Wade Robson’s life would never be the same when he left Brisbane, Australia for a showbiz career at the beckoning call of Michael Jackson. Neither apparently would his father’s.
In part 2 of Leaving Neverland’s HBO debut, Wade went into detail about his father, Dennis Robson (pictured above with Wade), taking his own life in 2002 after he found himself alone in Australia while the rest of his family was miles away.
The father became estranged from them a few years into MJ’s friendship with the young child. As explained in the doc, Jackson helped the Robsons uproot their lives from Australia to El Lay in the early 1990s to help launch young Wade’s career in show business.
Related: Shocking Michael Jackson Allegations From ‘Leaving Neverland’
Wade’s mother left Dennis when she moved Wade and his younger sister Chantal to the states. When Dennis, who was bipolar, visited his family, he would start exhibiting strange behavior that only pushed his son further away from him. Wade explained:
“He was doing things like going on walks in the middle of the night through LA. Getting on buses and we would have to find him… I think it terrified me but my reaction was just to get angry, and I just wanted him to go.”
The distance between them caused the family to fall apart, but it wasn’t until Wade’s older brother Shane, who stayed in Australia with his father, decided he wanted to move out to LA with the rest of the family in 2002.
Sadly, Shane was the last member of the family to see their father alive: Dennis hanged himself the day his eldest son left. Shane remembered in the doc:
“At that point I didn’t know if I’m leaving for good, I’m taking six months off and going to hang out with the family.”
Before he left for his flight, he remembered noticing that something was wrong with his father — he described it as if “the lights were on but no one was home,” recalling:
“The day that I left my grandparents, his mom and dad, came over before I headed to the airport. And I remember dad didn’t say a word nothing at all. Kind of like a statue staring off in the distance… And then I remember saying goodbye and giving him a hug and I don’t think he ever hugged me.”
Shane recalled feeling “anger” after learning about his father’s suicide. His mother, Joy, recalled:
“I brought all the children in for the night and we laughed and we cried and we laughed and we cried.”
But after that first night, a then-19-year-old Wade didn’t cry — he went back to work. Wade explained:
“I don’t know, I feel like from the next day I just started stitching myself up again.”
At the time, Robson had his hands full serving as the creative director for Britney Spears and *NSYNC. It was reported that Wade even had a relationship with the songstress before she started dating Justin Timberlake.
According to Wade, MJ also had a fascination with the Pop Princess. He claimed in Leaving Neverland:
“Michael had some kind of obsession with Britney and he would call me and ask me: What is she like? Isn’t she sexy? Isn’t she beautiful? And wondering if I could set up a way for them to meet.”
Wade partially blamed Jackson for his father’s suicide in the 2013 complaint he filed against the superstar, claiming that the thought of Wade being sexually abused was “a huge source of anxiety and depression” for Dennis.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
[Image via HBO.]
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