As Michael Jackson saw it, children would become enamored with his personality as well as want to touch and hug him, and “sometimes it [got] me into trouble”, the late US pop superstar says in audio recordings, many of them previously unheard, contained in a new documentary.
The UK’s Wonderhood Studios included the recordings of Jackson voicing those thoughts for a new four-episode documentary series beginning on Wednesday that explores his acquittal on child sexual abuse charges after a 14-week criminal trial near Los Angeles in 2005.
A promotional trailer of Channel 4’s The Trial features Jackson’s soft, high-pitched speaking voice asserting: “Children … wanna just touch me and hug me.”
“Kids end up just falling in love with my personality – sometimes it gets me into trouble,” Jackson also says in the clip, after an interview subject explains that some of the things revealed on the recordings in question “have no precedent”.
The New York Post on Saturday reported on another particularly alarming remark that those recordings captured Jackson making.
“If you told me right now … ‘Michael, you could never see another child,’ … I would kill myself,” Jackson purportedly says on the recordings, according to the Post.
Wonderhood Studios’ website says the The Trial aims to step beyond the “media circus” that surrounded Jackson’s acquittal to pose “profound questions about fame, race and the American justice system”.
Prior to his acquittal, Jackson was charged with molesting a boy, providing a child alcohol, getting a minor intoxicated so as to abuse him, and of plotting to keep a juvenile and his family captive at the 13-time Grammy winner’s Neverland ranch in California.
Those charges stemmed from a UK television documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, that was broadcast in February 2003.
In a March 2005 interview, Jackson argued that the charges were the lowest point in his life – and had been brought against him as part of an elaborate scheme to discredit him.
“I am completely, completely innocent,” Jackson also said in that interview. “Please know a lot of conspiracy is going on as we speak.”
A jury found Jackson not guilty of all charges on 13 June 2005 in a Santa Maria, California, courtroom.
Four years and two weeks later, Jackson died from what authorities described as “acute intoxication” of the powerful anesthetic propofol. He was 50.
Since his death, Jackson’s legacy has been met with opposing forces – one that exalts his musical and performing talents and another which takes note of his artistry but refrains from celebrating it further given the detailed abuse accusations against him.
His personal physician, Dr Conrad Murray, was ultimately convicted of giving Jackson the deadly dose of propofol as the singer prepared for a series of comeback concerts. Murray was found guilty of manslaughter and served nearly two years in prison.
The Trial’s release was set to come after the US government released millions of files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor and then was reported to have died by suicide in federal custody while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
Those files contain photos of Epstein with some of the most significant figures from the last century, including Jackson.
The singer was shown in one picture posing with Epstein next to a large painting. It is not clear where that picture – initially released in December – was taken. And there is no suggestion Jackson was aware of, or involved in, any of Epstein’s crimes.
• This article was amended on 5 February 2026 to clarify that not all the audio recordings of Michael Jackson had been previously unheard.
