Charles Thomson Makes Glaring Factual Inaccuracies

Jun 10, 2019

I’ll be honest, I’m not that familiar with Charles Thomson (@CEThomson). Sure, I’ve heard his name many times, and there’s no doubt he’s a Michael Jackson truther and an all-around obsessive fan.

Do a quick search on social media, and you’ll come across plenty of Charles Thomson posts and videos. The most recent ones, unsurprisingly, criticize Dan Reed’s Leaving Neverland and its subjects Wade Robson and James Safechuck. In fact, Charles Thomson is so brazen in his support for Michael Jackson that his moral compass saw nothing wrong with giving an interview with John Ziegler, a 911 conspiracy theorist and open sympathizer of convicted child molester, Jerry Sandusky. Hmm?

One sticking point within the documentary, and something that’s been fully weaponized by Jackson truthers, is the main Neverland train station and James’s timeframe of abuse between '88 and '92. This train station hadn’t received planning permission until September 1993, and despite unintentional claims by Jackson’s former photographer, Harrison Funk, that Jackson built it without a permit, initially, it probably (though not conclusively) didn’t exist in any substantial form until the latter part of 1993.

Just like Mike Smallcombe, who aggressively pushed the story, Charles Thomson himself displays chronic misconceptions and ignorance around the complexity of child sex abuse and inconsistencies in timeframes and locations made by genuine survivors.

In an ever so brief 1:08m YouTube video, titled: “Truth Be Told Panel Charles Thomson” published on 6 June 2019, he drops a number of clangers and proves that he, a self-proclaimed Jackson “expert,” couldn’t even get the simplest of facts from a 4-hour documentary correct.

Watch the video below.

In the video he states:

"What do you do when someone makes an allegation and the other side is not responding or able to respond? There are two things you do. First, you investigate. 'Leaving Neverland' did not investigate because there are massive, glaring factual inaccuracies in that documentary. It's full of them. For example, you have a kid saying he was molested in 1988 or 1989 in a building that was not built until 1995."

Charles is then told that time is running out, but goes on to say:

"I'm not going to list everything, but it's teeming with massive errors. So then what do you do? If you haven't investigated, you go to the other side for balance. They didn't do that either. The filmmaker, Dan Reed, gave a ridiculous excuse, saying he included Michael Jackson's denials when he was alive. But Jackson never denied these specific allegations because these guys never accused him until after he was dead. You have lawyers who have been litigating with these guys for five years."

The video then ends abruptly.

Charles Thomson, perhaps high on his own narcissism, appears to be the one making massive, glaring factual inaccuracies, rather than Dan Reed or James Safechuck.

First and foremost, James Safechuck, in the four-hour documentary, makes no mention of when he was abused in the train station. His exact words are:

"At the train station, there's a room upstairs, and we would have sex up there, too. It would happen every day. It sounds sick, but it's kind of like when you're first dating somebody, right? And you do a lot of it."

James is also describing other Neverland locations within that sentence, for the record.

Watch the video below.

Secondly, the train station was already substantial in size by the end of 1993 and fully completed by the summer of 1994, at least according to Mike Smallcombe.

Thirdly, Leaving Neverland isn’t limited to just allegations against Jackson. It documents how Jackson chose and befriended James and Wade and their families, how he became an integral part of their lives, before eventually losing interest and moving on to new and younger boys. These are facts that can be backed up with court documents, photographs, and video footage.

Dan Reed has always stated that Leaving Neverland is about James and Wade, how they met Jackson, how Jackson groomed and seduced them into sexual contact, and why they defended their abuser both publicly and under oath for so long. It’s not a case of doing no research whatsoever. In fact, he started the entire process by interviewing former detectives and those involved in investigating Jackson in the 1993 and 2005 cases.

If any Jackson apologists were invited to offer their opinion in the documentary, it would be the same scripted and limited response: that Jackson was a wonderful man, and all his accusers are motivated by money.

Anyway, let’s refocus on Charles Thomson and his glaring factual inaccuracies. This is a “journalist” who thinks that James Safechuck, a man who states he was abused over a four-year period more than 25 years ago in a place bigger than most housing estates, containing a minimum of 50 to 100 different buildings and structures, couldn’t somehow misidentify a site of abuse or misremember his end-of-abuse timeframe by one to two years.

Well, guess what, Charles? You somehow screwed up big time and couldn’t even get your facts straight from a four-hour documentary that aired in March 2019. You, along with Mike Smallcombe, call yourselves “journalists,” yet you appear to be the only two who have never heard of inconsistencies in timeframes and locations made by genuine sex abuse survivors.

This is what Kenneth V. Lanning, Former Supervisory Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has to say on the matter of inconsistencies when it involves multiple sexual acts over an extended period:

"Allegations involving multiple acts, on multiple occasions, over an extended period of time must be evaluated in their totality and context. Cases involving longterm sexual contact with child victims who engaged in compliant behavior should not be assessed and evaluated by comparisons to cases involving isolated, forced sexual assaults. 

Indicators suggesting a false allegation in a typical rape case have little application to the evaluation of most acquaintance, child-molestation cases, especially those involving repeated access and prolonged sexual activity. Such child molestation cases are very hard to classify as either a valid or false allegation. Victim claims may include allegations that appear to be false, but that does not mean the case can be labeled in totality as “a false allegation.” 

In my experience, many valid claims of child sexual molestation, especially those by this type of child victim, involve delayed disclosures, inconsistencies, varying accounts, exaggerations, and lies often associated with false allegations. Inconsistencies in allegations are significant but can sometimes be explained by factors other than that the allegation is false. What is consistent and logical in these circumstances must be based on experience and knowledge of cases similar to the case being evaluated.

Any indicators of a potential false claim must be applicable to the type of case in question and not based on cases involving one-time, violent sexual assaults. There is a difference between an unsubstantiated/unproven allegation and a false allegation. There may be many reasons to believe the allegations are not accurate and should not sustain a conviction in court beyond a reasonable doubt, but that does not mean the allegations of sexual victimization can be labeled as totally “false.”

Labeling an allegation as false should mean nothing of a criminal/sexual nature occurred between the child victim and the alleged adult offender at any time."

Here’s a more simplified version why sexual assault survivors forget: bbc.com

CONCLUSION

The most hypocritical aspect of Charles Thomson is that he isn’t exactly a journalistic novice when it comes to historical child sex abuse. Along with his colleagues at Yellow Advertiser, a free weekly Essex-based newspaper, he obtained financial records released under the Freedom of Information Act, revealing ten compensation pay-outs by Essex Council for “alleged abuse” in the 1970s and 1990s. He even states on his own website that “his investigation has inspired multiple victims to report their abuse for the first time and has led to at least one arrest.”

However, Charles displays chronic misconceptions about child sex abuse, or at the very least freely chooses to when it comes to Michael Jackson’s accusers. This is evident in the above video where he not only tries to twist the words of James Safechuck and omits important facts about inconsistencies but also strongly implies both men are financially motivated to lie through their litigation with lawyers. This is despite his role as a “journalist” directly involved in publishing stories about cover-ups and compensation to genuine sexual abuse survivors.