Paris Jackson Battled Suicide, Was Sexually Assaulted at 14

Paris Jackson Sexual Assault, Suicide Attempt

In her first in-depth interview, Paris Jackson, the only daughter of megastar Michael Jackson, gets candid. Shot by celebrity photographer Dave LaChapelle, the 18-year-old discusses the emotional distress of losing her father eight years ago and details her highly publicized suicide attempt when she was just 15. Jackson also talks being sexually assaulted at 14, being “crazy” and opens up about father’s legacy and death. Read some excerpts below.

On her suicide attempt at 15:

It was just self-hatred. Low self-esteem, thinking that I couldn’t do anything right, not thinking I was worthy of living anymore.

On attending private school and hanging with kids outside her age group:

…a lot of older people doing a lot of crazy things…I was doing a lot of things that 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds shouldn’t do. I tried to grow up too fast, and I wasn’t really that nice of a person.

On social media and cyber-bullying:

The whole freedom-of-speech thing is great, but I don’t think that our Founding Fathers predicted social media when they created all of these amendments and stuff.”

On being sexually assaulted at 14:

I don’t wanna give too many details. But it was not a good experience at all, and it was really hard for me, and, at the time, I didn’t tell anybody.

On attending the Diamond Ranch Academy in Utah:

It was great for me. I’m a completely different person. I was crazy. I was actually crazy. I was going through a lot of, like, teen angst. And I was also dealing with my depression and my anxiety without any help.

On dating 26-year-old drummer, Michael Snoddy:

I never met anyone before who made me feel the way music makes me feel.

On being famous and what her dad would want:

I was born with this platform. Am I gonna waste it and hide away? Or am I going to make it bigger and use it for more important things?

On not knowing who her dad actually was:

I just thought his name was Dad, Daddy. We didn’t really know who he was. But he was our world. And we were his world.

On having a normal life:

We actually had a pretty normal life. Like, we had school every single day, and we had to be good. And if we were good, every other weekend or so, we could choose whether we were gonna go to the movie theater or see the animals or whatever. But if you were on bad behavior, then you wouldn’t get to go do all those things.

On her dad being “open-minded”:

My dad raised me in a very open-minded house. I was eight years old, in love with this female on the cover of a magazine. Instead of yelling at me, like most homophobic parents, he was making fun of me, like, ‘Oh, you got yourself a girlfriend.’

On having Michael Jackson as a father:

His number-one focus for us, besides loving us, was education. And he wasn’t like, ‘Oh, yeah, mighty Columbus came to this land!’ He was like, ‘No. He fucking slaughtered the natives.’ He did have kind of a potty mouth. He cussed like a sailor.

On if he was really her father:

He is my father. He will always be my father. He never wasn’t, and he never will not be. People that knew him really well say they see him in me, that it’s almost scary.

On her relationship with her mother:

I’ve had a lot of mother figures, but by the time my mom came into my life, it wasn’t a ‘mommy’ thing. It’s more of an adult relationship.

On the child molestation case:

My dad would cry to me at night. Picture your parent crying to you about the world hating him for something he didn’t do. And for me, he was the only thing that mattered. To see my entire world in pain, I started to hate the world because of what they were doing to him. I’m like, ‘How can people be so mean?’ sorry, I’m getting emotional.

On her father’s death:

He [Michael Jackson] would drop hints about people being out to get him. And at some point he was like, ‘They’re gonna kill me one day.’

On if she believes her father was murdered:

Absolutely, because it’s obvious. All arrows point to that. It sounds like a total conspiracy theory and it sounds like bullshit, but all real fans and everybody in the family knows it. It was a setup. It was bullshit.

By:@CaDarius_