„Michael was too sensitve a boy to be manhandled the way he was by his father. He was also quick on his feet, and determined to avoid an altercation with Joseph. Tito remembered that Michael was ‘so quick that if my mother or father used to swing at him, he’d be out of their way.They’d be swinging at air.’
Joseph believed in the value and impact of brute force as a disciplinary tool. ‘Either you’re a winner in this life, or a loser’, he liked to say. ‘And none of my kids are gonna be losers’. To be sure of that, he would smack his kids without giving it a second thought in order to keep them on the right track to being ‘winners’. Shoving them into walls was not unusual behavior for him, especially the boys. Michael, however, was the one boy in the family who would attempt to fight back when provoked by his father. Once, when he was just three, Joseph spanked him for something he had done. Crying, then Michael took off one of his shoes and hurled it at his father. Joseph ducked; the shoe missed him.
‘Are you crazy?’ Joseph screamed at him. ‘Boy you just signed out your own death warrant. Get over here.’
Infuriated, Joseph grabbed Michael and, according to Marlon, held him upside down by one leg and pummeled him over and over again with his hand, hitting him on his back and buttocks. Soon, Michael was crying and screaming so loudly as if he was trying to summon the entire neighbourhood to his aid.
‘Put him down, Joseph’, Katherine hollered. ‘Your’e gonna kill him! You’re gonna kill him.
When Joseph released the boy, he ran to his room sobbing, ‘I hate you.’ Those were the fighting words for Joseph. He followed Michael into the bedroom, slammed the door and then let him have it.
‘Joseph once locked Michael in a closet for hours’, said a friend of the Jackson family’s. ‘That was traumatizing, horrible for him’.”
Kommentar