Now the faces of Jackson’s children have been revealed…

Daily Mail is usually be so full of B.S., but I actually found this to be interesting, save for a few tabloid gestures here and there (the status quo right).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Now the faces of Jackson’s children have been revealed, are they really his?

By Alison Boshoff
Last updated at 10:31 PM on 28th May 2008

Revealed: Paris, left, Prince and younger brother Blanket visit a Las Vegas bookshop in the early hours – without their usual disguises

They appear to be absolutely normal, and utterly unremarkable.

There is nothing about the girl, with her flowing brown hair and fine, pretty features, or her two handsome brothers which would merit a second glance.

But, on closer inspection, there is perhaps just something in the way which the older of the two boys is looking, in eager glee at his surroundings which lets you know that he is enjoying a moment of rare freedom.

For these are the rarely seen children of Michael Jackson.

They have spent their lives being veiled, shrouded and even masked in public. Until very recently, only those in Jackson’s inner circle would have recognised them. They have been brought up in the most peculiar way in gilded isolation – without friends, conventional schooling or even a mother.

The children have had a tiger cub to play with at home, but never a friend. Theirs has been a totally unconventional existence: they have feasted on Kentucky Fried Chicken in presidential suites in hotels across the world, and shopped at London’s Hamleys toy store in the middle of the night.

They have trailed across the globe after their eccentric father, who seems to be in a state of flight from the scandal which sticks to him, and the financial meltdown which is imminent (Jackson gets through around £500,000 a month, and is seeking to refinance his considerable debts.).

Saddest of all, they have just lost the nanny they called “Mom” and who Jackson was said to have been on the brink of marrying. And through all this, they have seen the world only at one remove – through a disguise. Jackson, who has long loved to cover his face both to hide his macabre plastic surgery and fend off the germs he fears, has said veiling his children originally started as a way to protect them from potential kidnappers.

He used to tell them it was all part of a “game” with photographers. However, it always looked disturbing, even a little gothic, to see the children masked, and you have to wonder how it made them feel to hide their perfectly normal faces this way.

The last time they went out, to see a show in New York, all of them – including Michael – wore wigs and dark glasses, even when they went backstage to meet the performers. When they went to Disney World, they all wore masks over their eyes, as well as baseball caps.

At Berlin Zoo, when they were still tiny, their faces were completely obscured by scarves. Last week, though, Prince, Paris and Prince Michael were pictured visiting a Las Vegas bookstore. They browsed through children’s books, while their father stayed in the music section.

He was, as usual, covered up with a scarf and hood.

The resemblance between Prince and Paris, the older two, is striking – both have the same colouring and delicate bone structure.

Six-year-old Prince Michael – known as “Blanket” – is much darker than his two older siblings. It was Blanket, or course, who was dangled off a hotel balcony as a newborn by his father, who later said: “He enjoyed it. He started to respond by going ‘eeee’.”

So what of these three motherless children? What is the truth about their extraordinary lives? And what kind of a father is Michael Jackson – if he is indeed their father at all? Those close to Jackson say he started a family in an effort to banish the demons of his own childhood. He was bullied and beaten by his father, Joe, who turned him into an international star before he was a teenager but never, according to Jackson, showed him love or affection.

Debbie Rowe, a nurse whom he met during a dermatological consultation, and who became his second wife, said she agreed to bear children for him because he was so desperate to be a father.

Jackson would pace the corridors of his Neverland home cradling baby dolls and talking to them, such was his yearning for a child of his own. When they married in 1996, she was seven months pregnant with Prince. Rowe told an ex-lover she had agreed to try for a baby using artificial insemination as a “favour to a friend”, though she did not name the “friend”.

Jackson has repeatedly denied that his blue-eyed son, born in February 1997, was the product of artificial insemination. He was “made the natural way”, he told interviewer Martin Bashir.

Rowe went on to give birth to Paris Michael Katherine the following year, even though she continued to live apart from Jackson and her son. It seems to have been more of an arrangement than a marriage. Jackson has admitted that he “snatched” Paris from the delivery table within seconds of her birth and “took her home with the placenta all over her”.

He giggled during an interview at the memory of how excited he was to have another baby, seemingly unaware of how disturbing his behaviour had been. The upbringing of these two children was, from the first, every bit as disturbing as his own dysfunctional childhood.

They were not allowed to associate with other children, and did not attend school or nursery. Instead, their father was with them day and night. He would do everything for them, watching cartoons with them and singing them nursery rhymes. He also shared their room. There would be a new toy every single day, and the children were encouraged to spend their time climbing trees with their father, or having water balloon fights with him at his Neverland ranch. He bought a tiger cub for them to play with.

Jackson, who was said to be heavily under the influence of painkillers (a legacy of his multiple plastic surgeries), retreated into a second childhood with Prince and Paris. There was a team of nannies but they were mostly sidelined – Debbie Rowe once recalled that she wasn’t even allowed to change her babies’ nappies, as Jackson wanted to do that all himself.

“Michael pays so much attention, I would have nothing to do . . . It is unusual, but I don’t think it’s weird,” she said. Later, she changed her tune quite radically and said that she would not have another child for him even if he offered her £50 million.

Reports from Neverland indicate that everything had to be perfect for the children. Jackson, who has a phobia of germs, wanted the air in the nurseries to be filtered and constantly checked. Nannies had to wear gloves when preparing food, and threw away utensils after only one use.

Debbie quickly disappeared from her children’s world. By the time she filed for divorce in October 1999, she was only an occasional visitor. She did not ask for custody of them.

These days, they do not even know that she is their mother. Their last contact with her came in 2005, when they were brought by their nanny, Grace Rwaramba, to see her at a Los Angeles hotel. Rowe was aghast to discover the children called Grace “Mom”. Who, she asked, had they been told she was?

“A family friend,” said Grace.

Rowe was initially angry, and said that the children had been abducted on fake passports.

Eventually, she signed a further legal agreement giving up all claim to them in return for an enhanced financial settlement (£750,00 a year, on top of her initial settlement of £8 million plus a house).

So the children – Blanket was born thanks to a surrogate mother who Jackson says he has never met – have been raised with only a father figure. Jackson often takes them abroad and on those late-night visits to museums and shops – usually between 2am and 3am – when everything is closed to the public. One who saw them during a tour of a museum in Vegas a few years ago said that while Jackson was looking at the classic motorbikes in an excited state, the children were noticeably sleepy and pale.

It seems that Jackson is obsessed that they might be kidnapped. In Berlin five years ago, he ordered his security team not to allow anyone out of the lifts until he and the children were hidden in their suite. He also insisted management swept the room for recording devices, and requested special filters for the air-conditioning units.

Uri Geller, Jackson’s friend, said with understatement: “They do not have a normal family life as you or I would know it.”

Others, though, insist that the children are very happy. Bryan Monroe, of Ebony magazine, met Jackson and his youngest child last year, and said: “Blanket was not masked – he just walked into the hotel room and shook hands.

“He sat down and watched cartoons. I was struck by the father-son relationship that appeared to be very authentic.”

Is Jackson, though, their biological father? He has always insisted that he is, even though Rowe has remarked: “Michael knows the truth. He has to come clean.”

Their fair skins would seem to back her up, but Professor Steve Jones, an expert in genetics from UCL, says it is possible that they are indeed his biological offspring.

He said: “If Michael Jackson had, say 500 children with Debbie Rowe, you would expect some of them to be very white and some to be very dark.

“On average, they should be somewhere in between, and that is what you have here.” Whatever the truth, the three of them are his life. Which is why he was so terrified of going to jail on charges of child molestation. After being acquitted, the singer (who turns 50 in August) returned to Neverland only to pack up, and has not returned since.

First, the Jacksons went to Bahrain. Then they moved to Switzerland, and then Ireland. At the centre of this peripatetic life was stunningly attractive Grace Rwaramba, whose job title was nanny, but she was far more than that to Jackson and his children.

Grace, originally from Rwanda, was Prince Michael’s first nanny – a position of great trust.

She also looked after Michael, and after his trial, no one got to speak to him without her say-so, including his own family. The pair were so close that many insiders said they would marry. Indeed, last summer Jackson’s legal team apparently were charged with finalising Grace’s divorce from her first husband.

Their relationship was certainly the longest Jackson has ever managed with another adult. Grace shared his humanitarian drive and would spend hours planning projects to save children living in poverty. She supported Jackson’s wish to adopt five children from the developing world, a plan that never came to fruition.

And Grace apparently believed Jackson had been a victim of terrible smears at the trial and might yet be rehabilitated. She encouraged him to change manager, lawyer and record label.

But she has suddenly found herself surplus to requirements and has been frozen out. Some reports say she is suffering from the auto-immune disease lupus, which may explain why she has been dropped from his life – the singer has long been terrified of contact with anyone who is sick.

A new nanny is in her place. The Jackson family unit is tighter than ever before – and that’s just the way Daddy likes it.

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