Michael Jackson ‘told not to visit ill children’

Dec. 15, 2012 - PRLog -- POP star Michael Jackson was persuaded by an Irish doctor not to visit two Limerick children in a Dublin hospital during his trip to Ireland in 2006 because of previous accusations of child molestation, according to a new book.

Patrick Treacy, a cosmetic surgeon who treated Jackson while he was in Ireland, told the singer that “seeing him go into a paediatric hospital so soon after the paedophilia case” could be read in “totally the wrong way”. The previous year, Jackson had been acquitted of child molestation after a trial in California.

Treacy said Jackson had wanted to visit Gavin and Millie Murray, two siblings then aged five and seven, who were being treated for burns in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin after their mother’s car was firebombed in September 2006.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, the Dublin based surgeon said 'Michael and I became friends while he was in Ireland and he wanted to see the children in the burns unit of the hospital to chat with the doctors and find out about his condition. He was horrified about what had happened and would continually ask me whether they were in pain., if they were given morphine and whether they would be scarred".
 "But it was a different time in 2006, not long after his court case in Santa Maria and the visit could be totally misinterpreted. The media would also follow him around and his peace and quiet would be totally disturbed."

Treacy said the singer was particularly pained by the Murray children's injuries because of the horrific burns he had suffered himself while filming for a Pepsi advertisement in 1984.
"It was terrible to look at Michael sitting there with tears in his eyes, his own scalp stretched and scarred, in some ways pathetic but in another way dignified, " Treacy said.
 The account is included in Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic  Death of Michael Jackson, by Randall Sullivan, a Rolling Stone journalist. The book documents the final days of Jackson including his six month stint in Ireland from June 2006 during which he lived in Co Cork, Co Westmeath and Co. Wicklow.
Treacy criticised Sullivan's research, saying he had not been contacted. Sullivan, who lives in Oregon, said he called the Ailesbury Clinic but did not speak to Treacy.  He said he interviewed some other Irish people who spent time with Jackson, including Liam Sheehan, a Cork magician who entertained the singer at Blackwater Castle. Sheehan's account of Jackson as a father determined "to give his children the feeling they were part of a big, happy family" inspired Sullivan to turn a planned article into a book. Sullivan said Jackson described his days in Ireland as "one of the happiest times of his life". "It was his last really happy time", he said.