you defending AC. I just take issue with the way you went about it.
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Before I say anything else l want to express my sincere regret about your abuse at the hands of that monster.
“Teva, if you think that your judgment is better and you insist that Aaron was speaking about Michael Jackson I can’t help it. However it shows that in a way you believed Daphne Barak’s lies about Michael. I DID NOT and that is why I looked for other explanations for those tapes .” – Helena
Helena, you have missed my point completely. When I talked about my “judgment” I was referring to responding to the post, and prolonging the life of this ridiculous scandal. One of the areas we digress is the authenticity of the tapes. They maybe fake, but they may also be real, and since Aaron has never said they were contrived I am going with the later. The first video was put out by DB which AC used as a rebuttal to the cocaine allegations. You have said the other 2 were fake not Aaron. AC has not once denounced DB unlike Grace Rwaramba. The other more serious area were we part company is the casting of a villain without CORROBORATING evidence to fit your version of events.
Okay Pearlman did not sue Vanity Fair or Bryan Burrough, but Michael did not sue the publication or Maureen Orth either. In fact she bragged about that fact and used it prop up her tabloid pieces.
“You think that my research is an allegation? It is just an account of all the events the way they were reported by numerous boy witnesses and many reporters. I even left all the conclusions to be made by the readers and refrained to write my own though I feel very strongly about the subject.” – Helena
You and I both know that the pen is mightier than the sword. You may have left the conclusion up to the reader, but you made a very strong, overt and passionate inference that the second/third clip was about Lou Pearlman.
“If this is the case – do some readers really think that it is much more important to prove that Aaron is a liar than proving that this event could not take place in principle and that Michael is innocent of this allegation whoever said it or whether he said it at all.” – Helena
This was done already by fans without casting aspersions on others.
“As to the evidence whether she is capable of threatening people or not let me refer you to Mallika Chopra’s account where she says that Daphne screamed at Grace and Mallika (so much that her child started crying) and threatened that she would make her private conversations with Grace public. Grace was devastated but Mallika took her by her shoulders and said something like “Let her do it”. If this is not enough proof for you that she is capable of threatening and blackmailing people then it is indeed useless to talk further.” – Helena
… but there is no proof that is the case in this instance. there is no evidence of this being done to Aaron.
“Don’t you feel it? “ – Helena
I feel I am at the beginning of the end regarding the truth and facts.
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It ought to be an axiom that any DB interview is fake and to keep away from her like the plague.She is very skillful taping secretly,then cutting and pasting, creating something that never occurred in reality.
There are 2 good precedents;Benazir Bhutto and Nancy Grace Rwaramba.
And ofcourse these interviews resonated in the press.
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Helena do you know Desiree? the despicable villain who run this site “Desiree speaks…so listen… ”
Funny when I contact her she Quickly Identified herself as the Black girl who fancy Michael Jackson but has her own thing to as she said to me “give the story another bias or unbias shear ” !!!
She claimes writing about things she find blogworthy and interesting,what a real joke she is indeed because the only one thing she write about is Mike!!!
Apparently, she is at it talking about Aaron garbage and of course the only one who worth to write about …. Michael Jackson.
The fact is she has 10 or 15 followers and they had no idea what to make of the real sex orientation Jackson was in.
She put it this way “either Michael is gay or P “!!!
one thing still Bother me so much and put me unease is that everyone in that shameful blog still talking about the Arvizo case??
What the HELL is wrong with these monsters?
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@ Helena
I’m truly sorry to hear about your abuse, and it gives me a deeper respect for you and your desire to vindicate MJ of the false allegations against him. (Same thing with Raven Woods, who wrote a post on her blog last year about her desire to vindicate MJ, despite being a victim of abuse herself at the hands of her father. Unfortunately, her blog is down at the moment.)
I’m sorry I haven’t been able to complete my post on Matt Drudge’s radio shows, but I’ll try to get it posted later this week. I’ve been very busy lately with work and other activities, and I’m behind on everything, but trust me I have some good projects coming soon, so please be patient with me!
Also, let’s not get carried away with this Aaron Carter/Daphne Barack non-story. When it gets to the point that people are attacking each other, it has gone too far. We have a lot of work to do, and we’ve spent an enormous amount of time commenting on this story, which has already died down and gone away. It never had any credibility to begin with, and I don’t want us to get distracted with Lou Pearlman now, too.
Much love to you all!
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Better judgment and every fiber of my being tells me to do not comment, let it go and move along. Yet, I cannot ignore the speculations, the double standards and lack of cohesion. I agree with a friend that said to continually comment will only fuel the story, but this was a tabloid piece between DB & AC, THEY brought Michael Jackson into it and VindicateMJ INSERTED Lou Pearlman. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and corpses. It is great that we believe in Michael’s character enough to defend him, but in the vindication it is WRONG to rake up bystanders, and insert them into the story to explain away inconsistencies in Aaron’s now words.
Teva, if you think that your judgment is better and you insist that Aaron was speaking about Michael Jackson I can’t help it. However it shows that in a way you believed Daphne Barak’s lies about Michael. I DID NOT and that is why I looked for other explanations for those tapes (and found them).
I insist that either Aaron was speaking about someone else (and Pearlman looks like a good candidate for it) or he is a completely lost soul. Believing that he is a hardcore liar is very easy and taking the line of least resistance is not for me. Based on what he did and said about Michael before I am willing to give him all the benefit of my doubt. He is still a young man – and when we are young we tend to make mistakes, so I hope he finds enough courage to correct them. As to Daphne Barak I DO NOT give her a single morsel of doubt – she isn’t an innocent naive girl who doesn’t know what she is doing.
I will speak about Lou Pearlman. I do not know if he is a p*dophile, but factually – he has never been arrested for it, charged, or convicted. Furthermore, he has not had accusers, or settlements surrounding such claims. It is unknown to me whether he was caught with child porn, but if he was that would have resulted in a conviction.
This is an extremely interesting point which I intend to investigate. It seems that real victims are very much unwilling to talk about their past while fictional victims (since they have never been abused) do not have any complexes and are ready to make it public – sue like Jordan or go to a trial like the Arvizos because they are emotionally absolutely impassive. They do not cry, do not have nightmares, do not take drugs to forget about the experience – no, they live a normal life of an extortionist and even possible mockery about them being a MJ’s “boy” is simply annoying but does not really “get” them because they know that everything was okay with them – so let these people talk as long as we keep the money…. It is the REAL VICTIMS who keep silence and rarely complain, and that is why it is so difficult to put these molesters into jail.
By the way I have first hand information about molestation – when I was four or five I was abused by a man in full view of his family (he put me on his knees), and I never said a word about it to my parents. I just ran like mad each time I had to pass the door of his apartment and I still remember the sick feeling and fear of meeting him again. No power in the world could make me confess – but no power in the world could make me praise this man either.
This is an explanation why they kept silent but never said a good word about him. It is suffering in silence – this is what it is. And the fact that Aaron and other boys could speak about Michael in very good terms means that they were never touched by him.
“We disregard articles by Vanity Fair and People about Michael, but are expected to embrace the same publishers when they write these things about Lou Pearlman because it can be used to fit a story to explain AC’s half truths. That is the definition of double standards.”
No, this is no definition of double standards. From what I hear about Vanity Fair is that it has a rather good reputation – that is why Maureen Orth’s article did so much harm to Michael. The article was presented as a ‘serious research’ and therefore looked credible. If it had been published in some “Sun” newspaper its effect would have been less detrimental. Vanity Fair seems quite credible and that is the problem with it! Therefore we need to talk about two different journalists here – Maureen Orth and Bryan Burrough (who wrote the article about Pearlman).
By the way if all of it was a lie why didn’t Pearlman sue Bryan Burrough and Vanity Fair though he sued every person around him?
Although it is pointed out that the second tape does not specifically mention MJ (though the inference was made) it also does NOT mention Pearlman.
It does not mention EITHER of them. So WHY think that it is about MJ? Why believe a lie told by a hater? And what is even more important to me – why are Michael’s fans so ready to believe every lie told about MJ?
“If it were contrived it would make more sense to throw in Michael Jackson’s name to remove any doubt”
Sometimes it is technically impossible, though Daphne Barak will think about your suggestion.
“I hope for the sake of this website’s credibility that what is alleged is TRUE because from the comments some persons have now seen the light, and plan on using this article as a rebuttal.
You think that my research is an allegation? It is just an account of all the events the way they were reported by numerous boy witnesses and many reporters. I even left all the conclusions for the readers to make them and refrained to write my own though I feel very strongly about the subject.
Or do you think that Daphne’s allegations about Aaron are true? Then do I understand you right that you think it is better to believe that Aaron was talking about Michael? And saying that he sat on his bed at 5 in the morning? Though we know that he physically couldn’t be doing it?
If this is the case – do some readers really think that it is much more important to prove that Aaron is a liar than proving that this event could not take place in principle and that Michael is innocent of this allegation whoever said it or whether he said it at all????
“There is NO evidence in any form or fashion that AC is being blackmailed by DB. I do not know how to comment further on this because I have absolutely nothing remotely credible to work with. I mean who is Aaron Carter to blackmail?”
Aaron Carter can tell the truth about how Daphne made those highly non-credible tapes – which after so much scandal can blemish her reputation further. And this is one out of a thousand reasons why she may be blackmailing him. I don’t insist that she is but – considering what Aaron could have said to her in a private conversation about himself, his brother and other members in those boys bands – such a thing is possible.
As to the evidence whether she is capable of threatening people or not let me refer you to Mallika Chopra’s account where she says that Daphne screamed at Grace and Mallika (so much that her child started crying) and threatened that she would make her private conversations with Grace public. Grace was devastated but Mallika took her by her shoulders and said something like “Let her do it”. If this is not enough proof for you that she is capable of threatening and blackmailing people then it is indeed useless to talk further.
DB’s actions and slanted opinion of Michael Jackson I do not find shocking at all, but rather it is in keeping with the main stream.
Here is a big difference between us. I find it extremely shocking. And if the media did it in respect of Michael in the past (when I more or less put up with it) NOW I am not going to let them get away with it – at least in this blog.
What is shocking was Charles Thomson’s piece “One of the Most Shameful Episodes in Journalistic History” because it was rare for a reporter to look at Michael Jackson fairly after years media bias.
You mean to say that a journalist telling the truth about MJ is so rare an occurrence that it does look shocking to you? However it is time to get used to it – it is a NEW TIME and a new era when the truth – by some miracle from the above – has finally received a chance (as the scandal around Rupert Murdoch shows it). Something has changed with Michael’s death and now we live in a new era when old lies have started collapsing and the truth has begun struggling its way to the surface.
Don’t you feel it?
“We should all be concentrating on the upcoming Murray trial that will once again spot a negative light on Michael.”
Yes, but in order to be able to understand anything about that trial we must first learn to tell the truth from numerous lies they are going to tell us. Haters are testing our abilities in this respect and have thrown their first ball with Aaron Carter. And have won. The score is 1:0 in their favor.
But I don’t want any more balls missed.
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@Teva
Totally agree.
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@vindicate
Also, its not as if we haven’t seen video of Aaron claiming that there were some weird things about Michael and alluding that Michael inappropriately drank around him.
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1. Fact: The article claims that Aaron spoke about Michael – Aaron has not denied that aspect of story.
It’s not speculation to conclude that he said those things about Michael. Its speculation to bring someone into the mix (Pearlman) whose name has not even been mentioned in the article.
This is not about Aaron, its about refraining from following in the same footsteps as the haters .
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Better judgment and every fiber of my being tells me to do not comment, let it go and move along. Yet, I cannot ignore the speculations, the double standards and lack of cohesion. I agree with a friend that said to continually comment will only fuel the story, but this was a tabloid piece between DB & AC, THEY brought Michael Jackson into it and VindicateMJ INSERTED Lou Pearlman.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and corpses. It is great that we believe in Michael’s character enough to defend him, but in the vindication it is WRONG to rake up bystanders, and insert them into the story to explain away inconsistencies in Aaron’s now words. I will speak about Lou Pearlman. I do not know if he is a p*dophile, but factually – he has never been arrested for it, charged, or convicted. Furthermore, he has not had accusers, or settlements surrounding such claims. It is unknown to me whether he was caught with child porn, but if he was that would have resulted in a conviction. We disregard articles by Vanity Fair and People about Michael, but are expected to embrace the same publishers when they write these things about Lou Pearlman because it can be used to fit a story to explain AC’s half truths. That is the definition of double standards. Although it is pointed out that the second tape does not specifically mention MJ (though the inference was made) it also does NOT mention Pearlman. If it were contrived it would make more sense to throw in Michael Jackson’s name to remove any doubt. I hope for the sake of this website’s credibility that what is alleged is TRUE because from the comments some persons have now seen the light, and plan on using this article as a rebuttal.
There is NO evidence in any form or fashion that AC is being blackmailed by DB. I do not know how to comment further on this because I have absolutely nothing remotely credible to work with. I mean who is Aaron Carter to blackmail?
DB’s actions and slanted opinion of Michael Jackson I do not find shocking at all, but rather it is in keeping with the main stream. What is shocking was Charles Thomson’s piece “One of the Most Shameful Episodes in Journalistic History” because it was rare for a reported to look at Michael Jackson fairly after years media bias.
We should all be concentrating on the upcoming Murray trial that will once again spot a negative light on Michael.
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“We need something concrete to conclude this and Aaron has not said a word”.
What Michael’s fans seem to overlook is that they’re behaving in exactly the same way as Michael’s haters who don’t believe our conclusions of his innocence based on the analysis of various materials. Haters demand that Jordan should speak up and only then they will (probably) believe that Michael was innocent.
However if you ask me – they won’t believe in Michael’s innocence even if Jordan says it or even hammers it into their heads. They will always find an explanation why “it is all wrong” – he doesn’t want to look like an extortionist, he doesn’t want to carry a stigma of someone molested, he was intimidated by Michael’s fans and now wants to walk about freely, so on and so forth.
An independent analysis of the situation is often even better because we arrive at same the conclusions irrespective of whether someone does or doesn’t talk. It also creates a more favorable atmosphere for the person to come out with the truth – he finds it easier as everyone already knows what he is going to say.
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“This article is speculating that he was speaking about someone else. We need something concrete to conclude this and Aaron has not said a word.”
This article is not speculating about anything – it is analyzing the materials available to us. In fact what Michael’s fans (and non-fans) did about Barak’s video #2 – where Aaron did not mention the name of a person who “sat on his bed at 5 o’clock in the morning” – was REAL SPECULATION.
It was pure speculation to think that Aaron was talking about Michael when he didn’t even mention him and we know that at 5 o’clock in the morning they were riding four-wheelers.
So why did you speculate that he meant Michael? Because Daphne Barak said so?
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“My God what a world.”
What a world indeed! The tragedy in Norway is staggering. No idea is worthy of taking other people’s lives, especially young ones.
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Sara, thank you and God bless you too and all those who are fighting lies and are on the side of the truth.
“Yes Aaron did use drugs and drank alcohol BUT this is was NOT about Michael Jackson , the cold sly Daphne is still on her pathetic disgusting obsession of Jackson for many years.”
Yes, despite what Aaron seems to be saying in those tapes and what Daphne Barak wants us to think about Aaron and Michael Jackson the analysis shows that the chances of the tapes being a fabrication are extremely high.
“I pray for a speedy ending of this pure garbage about whom Aaron is taking cocaine or wine from , for God sake I’m appalled of this none existing story that has been roaming around the internet for about a month.”
Unfortunately it happened because many Michael’s fans (and non-fans) fell for the story without making proper research and no analysis of facts. They believed a person who had a history for telling lies and slandering people which is a very grave mistake. Haters will come up with lots of such stories – so what? Shall we believe everything they say?
“ironically, I find it odd that there is no prosecutor would pick the many disturbing behavior of this guy Pearlman seriously and start a case!! Does anyone find it injustice that Michael had to go through HELL and this obese walks for free and live his life. My God what a world.”
The fact that Pearlman could get away with everything known about him (and I used only one third of the facts) is extremely disturbing. It looks like everyone knew but no one took action. In fact even his fraudulent schemes in finances were discovered quite by chance when relatives of one of his deceased investors asked for repayment of some of their money. It turned out that the company he was selling simply did not exist and the accountant who “sent” out some reports to the investors could not be reached by them because for many years he had been ….a dead man.
Reading about Pearlman’s practices with boys and young men gives you an uncanny feeling – it is like reading tabloids or Tom Sneddon speaking about Michael Jackson but only in the reverse – EVERYTHING that was attributed to Michael could be found in Pearlman’s real life. “We are family”, “do you trust me?”, walking naked in front of them, grooming them through accidentally showing porn, constantly rubbing and touching them – all of it never took place in Michael’s life but was between Pearlman and the boys on a routine basis – but no, the prosecutors never talked about Pearlman where it was real, but attributed all of it to Michael – where it was fictional!
It is uncanny, incredible, unbelievable and seems to be a kind of a black comedy (if only it could be a comedy!).
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“regarding the tii footage , http://www.filmcontact.com/united-states/is-it-is-tim-pattersons-personal-thriller just thought i would pop this article up regarding the footage of tii..i find that stuff very confusing because i was under the impression it was being edited every night after rehearsals.”
Nan, thank you for the article! I think it deserves to be posted here in full as it provides a lot of valuable information. If the footage was indeed edited after every rehearsal – as someone who made the research claims it – it might give reason to believe that recording the rehearsals with two cameras was not just “amateur” filming but could be intended for a high-profit documentary from the start. Of course it is just an idea which I hope we’ll be able to verify later.
The article:
‘This Is It’ is Tim Patterson’s personal thriller
4 November, 2009
On June 25, just hours after Michael Jackson died, Tim Patterson drove from his home in the Santa Clarita Valley to downtown Los Angeles with $60-million worth of film footage in his trunk.
The film on Michael Jackson proves an unlikely odyssey for Tim Patterson, a commercial director who made crucial contributions.
As he sped down Interstate 5 in his green Lexus convertible, Patterson carried virtually all of the 140 hours of rehearsal footage from the late singer’s planned “This Is It” concert series that would eventually be whittled down to the 112-minute movie that opened last week to a decent $34.4 million domestically and a much stronger $69.5 million overseas through Sunday.
Patterson, a commercial director who has occasionally worked in music over his 29-year career, was one of two camera operators hired by concert promoter AEG Live to record “This Is It” rehearsals.
Every night after work, he transferred hours of video shot by himself and collaborator Sandrine Orabona to two hard drives in his home office. The afternoon that Jackson died, Paul Gongaware, a producer of the concert and movie, called him with an urgent request: The footage, which had suddenly become uniquely valuable, had to be delivered to AEG’s downtown offices immediately.
“I could have easily gone to TMZ and made a few million dollars,” Patterson recalled with a laugh.
Instead, he began an unlikely odyssey in which a commercial director who had never worked on a feature film before became the only person besides Jackson’s close artistic collaborators involved in “This Is It” from beginning to end. Together with longtime collaborator Brandon Key, also a commercial director and producer, Patterson worked on every cut of “This Is It,” from the original footage given to the news media days after Jackson’s death to DVD extras just recently completed.
“This will be the most important and incredible thing I do in my career,” the 53-year-old said from his home office in the rustic environs of Castaic. “I never imagined I would get involved in concert rehearsals and end up making a motion picture.”
Patterson’s involvement began in May when he e-mailed Gongaware, whom he has known since the early 1980s, to ask whether there might be some role for him in preparations for the “This Is It” concert while he was on a break from other work.
Gongaware was by chance looking to start compiling behind-the-scenes footage. He hired Patterson and Orabona and put together a budget of $80,000. Over the next six months, using two $6,000 Sony cameras Patterson bought for the project, they worked six days a week, often until midnight, shooting performances and candid moments and interviewing dancers, musicians and others working on the concert.
It was a simple, almost amateur production, since it wasn’t intended at the time for anything more than promotional Internet videos and Jackson’s private archives. Many important moments were shot by only one person and when the performers’ body microphones were turned off, fuzzy sound was captured with a boom mike attached to the camera (thus the prevalence of subtitles in the finished picture).
“If we had known it was going to be a movie,” said Patterson with a laugh, “we would have shot with nine or 12 cameras and gotten coverage on everything.”
The week after Jackson died, Patterson and Key were working in a makeshift office at AEG headquarters with equipment strewn on the floor, rapidly trying to figure out just what they had. Within a week of the singer’s death, they cut together the initial 97-second clip from “This Is It” that was released to the media and became a cable and Internet sensation.
“We laid off 10 copies on DVDs and five minutes later my wife told me it was on CNN,” said Key, 44.
Over the next couple of weeks, the pair continued sorting through the clips, editing together rough cuts of several different performances and backstage discussions. By mid-July, a parade of top executives from studios including 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures came to one of the cramped rooms where they were working and Patterson showed off what they had.
A couple of weeks later, Sony agreed to pay $60 million to turn the footage into a movie.
It took more than two weeks from the time the deal was struck among the studio, AEG and Jackson’s estate until it got probate court approval that allowed production to move to Sony’s lot in Culver City, where they worked in tightly guarded rooms on the top floor of the Gene Autry Building.
In the interim, Patterson and Key worked with Don Brochu, who edited director Kenny Ortega’s “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” to assemble a first cut of about two hours and 45 minutes — 2 1/4 hours of performances and half an hour of discussions
Patterson, who had come onto the project as a behind-the-scenes cameraman, and Key, who’d responded to an urgent call from a friend to help make sense of the footage, had unexpectedly become editors on one of the highest-profile movies of the year, one created entirely in the editing room.
As they made a film that had no script and on which the director had rarely paid attention to what was being shot, Patterson was in the incredibly unusual position of being the only person present who knew just what they had to work with.
“There were no tape numbers, nothing was logged; I just sort of knew what we had shot and about when,” he said.
In the course of about a month, the duo worked seven-day weeks at Sony, clipping and tweaking their 2 3/4 -hour cut into the finished movie. To allay concerns over piracy, there was no Internet connection in the offices and only those with special passes were even allowed into the rooms where four editors and five assistants were putting together the movie, code-named “Industrial.”
There were debates and disagreements about what to include, but the editors pledge that, contrary to some rumors, nothing was deleted to make Jackson appear healthier than he was in the months leading up to his surprising death. The only question was how heavily to weight the film toward performance versus discussions.
“We could have shown more behind-the-scenes stuff, but Kenny felt strongly that Michael would have wanted to include more songs for the fans,” explained Key. “It was also Kenny’s decision that we wouldn’t do it like a documentary with interviews and new footage.”
After a final version of the movie was done in mid-September, Patterson and Key went on to edit and shoot additional content for the DVD, which is expected to ship in January or February with several hours of new footage, including performances of songs such as “Stranger in Moscow” that didn’t make the theatrical release.
The two have now returned to the lives they were living six months ago, far away from feature films and studio lots. But as they took a break from commercial work to discuss the “This Is It” experience in Patterson’s home office, it was clear they’re eager to work on another concert movie and yet aware that nothing can live up to their physically and emotionally exhausting experience this summer — creating a tribute to a pop legend’s life.
“I never imagined,” said Patterson, whose biggest regular gig is making ads for a golf equipment company, “that I’d ever work on a project where I would break down and cry in the edit bay.”
http://www.latimes.com
http://www.filmcontact.com/united-states/is-it-is-tim-pattersons-personal-thriller
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Sara Williams, I agree with you that this story is roaming round for far too long and is not worth it.Anybody agreing to an interview with Daphne Barak can blame themself. Also I think AAron doesn´t really mind this cat& mouse game as it is giving his name an picture much publicity that he needs for a new album. And the mother giving paid interviews to Entertainment and Vanityfair.Both sons have had serious drugproblems, rifts in the family, and some mentioned the father having his problems too. And what friends of Michael were they, having mer at a studio and then got an invitation to the September party, a belated BD-celebration, not even knowing for what year birthday.Someone in an earlier post on this said Aaron is not that thruthful when cornered and when it serves him .When times are hard, you gotta do what you gotta do.
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@Teva
Aaron has not denied the bed story or MJ giving him alcohol, or weed.
Exactly, that was my point.This article is speculating that he was speaking about someone else.
We need something concrete to conclude this and Aaron has not said a word.
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I spoke to an MJ fan who knew Aaron and they told me this:
No, I havent talked to him in awhile. I have never heard him say anything, ever, like he is saying now. He has always talking great about Michael, not that I think he would ever tell me anything bad, even if it happened. I dont believe it, at all, mainly because I know how he lies about things, especially when backed in a corner, as it seems he is now. He also
isnt the kind of person to take things as they are happening to him laying down.
Im pretty sure he is bs. his mom is crazy, his dad is the one who is a pervert,
and I think he’s desperate right now due to situations going on in his life.
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let’s just put this into the right perspective about the shark Daphne Barak and Carter’s chaos, it doesn’t make sense at all, same thing with the Carters family in which they are highly a dysfunctional family.
First, the Mother Jane Carter who every little idea pops to her tiny brain has been exposed to vanity fair or Entertainment tonight for a large sum of MONEY.
She cares so much of her children that she is willing to let the world knows about it, especially the tabloids most horrifying innuendos are built on.
Second, there comes the “she thinks she thought” sister whom her brother is trusting her with so called secrets and she decided to put it in a shiny plate for the world in exchange of a sum of money or 5 seconds of ……!!!! I really don’t know what to use a word for it ,seriously.
The Carter family is as crazy as the Arvizo clan in terms of a certain family members such as the mother who tend to exaggerate everything about her boys, I will not compare the two for they are different .
As for the Pearlman story ,I did read many articles about his Suspicions behavior with members of boys band, however it seems that AAron Carter is some how embarrassed about it and does not want to Insists on the issue or do NOT want to be blamed for something such as his drug problems.
Truly, I find him sometimes spoony and absurd, He doesn’t want to be blamed for it or deny the cocaine use , he creates many fairy tales for instance the story of his brother when Aaron claimed that Nick hit Paris Hilton , he spoke many things about his relationship with former girlfriend Hilary Duff .
Yes Aaron did use drugs and drank alcohol BUT this is was NOT about Michael Jackson , the cold sly Daphne is still on her pathetic disgusting obsession of Jackson for many years.
I pray for a speedy ending of this pure garbage about whom Aaron is taking cocaine or wine from , for God sake I’m appalled of this none existing story that has been roaming around the internet for about a month.
ironically, I find it odd that there is no prosecutor would pick the many disturbing behavior of this guy Pearlman seriously and start a case!! Does anyone find it injustice that Michael had to go through HELL and this obese walks for free and live his life.
My God what a world.
Helena God bless you dear.
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regarding the tii footage , http://www.filmcontact.com/united-states/is-it-is-tim-pattersons-personal-thriller
just thought i would pop this article up regarding the footage of tii..i find that stuff very confusing because i was under the impression it was being edited every night after rehearsals.i was speaking to someone on fb who i got this article from and we had a conversation regarding it.this person imo ,has done a lot of research,….and has a lot of info on that stuff..the page is called insanity nexxxxt..i would copy it , but i am not real clear on fb rules and i wouldnt want to violate someones privacy…at any rate ,you could always look at his page and draw your own conclusions
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“So Murray’s defense team does no longer believe they can find evidence in the TII rehearsal videos for their strategy? So they have to change their tactics? Because Michael was not looking ill, was not depressed and was “pretty good”? This comes from the mouth of Michael Flanagan, Murray’s lawyer? I’m still not sure if I understood that right. I mean, I knew before they wouldn’t find anything, but hearing that from Murray’s lawyer is stunning”.
Susanne, it seems that Michael’s performance during the rehearsals was so good even the defense was smashed by those 100 hours of footage and could not resist the truth:
” “Flanagan said the video showed him that Jackson was “very talented, that he’s pretty good; even on his bad days, he’s good”.The defense was looking for clues in the video to show that Jackson was in ill health in his final days, but Flanagan said it was not detectable in his performance video. Jackson also did not appear to be depressed in his final days, he said.”
But you know, it is highly depressing for us to find out that he was in so good health and good spirits in his final days – it makes his death all the more tragic.
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“Personally I don’t think that Aaron made this stupid drug statement. But I still do not like Aaron. For me he is not a true friend of Michael. Not as much as he wants us to believe.”.
Tanja, I am also in two minds about Aaron, and am not sure which side of his nature will take the upper hand. I hear that he is giving another interview and am waiting for the news of it with baited breath praying to all the good there is inside this man.
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Guys, this is a different subject, but I am baffled.
This was on CNN now: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/07/20/california.conrad.murray.hearing/index.html?iref=allsearch
The article says:
Lawyers for each side spent the past two weeks viewing more than 100 hours of video, narrowing down what they thought was relevant to the case. The prosecution selected 12 hours of video, while the defense identified four.
Flanagan said the video showed him that Jackson was “very talented, that he’s pretty good; even on his bad days, he’s good.”
The defense was looking for clues in the video to show that Jackson was in ill health in his final days, but Flanagan said it was not detectable in his performance video. Jackson also did not appear to be depressed in his final days, he said.
The defense will argue that none of the “This Is It” video is relevant to the criminal trial and would be “a big waste of time.”
“It shows him onstage performing,” Flanagan said. “I don’t know why that’s relevant as to what happened the night that he died when he couldn’t sleep.”
So Murray’s defense team does no longer believe they can find evidence in the TII rehearsal videos for their strategy? So they have to change their tactics? Because Michael was not looking ill, was not depressed and was “pretty good”? This comes from the mouth of Michael Flanagan, Murray’s lawyer? I’m still not sure if I understood that right.
I mean, I knew before they wouldn’t find anything, but hearing that from Murray’s lawyer is stunning. What are they gonna do now?
(Of course they want the prosecution not be allowed to show TII for their case now)
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Great article.
Personally I don’t think that Aaron made this stupid drug statement. But I still do not like Aaron. He not only waited much to long to tell the truth about that drug-thing he spoke about having alcohol at Neverland and the way he told it just wasn’t okay. Aaron knows what Michael had been through in the past years. He knows that Gavin also said that Michael gave him alcohol and now Aaron comes out with exactly the same story. Maybe he had some wine at Neverland but the way he talked about it nearly makes sure that Michael has to stand in the spotlight of tabloids again! And Aaron isn’t stupid. He must have known that. He don’t say who he was talking about when he talked about that bed scene, he had to mention this alcohol thing and he waited much to long to clarify this drug-thing. He talked about someones addiction and even though there are some parts missing in the first video or because they are missing you have to think that he’s talking about Michael and it isn’t okay too. He never saw Michael taking pills or anything? Okay…full stop! He shouldn’t have said anything more about it. He never clarified that too. And Aaron isn’t the most honest guy in the world. Years ago (you can also read it in this article) he told the world that Nick hit Paris Hilton while he had a relationship with her just after Nick and Paris broke up. After the relationship between Aaron and Paris ended he changed the story and was on his brothers side. Doesn’t have anything to do with Michael but it has something to do with the fact that you have to be very very careful when it comes to Aaron Carter. For me he is not a true friend of Michael. Not as much as he wants us to believe.
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“Of course Aaron should make a complete statement about all what was revealed, and if he really made false statements about Michael, he is guilty of that, but the devil in this game is Daphne Barak who plays with everybody for her own advantage.”
Susanne, devil is the best word for Daphne Barak.
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Brian, I didn’t know what Badger game means and looked it up in the dictionary. This word suits Daphne Barak\Aaron Carter situation perfectly:
Webster dictionary:
Badger game
The method of blackmailing by decoying a person into a compromising situation and extorting money by threats of exposure.
Wikipedia:
The badger game is an extortion scheme in which the victim or “mark” is tricked into a compromising position to make him vulnerable to blackmail.
Only it should not necessarily be money extortion – silencing someone is a variety of Badger game.
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Think of what kind of person would take someone who is just getting out of rehab,and trying to rebuild their life, and career and do that kind of piece….She loves to trash MJ for profit, but she has no regard for the emotional well being or career of Aaron either…..Daphne is a cold blooded shark…I dont know if Aaron said exactly what she is implying..She was the one with the reputation for slander, not Aaron…She has a history of doing this stuff…
.I tend to think it is a little bit of both…..,,,He was probably talking about his own addiction problems and she brought up the questions regarding MJ…..She probably got him to speculate on certain things, and is now twisting things..This is a no win for everybody but Daphne if it keeps being brought up in the media.
.Because she is just going to release more tid bits., and there is no way to hit back without giving her more publicity on MJ back….He was stupid to even talk to her…..ended up doing damage to himself as well as MJ…..btw i dont know if she purposely slurs her words so you cant hear what she is says …she is so calculating , i would think their is an ulterior motive in everything she does..
Nan, I agree with every word of what you are saying.
Of course she is going to post more and more of her fabrications. You remember the news about Aaron’s future appearance in some Australian (again Australian) reality show? They said that Aaron would be talking about “Nick’s friendship with Michael” and we know in advance that it is a complete lie. Nick said it himself that he had seen Michael only a couple of times and it was Aaron who was friends with him.
So from this little announcement of theirs we can very well expect another of Daphne Barak’s tapes about Nick’ s association with somebody (?) where this “somebody” will be insinuated to be Michael.
I hope she didn’t intimidate Aaron bad enough for him to start echoing her lies (in that reality show, I mean).
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It took me some time to read it to the end. But now I want to support you, Helena.
1. The first moment I read about the interview and who made it I immediately thought: OK, we cannot believe this. Daphne Barak stands for lies, and we cannot believe Aaron really said this.
2. When you first mentioned above Pearlman and his suspicious behavior I immediately thought: OK, so Aaron could have talked about him – before reading the end. It’s simply very suggesting.
All your findings are very plausible, Helena.
I have no proof what was really said in this interview and who was meant, but I know we have to blame Daphne Barak first of all for this mess. She is the one who seduces people to talk and then twists the information she gets.
Of course Aaron should make a complete statement about all what was revealed, and if he really made false statements about Michael, he is guilty of that, but the devil in this game is Daphne Barak who plays with everybody for her own advantage. She is the one using power to create wrong images and stories that could have a major influence on public opinions and the Murray trial.
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I’m starting to think that there is some kind of cover-up being worked with all of allegations about “MJ” DRUGS/Children/jesus juice, stuff….It might have been part of the enslavement of Mr, Jackson from the start [1993]…..I never felt that “MJ’s” sexuality was all that important…..The “Badger Game” and theft of His wealth is a much larger topic…[after all the CPS was not interested in the first case]….Yes this Aaron stuff does smell bad….and June was being directed in 1993….but the murder of Brett Cantor is the only thing that can bring some public attention to the fact that “MJ” was pushed around as part of a “badger game”…..I have traded emails on this subject with one of the Jackson family Reps……They know it!..[LaToya…for sure]…but some of the family insider’s had to be part of the game….thats why it is kept secret…[in my opinion]…Brian N. Everett
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Think of what kind of person would take someone who is just getting out of rehab,and trying to rebuild their life, and career and do that kind of piece….She loves to trash MJ for profit, but she has no regard for the emotional well being or career of Aaron either…..Daphne is a cold blooded shark…I dont know if Aaron said exactly what she is implying..She was the one with the reputation for slander, not Aaron…She has a history of doing this stuff…
.I tend to think it is a little bit of both…..,,,He was probably talking about his own addiction problems and she brought up the questions regarding MJ…..She probably got him to speculate on certain things, and is now twisting things..This is a no win for everybody but Daphne if it keeps being brought up in the media.
.Because she is just going to release more tid bits., and there is no way to hit back without giving her more publicity on MJ back….He was stupid to even talk to her…..ended up doing damage to himself as well as MJ…..btw i dont know if she purposely slurs her words so you cant hear what she is says …she is so calculating , i would think their is an ulterior motive in everything she does..
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“I think the lie about Michael sitting on his bed at 5 am is just as much of an outrageous lie.”
He never said it was Michael.
It was that beast of a woman who immediately came up with the word “king” to create the necessary impression. She already knew how she would use that tape!
“Now, if he didn’t say this about Michael, but about Pearlman or somebody else, he should come out and say so. He shouldn’t even name the person who did it. He should just say: “I was not talking about Michael there. It got taken out of context.”
And how do you know what quotations this woman will post in retaliation? Out of that private talk of theirs?
What if he told her something about his brother? Making him suffer again? His brother is everything to him.
What if he said something about Justin Timberlake? This could result in a lawsuit.
What if he said something about himself?
“it was probably her idea”
You are still in doubt???
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“Aaron signed a contract with Pearlman in 2000, so a few years after his brother had a falling out with Pearlamn, if Jane was suspicious why did she her 2nd son signed a contract with him?”
Probably because Pearlman was a music mogul? But at the same time she insisted that neither of them should stay overnight anywhere at all and he and Nick should always accompany each other? Doesn’t her previous experience explain her over-reaction to Aaron’s stay at Michael’s party? Only an extremely nervous woman would react like that.
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@ Helena
“Suzy, you sound like a prosecutor. Yes, at the moment he summoned courage enough to refute only the most outrageous lie.”
I think the lie about Michael sitting on his bed at 5 am is just as much of an outrageous lie.
Now, if he didn’t say this about Michael, but about Pearlman or somebody else, he should come out and say so. He shouldn’t even name the person who did it. He should just say: “I was not talking about Michael there. It got taken out of context.”
That’s all. Until that happens I cannot consider him innocent in all this.
And personally I despise Daphine Barak more than him, because it was probably her idea. I just can’t fully accept the excuses for Aaron.
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I know that vindicate but lots of those people had lawsuits against him when they said those things. And if I remember well, Aaron signed a contract with Pearlman in 2000, so a few years after his brother had a falling out with Pearlamn, if Jane was suspicious why did she her 2nd son signed a contract with him?
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It’s just an article.
And Barak’s tapes are just tapes.
P.S. By the way that “just an article” is accompanied by a video of them talking.
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It’s just an article.
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‘The problem is we don’t know if there is any truth to the Pearlman story either”
Really?
Even after them carefully saying “Karma is karma” and “What goes round comes round”?
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The problem is we don’t know if there is any truth to the Pearlman story either.
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“There is a real and very sad story here I suspect, which has nothing to do with Michael Jackson. It is up to Aaron how he proceeds from here.”
BG, thank you very much for your support. I am happy that there are at least two of us who think the same way.
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So he wasn’t afraid to deny the cocaine story, but he was afraid to deny the rest?
Suzy, you sound like a prosecutor. Yes, at the moment he summoned courage enough to refute only the most outrageous lie.
What surprises me greatly is that no one is expressing the type of fury they have for Carter for the mastermind of this devilish project – Daphne Barak. All the talk is about Aaron while I am equally interested in why Daphne Barak doesn’t show the VIDEO of their interview? Why doesn’t she show the FULL version of it but only clipped pieces? And why in parts 2 and 3 we can only HEAR (and not see) them speaking about someone? And why does everyone assume that he spoke of Michael? Because she intentionally introduced the word “king” and tampered with the other tape where the name is finally pronounced? Isn’t the fact that she said and did it the best recommendation not to believe her?
The essence of the problem is that you and other people BELIEVED her and her forged tapes (despite all the fraudulence revealed) and I DON’T and look for signs of her falsifying things and Aaron’s motives not to speak up.
Instead of asking questions of Aaron – who is most probably caught up in a trap – why don’t you spread all the damning information about Daphne Barak instead? It is people like her who killed Michael Jackson and now continue killing those who are ready to say a good word about him – Kit Culkin, Grace Rwaramba and now Aaron Carter. Who will be the next I wonder?
As to Aaron Carter it is becoming clear with each day that he will not be left alone anyway. If I were in his place I would come clean about everything even despite the dangers of being further compromised by that beastly Daphne. Even if it involves speaking about other people who suffered in the hands of Pearlman and who don’t want it to be disclosed (by those secretly made tapes Daphne possesses).
I really wish all of them told the whole truth about Pearlman and probably other people in their industry who are employing the same methods.
Yes, there is a certain risk in it for him and others as people are cruel and find fault with the victim and not the culprit. It is only up to them to take that decision, but he and other people involved will feel infinite freedom if they drop it off their shoulders. And if they don’t speak up their past will catch up with them anyway.
Beating the fear is the only way to freedom.
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Congratulations to the writer of this extremely well-researched article. After reading every word, your conclusion seems spot on to me. Yes, it could be said that it is still speculation but the many details about Pearlman and how he has been described were far too close to some of the things in the AC/Barak ‘story’. They appear to be way too coincidental to be mere coincidence. There is a real and very sad story here I suspect, which has nothing to do with Michael Jackson.
I can understand Carter’s mother to a degree, who seems sure about Pearlman, and who had concerns about her two sons not sticking together as promised in another situation. She was defending herself too, defending her role as a good mother, which is something she seemed to be at great pains to do.
I can also understand how people want to move on with their lives and not want to have to talk about or repeat unpleasant things that have happened to them in the past, perhaps especially if those people want to continue their careers in ‘show business’. Image is everything and people want to be remembered for their work or their art, not things that happened in their personal life. Celebrities or artists put so much of their personal life out there for us and they do have a right to whatever privacy they can keep for themselves but as we know well, the media loves to intrude on the privacy of others and will go to any lengths to do that.
Barak, as the above article proves, is not to be trusted. It appears her modus operandi is to ingratiate herself with her target, pretending to be someone they can trust, pretending to be their friend, and she must have a way about her so that people, who would not normally place their trust in someone easily (Grace for example), is persuaded by. This says a lot about Barak’s ability to be a chameleon and ‘show the right face’ to her interview target, but not about her trustworthiness. A ‘story’ is what she is about, it was not about being a friend to Grace Rwaramba or Aaron Carter. Barak gained their trust and then deceived them.
Barak’s timing with Aaron’s interview could not have been more perfect. Aaron had a new album he wanted to promote, didn’t he?. The ‘story’ about Aaron and Michael is already overshadowing that fact. All the great things he has said about Michael in the past and the fact that Aaron was man enough to stand up for Michael in the midst of the media circus of lies and hateful accusations shouldn’t be forgotten. Although Michael’s name is again being put out in a negative way by this Barak ‘story’ and we wish so much it were different, it is up to Aaron how he proceeds from here.
Thank you again to the writer for shedding some, actually a great deal of light.
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So he wasn’t afraid to deny the cocaine story, but he was afraid to deny the rest? Why is that if he didn’t say any of those things?
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In case the tapes are manipulated and Aaron wasn’t talking about Michael, why doesn’t he say so?
Fear is the answer. Have you read the post to the end?
It doesn’t look good for him.
Of course not. This is why Daphne’s plan was so beastly – so incredibly beastly. Killing two birds with one stone.
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Day 29 – PRESENT
Aaron has not denied the bed story or MJ giving him alcohol, or weed.
When people are blackmailed by threats to disclose some of their personal secrets they can keep silence until their last day. Unless they manage to overcome fear of course.
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In case the tapes are manipulated and Aaron wasn’t talking about Michael, why doesn’t he say so? Teva’s timeline says it all. Aaron only ever denied the cocaine story, nothing else. It doesn’t look good for him.
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I would like to think that Aaron was referring to Lou Pearlman in his statements to Daphne Barak. I hope that he comes forward to say that it was not MJ he was referring to. He needs to clear it up. It is important for Michael’s memory. I think that instead of blasting him, maybe we need to encourage him and he doesnt even need to name names, just say truthfully that he was referring to someone else and not Michael.
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Helena,
I must have become so wrapped up in other things that I’ve failed to pay attention to the Carter situation. Because I do not do FB or Tweeter I wasn’t aware that it was still on the forefront of the gossip circuit or MJ Fans were helping to keep this story alive on the gossip circuit. You cannot convince all the people not to make judgments without real evidence, criticize others for not responding to situations as they do or get sucked into a Tabloid story, not even Michael Jackson Fans. I don’t know who did what and don’t really care unless someone comes to me and says Carter said Michael molested him. I will use the information you’ve provided to counter any inaccuracies or falsehood if I come upon them, but I do not intend to go chasing down commentaries on some back alley site unread by the major of the world to give the author one more minute of attention than already received. Thank you for the time and care you took to bring this to us.
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@TatumMarie
Here is the timeline, and decide for yourself.
Day 1 – 15 June 2011
MJ fans find out about the interview and tweet Aaron Carter. He deletes and ignores them.
Day 2- 16 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 3 – 17 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 4 – 18 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 5 – 19 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 6 – 20 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 7 -21 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 8 – 22 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 9 -23 June 2011
The OK! artical ran with “Michael gave me c*caine” they have now changed it to “Michael gave me dr*gs”.
No response from Aaron
Day 10 – 24 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 11 – 25 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 12 – 26 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 13 – 27 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 14 – 28 June 2011
No response from Aaron
Day 15 – 29 June 2011
The internet blows up with the scandal.
No response from Aaron.
Day 16 – 30 June 2011
Daphne Barak issues her first clip which Aaron says Michael gave him alcohol, no mention of cocaine and talks about protecting Michael’s legacy.
Day 17 – 1 July 2011
Aaron reps issue a statement to TMZ using the Barak clip now posted on Youtube. Latoya said she spoke to Aaron he denied the cocaine story.
Day 18 – 2 July 2011
Daphne Barak posts her 2nd clip with the bed story.
No response from Aaron.
Day 19 to day 21 – 03-05 July 2011
Condense for space
No clarification on the bed story.
Day 22 – 06 July 2011
Aaron Carter sat down with Ken Baker for an interview where he references the no cocaine. No rebuttal to alcohol and no rebuttal to bed story no mention of marijuana.
Day 23 to Day 27 – 07-11 July 2011
Condense for space
No clarification on the bed story.
Day 28 – 12 July 2011
3rd clip from Daphne Barak. In it Aaron say Michael gave him marijuana.
No follow up interview with Ken Baker, no denying to TMZ, no outrage, No response from Aaron Carter
Day 29 – PRESENT
Aaron has not denied the bed story or MJ giving him alcohol, or weed.
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This is still speculation.
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hmm sound sispicious 2 me i think the so called journalist is a fraud and it wasnt MJ he was talkin about i mean why did she say KING Not King Of Pop as naturally sum1 would refer 2 mj when saying King they jus wuldnt stop at KING and wuldnt the fraud journalist make sure she said king of pop if it was really him aaron was talkin about to make sure the listener is convincied its mj instead she jus says KING so she can manipulate and play with the listners mind.
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Murray and his PR firm apparently have run out of new defences.That will
explain why so much illwill and dirty lies from Michaels past are surfacing.I thought that anything negative about Murray was blocked and
can not be brought out at the trial.But is Michael still and again free for all? The trial will give new life to DD, MO,NG and a long list of others.
I can not see many of the videos listed and neither TV programmes mentioned.Daphne Barak has already done much damage since Michaels death.
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“As for Aaron Carter, all I know is that I never heard of the guy until this story emerged and now his name is everywhere”.
Many learned of Michael’s friend Frank Cascio only when he contributed songs to “Michael” posthumous album. I still remember how he was trashed at every corner for their alleged “falsification”. His name was also everywhere.
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It’s interesting that Jane Carter chose to speak to the press about her concerns about Aaron’s night in Neverland, when she apparently had not asked her son about what had happened. It’s a theme I’ve seen in the other families who made allegations about MJ – the parents always seem more than happy to speak to the press, or to the police, but seem not to have discussed their concerns with their own children.
As for Aaron Carter, all I know is that I never heard of the guy until this story emerged and now his name is everywhere.
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it is clear to me that Aaron did say those things. i’m just trying to understand why…….people will take his word for it and say “see, here is another one”. but reading this post it’s easy to see he is laying now, not then as some may claim. while reading i was thinking: let say MJ truly was this clever predator that planed every step. would he really offer a child weed at a party and then bring him into his room and do something to the child when he KNOWS there are people all over the place? it just sounds idiotic
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“Regarding Aaron Carter. My interpretation of events is different”
Mine is too.
“My impression is he couldn’t because he knew he made highly inflamatory remarks against Michael.”
Each of us can have an impression of his own. It is proving one’s point which is difficult (but necessary).
“Regarding Daphne Barak. Her intention (to me) is 2 fold. Firstly her selection of clips to posts from hours of an interview tries to leave the impression that MJ was grooming AC. Secondly she closes with the dope tape, this is to lead into the Conrad Murray trial. Her assistant Linda Green told me “Many things would be out during Dr’ Murray’s trial”.”
Her intentions are not limited to the above. There is only one word for them – they are monstrous.
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@ Teva. I agree with you about the media and Murray. The answer is quite simple really when it comes to Murray. Were other drugs found in Michael Jackson’s system other than the ones that Murray put there? No. The media can help Murray if they like to me that is the same as aiding the manslaughter (IMO murder 2nd degree) after the fact. I hope that the LA prosecutor is ready to fight. I know that they (the PR team? What other killer gets a PR team?) and the media will try to muddy the waters with anything that they can get think of with this trial.
Murray gave Michael every drug that was found in his system per his own statement to the police. Nothing else was found. Propofol does not work in the stomach period. The IV canula was inserted into his popliteal fossa (behind the knee). He could not have reached it to inject more when he was out of the room. There was no Propofol found in the long tubing coming from the IV solution bag it was found in the short tube known as a saline lock which is about 4.5 inches long. That means that Murray was pushing it in not by drip but pushing it in. They found one 10cc syringe. They tried to say it was broken. It wasn’t broken it was a luer lock syringe, they sort of screw or push into what we call a blue port. They found one empty 100 ml. vial of propofol solution there are 10 mg of propofol per ml so in 100 ml there are actually 1000 mg of the actual drug. They found one empty 20 ml vial and another 20 ml vial that was ¾ empty. Doing the math that is 1350 mg of propofol that we can claim was pushed in the blue port. That means with a 10 ml syringe he had to push in 10 ml. at time to total 14 times.Murray claims he gave him 25 mg.that’s 2.5 ml. That is not an accident and you don’t have a reaction to an anesthesia unless it is the first time that it is used because you don’t often live through it .
It is not difficult to figure it out . He lied about the whole mess now his “PR” team is trying to make it sound like Michael deserved to die. Why didn’t one of them (the tabloid/ mainstream media) just put a bullet in his head in 1993? No one or their reputation should have had to live with and now die with all of this bullshit and all for the sake of money.
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@VindicateMJ,
I told you I would read your article when you posted it with an open mind, and I did. However, my interpretation of events are different.
Regarding Aaron Carter. People ask “why did he not refute the allegation when they first came out instead of deleting tweets from MJ fans?” My impression is he couldn’t because he knew he made highly inflamatory remarks against Michael. The Austrailian OK! article threw him a life line because had they not subsituted cocaine for marijuana I don’t think we would have heard from Aaron. He was able to rebutt that portion because he knew he didn’t say it, but he does/has not cleared up any of the other deflamatory remarks. Hmmmm
Regarding Daphne Barak. Her intention (to me) is 2 fold. Firstly her selection of clips to posts from hours of an interview tries to leave the impression that MJ was grooming AC. The serving of alcohol, the finding of MJ at the foot of Aaron’s cot at 5:00am like he was mesmerized or something, then closing with the two smoking weed together. It is straight BS and out of the Sneddon playbook. This is what the prosecution was alleging with the Arvizos’, and Barak is simply carrying the baton. Secondly she closes with the dope tape, this is to lead into the Conrad Murray trial. Her assistant Linda Green told me “Many things would be out during Dr’ Murray’s trial”. It is a precusor of what is to come where journalists especially HLN will be interviewing everyone, and their pets about Michael’s addictions, basically looking for dirt. Do not be surprised if Aaron Carter is not pursued in September by the media regarding him, and Michael lighting up together.
Fans should be looking at ways to hit back at the media onslaught that is surely coming in September. By now we should be proactive and not reactive.
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However I think I haven’t yet answered why Aaron Carter is not making a clear statement that the man he was talking about wasn’t Michael Jackson.
Because he may have been talking about Michael. It wasnt fair of him to include that he had wine at Neverland – especially since he never said that Michael gave it to him. It was his way of being sensational.
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I believe that Aaron DID make those statements about Michael Jackson giving him cocaine and alcohol, but the timing of him saying this is very suspicious, which leads me to believe that he wasn’t telling the truth and made up the allegations to cash in with the thought that it wouldn’t be made public, but when it did become public, he quickly recanted the claims and blamed it on the journalist saying that she misquoted him…But hey, you can’t really blame the guy. When times are hard, you gotta do what you gotta do.
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