Lost Boys

Two Michael Jackson accusers have their say in Leaving Neverland.

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DAN REED’S TWO-PART, four-hour documentary Leaving Neverland, in which former protégés of Michael Jackson describe years of molestation, scars the mind with words. The result is no mere account of a celebrity scandal, nor is it content to be a portrait of a disturbed musical genius who survived his own abusive childhood. It’s a radically empathetic documentary about the resonating impact of sexual abuse as well as the personal and social forces that conspire to keep people from talking about it.

The documentary arrives on HBO two years after the first wave of #MeToo allegations, which exposed an array of outrages and crimes by men (and a handful of women) in power, and it feels like a conversation-realigning milestone. It will draw viewers by listing the alleged misdeeds of another pop icon—one arguably bigger than the rest, even Bill Cosby—and perhaps inspire many of them to see him through a new lens, but it is ultimately not about Jackson. It’s about two sexual-abuse survivors telling their stories with unprecedented frankness, illuminating not just the sickness of a legend but the pervasiveness of a crime that exists at every level of society and that hides behind abuser-friendly notions of despoilment and shame.