[lukan]

It is not normal adult behavior and he likely should have had therapy.

But it is not necessarily pedophilia. Because that means wanting to have sex with children.

The explanation I heard is he wanted to be close to children to compensate for his own lack of innocent childhood. Children don't do sexual intercourse. Now if he was a child in his mind, then I as a parent would surely not have gave my children to his care, but this is still something very different from child molesting.

[iwontberude]

First of all children have sexual intercourse all the time. Many of my friends had sexual intercourse before 16, one as young as 8, it was between children, so no adults were part of this.

So what you are saying is flawed. Even if Michael was a child in his mind, he was not inherently asexual.

Treating children as incapable of sex is dangerous and you are giving a prime example. Treating Michael Jackson like a child is absolutely insanity because I don’t know a single child with a vacation Ranch and private security detail keeping everyone from witnessing how he actually lived.

Pedophilia is a sexual attraction to prepubescent children. The attraction is the disorder; acting on it is a separate thing (child sexual abuse). Michael was definitely a pedophile but maybe not a child sex abuser.

[lukan]

I am sometimes with hippi people and there is a thing called cuddle puddle. Cold around the fire, people get close to each other. But can also happen inside, on some couch, bed. The thing is, this is not sexual at all. Just people enjoying being close with each other. It can evolve into something sexual under special conditions, but usually it is not. Especially not, when children are around. Rather archaic feeling of wolf pack gets close to share body heat and feel each other. All there, all calm, all safe.

So I don't know what happened in Michaels bedroom, was it the innocent or the weird or even sick version. But I certainly won't condem the innocent version in general. The world needs rather more of this very normal close bonding, not people being afraid of being close with children for fear of being called a pedophile.

"Michael was definitely a pedophile"

So I would like to know what makes you so sure of it, that there was a sexual desire?

Apart from that, you are right, that also children can experiment or be very early. But normal childrens play or adult children interaction is not sexual. So I don't see the final conclusion. Did you read the article linked above? The media reporting about it was anything, but not fair nor factual. Did you consider you might have been influenced by that? I certainly do consider that I might be wrong here with my judgement, but all evidence so far I read against him seems either fabricated or hysterical from the point of view of puritans.