He was good, but not that good? In a new teaser clip of the upcoming season of Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars Family Edition, Aaron Carter opens up about the allegations of sexual abuse leveled against his late friend Michael Jackson.
“Michael was a really good guy, as far as I know. A really good guy,” the 31-year-old former teen star says. “He never really, like, he never did anything that was inappropriate … except for that one time.”
Say what?
“It was one thing that he did that was a little bit inappropriate,” Carter, who will be appearing in the WE tv series with mom Jane Carter, added.
But the singer didn’t elaborate any further in the short clip obtained by People.
The King of Pop, who died in 2009 of “acute propofol intoxication,” faced multiple allegations of inappropriate behavior with young boys starting in 1993. He settled a case with one boy’s family for $23 million in 1994, and was found not guilty in a 2005 trial. The 2019 HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, which came on the heels of the lauded Surviving R. Kelly documentary about the R&B singer’s alleged abuse of young women, stoked interest again in the allegations against Jackson, who had denied the allegations.
Carter was furious with Wade Robson and James Safechuck, the two men who alleged in Leaving Neverland that Jackson sexually abused them when they were only 7 and 10. In a March interview with TMZ, Carter blasted the men, who are now in their 30s.
“When I see someone that is like, OK, you’re a grown man, and when Michael Jackson was alive, you are backing him, you are up his a–, you are kissing his a–, you are there to testify for him under oath,” he fumed. (Robson testified on Jackson’s behalf in the 2005 case, while Safechuck declined to participate.) “And then when he dies, you decide that’s a good time to come out?!”
“What you’re doing is you’re actually stomping on an icon and a legend’s grave. You’re stomping on his grave!” Carter continued. “Why not do it while he was being accused of all these molestation charges? Why not do it then because it actually indicts a perpetrator.”
The pop singer noted that it was hard for him to believe the allegations leveled against Jackson. “How am I supposed to understand when my own experience with him was gentle and beautiful and loving and embracing?” he told TMZ at the time.
But a month later, in April, he seemed to change his tune. When TMZ caught up with him and asked about the documentary again, Carter said that everyone has their own experiences, and he wasn’t with the people who accused Jackson when the alleged abuse happened. And then revealed his own tale.
“In regards to that situation, I actually have my own experience that happened with Michael, so I’m going to be talking about that in the future,” he said, refusing to divulge more details beyond that he was working on a book. “I’ll always have his back, though.”
