The world knew him as the King of Pop. A global icon, a musical messiah, a figure of almost supernatural talent who seemed to defy gravity with his feet and cultural norms with his fame. We saw the sequined glove, the moonwalk, the adoring, hysterical crowds. What we did not see, what was meticulously hidden behind the gates of Hayvenhurst and the blinding flashbulbs, was the terrified child still trapped inside the superstar. In a series of raw, unguarded, and deeply disturbing confessions, Michael Jackson himself painted a portrait of his upbringing that stands in grotesque contrast to his public image. It is not a story of a gifted family nurturing a prodigy; it is a survivor’s testimony of a childhood stolen by relentless work and shattered by unimaginable violence.

That childhood, as most people understand it, simply did not exist for Michael Jackson. “I didn’t have any friends when I was little,” he once stated, his voice soft with a permanent ache. “My brothers were my friends.” But even that “friendship” was defined by their shared purpose: work. While other children were having slumber parties or playing in the park, Michael was in a recording studio.

He recounted the profound pain of this isolation with heartbreaking clarity. He described being in the Motown studios as a young boy, perhaps 11 or 12 years old, and hearing the roar of a crowd from a ballpark across the street. “I could hear the kids, you know, the roar of the crowd and playing and catching ball and having fun.” He admitted that he would often hide his face and cry, overcome with a passionate longing “to just go over there and just play a little bit.” But he couldn’t. The summer tour was around the corner. There was always an album, a TV show, a photo session.

The result was a profound developmental rupture. He was, in the jarring words of those around him, a “45-year-old midget”—an old soul in a small body, robbed of the chance to ever just be a kid. When asked what he would do with a real vacation, he was genuinely stumped: “I really don’t know. You’ve never really done it.” This absence of joy, however, was not the darkest part of his story. The empty space where his childhood should have been was filled by something monstrous: the absolute, paralyzing terror of his father, Joseph.

“I don’t think he realizes to this day how scared, scared I mean scared, I was,” Michael confessed, his adult voice trembling with the memory. This was not the standard-issue fear of a child disappointing a strict parent. This was primal, visceral terror. He described getting physically sick at the mere sight of his father, both as a child and as a grown man. “There’s been times when he’d come to see me and I would get sick, you know, I’d start to regurgitate.” He recounted fainting in his father’s presence, his stomach hurting as soon as Joseph entered the room, as if an “aura” of menace preceded him.

This fear was a carefully cultivated tool of control. It was rooted in a regime of physical abuse so brutal and systemic it sounds like something from a gothic horror novel.

When asked how often his father would beat him, Michael’s answer was simple and chilling: “Too much.”

This was not just a “belt,” though that was used. This was savage, calculated cruelty. “Whatever is around,” Michael said, “Arnie cords… throw you up against the wall hard as you could.” The rehearsals for the Jackson 5, the performances that looked so joyful, were conducted under the shadow of the belt. “He practiced us with a belt in his hand,” Michael recalled. “If you miss a step, expect to be.” His father would sit in a chair, holding the belt, and if they didn’t do it “the right way,” he would “tear you up.”

But there was a “ritual” he reserved for them that was even more horrific. He described in detail how Joseph would make them strip nude. “He will oil you down,” Michael explained, a horrifying detail that seemed to maximize the pain. “He would oil you down so when the flip of the ironing cord hit you, it would just… and it was just like me dying.” The whipping was relentless, all over his face, his back, everywhere.

The only sound breaking through the violence was his mother’s screaming. “I always hear my mother back, ‘No, Joe, you’re going to kill him! You’re going to kill him! Stop it!’” That phrase—”you’re going to kill him”—was repeated, a haunting refrain that underscored the life-threatening severity of the beatings.

The psychological abuse was just as scarring. Joseph Jackson was not “Daddy.” He was “Joseph.” Michael confessed he “wanted to call him daddy so bad,” but his father forbade it, cementing his role as a warden, not a father. “I never felt love from him,” Michael said plainly. “He would never hold me or touch me.”

The emotional void was filled with hate. Michael recounted a “hateful” game he and his sister Janet would play as children. They would tell each other to close their eyes and “picture Joseph in a… and he did.” The unspoken word was “casket.” “Did you feel sorry?” they would ask each other. The answer was “no.”

This nexus of terror and talent produced one of a successful entertainers in human history. Michael was aware of this bitter contradiction, calling his father “a genius.” But it was a genius that cost him his humanity. “He injured you,” an interviewer stated. “Yeah,” Michael agreed. “But look what came out of it.” It’s a trade-off no child should ever have to make. He was a money-making machine, and he knew it. He never forgot his father’s words: “You guys ever stop sinking, I’ll drop you like a hot potato.”

The world often judged Michael Jackson for his eccentricities, his reclusive nature, and his own controversial approach to parenting. But seen through the lens of his own testimony, his life takes on a different shape. His actions become the desperate, fractured attempts of a survivor to reclaim the childhood he was denied.

He was, in his own way, determined to break the cycle. The entire, horrific experience led him to a single, powerful conclusion. “That’s why to this day I don’t lay a finger on my children.” He was adamant. “I don’t want them to ever feel that way about me ever.”

In the most telling reversal, he who was denied a father made sure his children had one. “I don’t allow my children to call me Michael,” he said, his voice firm. “I say I’m Daddy.” In that simple, profound act, he gave his children the one thing “Joseph” had so cruelly withheld from him. He was reclaiming the word. He was reclaiming the love. It was, perhaps, the only way he knew how to heal.