Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris Jackson followed in her famous father’s footsteps on Tuesday, appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone.
In the in-depth cover story, the younger Jackson made a number of shocking revelations. Read on for the five biggest eye-openers.
1) Jackson attempted to take her own life multiple times. Speaking to writer Brian Hiatt, Jackson recalled making multiple suicide attempts. At age 15, Jackson slashed her wrist and took 20 Motrin pills in an attempt to end her life, but there were other efforts before that, Jackson revealed. “It was just once that it became public,” Jackson said.
After her third suicide attempt, Jackson said, the hospital insisted that she enter a residential therapy program.
2) Jackson was sexually assaulted at 14. According to Jackson, a “complete stranger” sexually assaulted her. “I don’t wanna give too many details,” Jackson said of the attack, which was committed by a “much older” assailant. “But it was not a good experience at all, and it was really hard for me, and, at the time, I didn’t tell anybody.”
3) Her father used to cry about the child-molestation allegations against him. “My dad would cry to me at night,” Jackson told Rolling Stone. “Picture your parent crying to you about the world hating him for something he didn’t do. And for me, he was the only thing that mattered. To see my entire world in pain, I started to hate the world because of what they were doing to him. I’m like, ‘How can people be so mean?’”
The younger Jackson remains adamant that her father was innocent of the charges. (He was eventually acquitted.) “Nobody experienced him being a father to them,” Jackson said. “And if they did, the entire perception of him would be completely and forever changed.”
4) She believes that her father was murdered. “Absolutely,” Jackson said of her father’s 2009 death. “Because it’s obvious. All arrows point to that. It sounds like a total conspiracy theory and it sounds like bullshit, but all real fans and everybody in the family knows it. It was a setup. It was bullshit.”
As for possible culprits, Jackson said, “A lot of people.”
“He would drop hints about people being out to get him,” Jackson said. “And at some point he was like, ‘They’re gonna kill me one day.”
5) She still dislikes her father’s concert promoter AEG Live. While the Jackson family lost a wrongful-death lawsuit against the concert promoter behind Michael Jackson’s ill-fated This Is It tour, Paris was open about her disdain for the company in her Rolling Stone interview.
“AEG Live does not treat their performers right,” Jackson said. “They drain them dry and work them to death.”
Jackson said she recently saw Justin Bieber on tour and felt “scared” for him. “He was tired, going through the motions. I looked at my ticket, saw AEG Live, and I thought back to how my dad was exhausted all the time but couldn’t sleep.”