For years, the Cascio family was one of Michael Jackson’s fiercest defenders against ugly pedophilia claims. The five siblings from New Jersey, whom Jackson considered a “second family” and who spent much of their childhoods with the King of Pop, publicly denied that he was ever inappropriate with them.
That all changed in 2019, when the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland amplified child sex abuse claims against Jackson from two men in disturbing detail. As the Cascio siblings tell it, the film led them to reflect and reveal to each other for the first time that they had all been abused by Jackson as children across “hundreds of instances.” The estate of Jackson, who died in 2009, says the Cascios fabricated these claims and were seeking to cash in on the cultural moment.
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Whether the Cascios’ allegations were true or not, one thing is for sure: The siblings signed a multimillion-dollar settlement, including a strict nondisclosure agreement, with the Jackson estate in late 2019. Now, the validity of this settlement is the subject of a bitter legal battle in court.
The Jackson estate alleged in a court petition this summer that the Cascios violated the settlement with an “extortionate” threat that they would go public with the claims unless they were paid an additional $213 million. Last month, the Cascio siblings responded by asking a judge to declare the settlement void.
The Cascios — Frank, Aldo, Marie-Nicole, Edward and Dominic — said the estate “exploited their confusion and vulnerability” upon coming to terms with the alleged abuse by pressuring them to quickly sign a deal they didn’t understand.
According to the Cascios’ Oct. 6 court filing, the siblings didn’t have their own lawyer and were told by the Jackson estate that the deal “would not get done” if they hired counsel and took time to review the papers. They also said the estate misrepresented the nature of the settlement, telling them it was a “life rights” agreement.
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“Exploiting the same patterns of trust, fear and conditioned loyalty that Michael Jackson had cultivated for decades, the estate manipulated respondents’ emotional state to extract their silence through coercive and deceptive means,” wrote the Cascios’ attorney Mark Geragos. “The rushed process was intended to, and did, in fact, take advantage of the Cascio siblings’ shock and trauma upon realizing this had happened to all of them.”
The estate, meanwhile, says the Cascios were not pressured to sign anything. To the contrary, the estate claims in court filings that the Cascio siblings were the ones who demanded a settlement for their “specious allegations” — and that the estate reluctantly paid to avoid public pain and harm to Jackson’s children.
“Frank inaccurately depicts the negotiations leading up to the execution of the Agreement as one-sided strong-arming,” wrote the estate’s attorney, Jonathan Steinsapir, on Oct. 30, referring to Frank Cascio.
The truth, argues the estate, is that the settlement was “extensively negotiated” and “voluntarily executed” by the Cascio siblings. It is now urging a judge to enforce all provisions of the agreement, including a mandatory arbitration clause.
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A court hearing on the dispute is scheduled for Dec. 3 in Los Angeles County. Geragos and a rep for the Jackson estate both declined to comment on the matter on Friday (Nov. 7).
Jackson was never convicted or held legally liable for any accusation of child sex abuse during his lifetime; he settled a civil claim in 1994 without admitting any wrongdoing, and he was acquitted at a criminal trial in 2005. But such allegations have continued to dog his legacy, most notably when Leaving Neverland hit screens in 2019.
The Jackson estate called Leaving Neverland a “one-sided hit job” and sued HBO, leading the documentary to be removed from the streaming platform. Yet the subjects of Leaving Neverland, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, are continuing to pursue civil sexual assault claims against the estate.
Meanwhile, the Jackson estate has been extraordinarily successful at monetizing the singer’s legacy. Jackson died with $500 million in debt, but the estate has since generated more than $3 billion with catalog deals and new live shows exploiting the King of Pop’s intellectual property.
The estate’s latest endeavor is Michael, a long-developed biopic tracing Jackson’s rise to stardom. After years of setbacks and delays, Michael finally has a release date of April 24, 2026.
The movie’s first teaser trailer dropped on Thursday (Nov. 6) with scenes of Jackson’s real-life nephew, Jaafar Jackson, recording and performing Michael’s record-smashing 1982 album Thriller. The teaser does not allude to any of the abuse claims against Jackson.
