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May 14, 2014

Michael Jackson's Pepsi co-star James Safechuck claims abuse

Michael Jackson's Pepsi co-star James Safechuck claims abuse. THE child who featured in Michael Jackson’s 1987 Pepsi commercial has joined a lawsuit against the singer’s estate saying he was sexually abused for years.

Lawyers for James Safechuck, 36, filed the documents on Friday alleging that Jackson started grooming him for sex when he first appeared in the ad at age 10.

In the commercial, Safechuck plays a boy who sneaks into the singer’s dressing room and starts imitating his idol before Jackson walks in on him.

Safechuck has joined the lawsuit filed by Australian choreographer Wade Robson, 31, who says Jackson made him perform sexual acts on him.

Both boys had denied that Jackson ever sexually abused them. Safechuck is now married with two children of his own and is a computer programmer.

A source close to him told The Daily Beast “once you start having children and you see what it’s all about … your perspective on life changes.”

“It’s the same type of sex abuse claim as Wade’s,” the source said. “Only with a different set of facts … and dates.” According to the source, Safechuck alleges that he “was molested from the age of 10 to about 14 or 15.”

The source says Safechuck was abused from the age of 10 until about 15. Safechuck went on many Pepsi sponsored trips with Jackson during that time, travelling with the singer to Hawaii and England

In court documents filed ahead of Jackson’s 2005 trial, employees at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch were quoted as saying they saw the singer in a hot tub with his hands “down the front of Jimmy’s underpants and was manipulating the boy’s genitalia.”

A maid also said in those court documents that she saw Jackson and Safechuck in bed together without shirts on. A judge ruled that the jury couldn’t hear this evidence because Safechuck claimed at the time that nothing inappropriate happened.

Adding some weight to Safechuck’s claims, Jackson’s sister La Toya said in a 1994 TV interview that she and her mother Katherine Jackson found a cancelled check Michael had written to one of the boys. While she didn’t name the child she said “the father, supposedly, is a garbage collector.”

James Safechuck’s father was at the time, and still is, a garbage collector.

La Toya came out against her brother then saying she could not be a “silent collaborator” to Jackson’s “crimes against innocent children.”

“This has been going on since 1981 ... and it’s not just one child.”

She recanted those statements later saying she was being pressured by her husband, Jack Gordon.

Harry Weitzman, attorney for the Michael Jackson estate, has not responded to the claims.