Multiple siblings of Michael Jackson's 'second family' accuse him of sexual abuse and grooming, sue singer's estate - Entertainment Weekly

After years of defending Jackson against allegations of child molestation, the four Cascio siblings have filed a lawsuit claiming the pop star repeatedly sexually assaulted them.

- Multiple siblings from the Cascio family have filed a lawsuit against Michael Jackson's estate, accusing him of sexual abuse and grooming.

- The siblings, who described themselves as Jackson's "second family," claim the singer groomed them as his "soldiers" to defend him from other allegations.

- The siblings reached a settlement agreement with Jackson's estate in 2020, but strained negotiations for further compensation led to their new lawsuit.

Multiple siblings who describe themselves as Michael Jackson 's "second family" have accused the late singer of child sexual abuse and grooming in a new lawsuit, claiming he trained them to defend him against other allegations.

Four of the five Cascio siblings — Aldo, Eddie, Dominic, and Marie Nicole — detailed their accusations against the pop star in a new interview with The New York Times. The siblings met Jackson through their father, Dominic Cascio Sr., who was the manager of the Helmsley Palace in Manhattan, where Jackson often stayed in the 1980s, the outlet reported.

All five siblings — Frank Cascio abstained from joining the lawsuit, citing legal reasons — claimed to The Times that Jackson had groomed them to be his "soldiers" to defend him from other accusers' allegations because he was "the biggest star in the world."

For years, before and after Jackson's death, they denied that Jackson had done anything untoward to them, including in a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey. In his 2011 book, My Friend Michael: An Ordinary Friendship With an Extraordinary Man, Frank even praised the singer, sharing memories of the siblings' time spent with him.

"We were brainwashed," Eddie Cascio claimed in his interview with The New York Times. "We were groomed. He made us feel like he was everything: a friend, father, like every sort of emotional support. And he was."

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Some of the Cascio siblings say they realized earlier on that they were being abused but felt "too overwhelmed" to come forward about it. The others told The Times that they didn't fully comprehend the reality of the situation until after they watched the 2019 HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, which detailed the allegations of two men who accused Jackson of sexually abusing them as minors. Seeing how closely their allegations of child abuse "matched" their own experiences suddenly "deprogrammed" them, they told the outlet. They allege that after the documentary's release and them filing their first lawsuit against Jackson's estate, the estate reached out claiming it was attempting to get them fair compensation "for the suffering Jackson had caused."

The siblings reached a settlement agreement in 2020 and received roughly $16 million from the estate, distributed over the course of five years. However, as the payments neared their end in 2024, the estate claims that Frank, through his lawyer, demanded that he and his brothers and sister be paid $213 million more and threatened to file a public lawsuit. When the payments ended in 2025, the other Cascio siblings claim that the negotiations with the estate for further compensation became contentious, elevating their private legal dispute to public litigation. (While Frank told The Times that he was abused, his arbitration with the estate over the original agreement and other matters prevented him from filing a new lawsuit with his siblings.)

Marty Singer, an attorney who represents the Jackson estate, called the lawsuit "a desperate money grab by additional members of the Cascio family who have hopped on the bandwagon with their brother Frank" in a statement to PEOPLE on Friday.

"The family staunchly defended Michael Jackson for more than 25 years, attesting to his innocence of inappropriate conduct," Singer said. "This new court filing is a transparent forum-shopping tactic in their scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael's estate and companies."