A new man has stepped forward with claims that Michael Jackson sexually abused him as a child.
Lawyers for 36-year-old James Safechuck filed court papers on Monday on his behalf, asking that he be allowed to file a late claim against the singer’s estate.
Safechuck alleges that he was abused by the late King of Pop after the two appeared together in a late ’80s Pepsi commercial when Safechuck was 10 years old.
Howard Weitzman, an attorney for the Jackson estate, responded by saying that Safechuck’s claims should be dismissed. “Mr. Safechuck’s request to file a late claim against the Jackson Estate so he can recover money from Michael’s beneficiary will hopefully be rejected,” Weitzman tells E! News in a statement.
“This is a person that made his claim five years after Michael died, more than 20 years after the incidents supposedly happened and has given sworn testimony that Michael never did anything inappropriate to him.”
Jackson was said to be engaged in a calculated course of conduct to lure both [Safechuck] and his parents into a false sense of security and normalcy that was far from reality, according to Safechuck’s attorneys’ state in the court papers.
“And [Jackson] was successful in his efforts to the point that [Safechuck] endured repeated acts of sexual abuse of a heinous nature and was brainwashed by the decedent into believing they were acts of love and instigated by James himself rather than the decedent.”
The court docs continue to state that, “After the first incident, [Safechuck] regularly began sleeping in [Jackson’s] bed in his hotel room during the rest of the Bad tour in 1988,” and allege that Safechuck was molested nearly 100 times over the course of four years until he hit puberty.
A hearing on Safechuck’s petition is scheduled Sept. 4.