Strip search 'broke' Jackson
2009-07-03 11:28
Los Angeles - Michael Jackson was left "broken" by police strip searches.
The 50-year-old singer - who died of a suspected cardiac arrest recently - was reportedly "stripped of all his dignity" when officers examined his naked body following allegations of child abuse against 13-year-old Jordy Chandler in 1993.
Michael's friend John Randy Taraborrelli - who had known the star for over 40 years - said the 50-year-old singer never recovered from the intimate examination and didn't want to people to see his scarred body.
"He begged police for an hour. Michael had been broken. He came into the living room and clearly agitated and wearing a brown dressing gown. Crying softly, he took it off, stripped of all his dignity," said journalist-and-photographer Taraborrelli.
When the child molestation allegations concerning Jordy were made - for which Michael was never charged - the teenager claimed he could prove the abuse because he had seen the singer's penis and private area.
Didn't want to look like his father
Police reportedly inspected the pop star's body and made notes on the colour of his bleach-damaged skin, buttocks and genitals.
"The boy had given a detailed description of his body and the detectives needed to check if it was true. All eyes peered at him to see if he was circumcised, as Jordy had claimed. He wasn't. 'Oh my God,' Michael whimpered. He looked as if he was about to faint," Taraborrelli said.
Meanwhile, Taraborrelli, 53, has also claimed his friend wanted to alter his appearance so drastically - through painful cosmetic surgery and skin-lightening procedures - so he would not look like his father, Joe Jackson. The pop legend and his father had a troubled relationship and Michael claimed Joe regularly beat him as a child.
"His motive for cosmetic surgery was not, as many surmised, to look more like his idol Diana Ross.
"It was so that he would look less like his father - the man who had so mistreated him and whose strong, broad-nosed face he saw looking back at him from the mirror," he added.