The lawsuit, filed last week in a U.S. District Court in California, was brought by Edward, Dominic and Aldo Cascio and their sister Marie-Nicole Porte. In the complaint, the siblings allege Jackson sexually abused them over a period of more than a decade, beginning when some of them were as young as seven or eight years old.
According to the lawsuit, the siblings first met Jackson through their father, who worked at a hotel where the singer frequently stayed. The complaint claims Jackson groomed the children through gifts, financial support and access to his celebrity lifestyle, gradually isolating them from other adults.
The plaintiffs allege that the abuse occurred across several locations, including trips to Switzerland, Bahrain and South Africa. They claim Jackson used drugs and alcohol to facilitate the alleged assaults.
The lawsuit names companies and entities associated with Jackson’s estate as defendants, including the Michael Jackson Estate.
“Plaintiffs reject the Jackson Estate's morally bankrupt efforts to control and silence them,” the siblings’ attorney, Howard King, wrote in the complaint. The lawsuit seeks to hold the estate and its affiliated companies accountable for what the plaintiffs claim was a long-running pattern of abuse and cover-ups.
Attorneys representing the estate strongly denied the allegations. Veteran entertainment lawyer Martin Singer called the lawsuit a “desperate money grab.”
Singer said the claims contradict the family’s previous public statements defending Jackson. In Edward Cascio’s 2011 book My Friend Michael: An Ordinary Friendship with an Extraordinary Man, the Cascio family described Jackson as a close friend and insisted he had never harmed them. Singer also noted that Edward, Frank and Marie-Nicole Cascio said in a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey that Jackson had never abused them.
“The Cascios spent decades defending and affirming Michael’s innocence,” Singer said. “These accusations come more than 15 years after Michael’s death, when there is no risk of a defamation lawsuit.”
Jackson died on June 25, 2009, at age 50 from acute propofol intoxication. His personal physician, Conrad Murray, was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter for administering the powerful anesthetic as a sleep aid.
The Cascio siblings claim they did not fully understand the nature of the alleged abuse until years later. According to the lawsuit, they began reevaluating their experiences after watching the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, which detailed sexual abuse allegations made by former Jackson associates Wade Robson and James Safechuck.
The complaint also alleges that the Jackson Estate offered the family $690,000 in 2019 as compensation for years of alleged abuse and that the siblings signed the agreement without having an attorney review it.
For decades, allegations of child abuse have followed Jackson. The first public accusations surfaced in 1993 when 13-year-old Jordan Chandler claimed the singer molested him. Jackson denied the allegations but settled a civil lawsuit with the Chandler family for an estimated $23 million in 1994.
In 2005, Jackson stood trial over accusations involving 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo. After a four-month trial, a jury acquitted him of all charges.
Following Jackson’s death, Robson and Safechuck filed civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual abuse. Their cases faced years of legal challenges but were revived after changes to California law expanded the time limits for filing childhood sexual abuse claims. A trial in those cases is tentatively expected to begin in late 2026.
The Cascio lawsuit adds a new chapter to the long-running legal and public debate surrounding the legacy of one of music’s most influential performers. The Jackson Estate continues to deny all allegations of abuse.
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