For decades, their family occupied a place at the very heart of Michael Jackson’s inner circle. 

The singer bestowed guidance and gifts and was a frequent dinner guest at the modest New Jersey home of the Cascios, who took immense pride in being chosen by the King of Pop.

But that closeness, they now claim, came at a shattering cost. For the first time, they are speaking publicly about the catalogue of sexual abuse five of them say they endured at his hands as young children.

Aldo Cascio, along with four of his siblings, allege Jackson groomed, manipulated and sexually abused them over a 25-year period, from the 1980s until his death in 2009.

In a harrowing but compelling interview to be broadcast tonight, Aldo, 35, gives a raw, highly detailed account of the years of sexual violation he says he suffered – starting when he was just a seven-year-old child playing a computer game.

‘I was just sitting on the bed with him during the day, and I was just playing my Game Boy,’ he says. ‘And I remember he just went to me and pulled down my shorts.’

Speaking alongside parents Dominic and Connie, and sister Marie Nicole, he fights back tears as he reveals the devastating impact the abuse has had on him. 

‘Since middle school, it introduced me to hell and my demons,’ he says. ‘I realised that I might want to end my life one day.’

Pictured: Michael Jackson (centre) and the Cascio family, who, for decades, occupied a place at the very heart of the singer’s inner circle

Aldo Cascio has spoken out in a world first interview with Daphne Barak, set to air on March 1

The Cascio family are currently in a legal battle with Jackson’s estate, seeking to void a confidential settlement they say silenced them and force their claims into a public court. They insist they are not motivated by money, but by the truth.

To the Cascios, it feels as though time has only served to burnish the singer’s legend further. 

Since Jackson’s death, his estate has generated some $3billion (£2.2billion) in revenue, with a fawning biopic on the horizon starring his nephew Jaafar.

‘It’s a lie,’ Aldo says of the forthcoming film. ‘They’re probably going to showcase how he was a philanthropist, going to children’s hospitals all the time. The truth is, he did these things to mask what he really wanted to do.’

The Cascio family first fell into Jackson’s orbit in 1984, when father Dominic was manager of the Helmsley Palace in New York, where the singer often stayed when he was in the city. 

Dominic took care of Jackson’s special requests, including installing a dancefloor in his suite.

He introduced Jackson to his wife, Connie, and sons Frank, then five, and Eddie, three. 

One day, says Dominic: ‘Michael said, “I want to surprise the kids”.’ He arrived at their house and Connie says he ‘wanted to see the kids’ rooms… He told jokes to the kids… he was so kind. We didn’t think about it.’

The Cascio family are currently in a legal battle with Jackson’s estate, seeking to void a confidential settlement they say silenced them and force their claims into a public court

Singer Michael Jackson with then wife Lisa Marie Presley in Budapest, Hungary in 1994

The couple went on to have three more children – Dominic, Marie Nicole and Aldo – who would stay, with and without their parents, at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in California. 

In 1993, Jordan ‘Jordy’ Chandler accused him of sexual abuse in a case the singer settled out of court for $23million. The eldest Cascio child, Frank, met Jordy on one of his trips to Neverland.

The Cascio parents rushed to ask their children if anything untoward had happened to them, but they denied it. ‘We sent Michael a fax to say we supported him,’ says Connie.

‘He immediately faxed us back: “I hope you guys are OK. It’s all about extortion, don’t believe them.”’

They trusted Jackson implicitly, but when Aldo was seven, the relationship changed in the most grotesque way. Jackson persuaded Aldo’s parents to let him take their son unsupervised to Florida, supposedly to offer him dance training.

When Jackson reached over and pulled down his shorts, he says: ‘It didn’t stun me or anything. I remember being like, just keep playing my Game Boy, and he took down my shorts and started performing oral sex and I was still… I didn’t ask him anything. 

‘This was Michael. I know Michael, I know he loves me and I love him.’

Afterwards, he says Jackson told him the act was his way of expressing love. 

Jackson and his second wife Debbie Rowe visiting Champ de Bataille Castle in France in 1997

‘Michael told me, “I make you feel good because I love you. And, you know, we’ve talked about love before. So, for me, this was just like an extension of that.” And so, I was like, “OK, I love you too”. And that was how he hooked me in.’

Over the following years, the abuse intensified and the acts Aldo says he was forced into became increasingly disturbing, including full sex at 10 years old.

He details the psychological tricks played by Jackson to keep him under his control, under the guise of ‘protecting’ their ‘special’ relationship.

‘He would train me to say no to any authority and the police,’ he says. ‘If anyone asked, “Are you doing this?” you would say no. 

He would say that people think this is wrong, but they’re wrong. This is real, this is love, but these people think it’s wrong and I could get into trouble – they’ll want to kill me… he would make me “Promise you love me and that you’ll protect me”… And so you felt responsible for helping him in any way.’

When alone with Jackson at a Las Vegas hotel, he was told to hide when his lawyer arrived. 

The singer even instigated role-plays in which he would pretend to be the police questioning Aldo. ‘The truth was,’ Aldo says, ‘I was terrified of him. The way he brainwashed me, I was scared for my own life.’

As time went on, it became increasingly apparent Jackson was an alcoholic and drug addict. 

Jackson on stage in Singapore in 1993 – the same year that Jordan ‘Jordy’ Chandler accused him of sexual abuse in a case the singer settled out of court for $23million

Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson hug Mickey and Minnie Mouse in their EuroDisney hotel room in September 1994

‘He was taking Xanax, he was giving me Xanax,’ says Aldo. ‘He was a big drinker and so the real him was this creepy monster that you felt responsible for.’

In a pattern followed by many abusers, Jackson worked to isolate Aldo from his peers, who might have brought home the full abnormality of his situation.

When he was aged 11, he was planning a school field trip with a close friend, but during a telephone call Jackson persuaded him to cancel. 

‘He just started getting mad at me on the phone, starts manipulating me by crying, “You don’t love me, I don’t want you to go, I don’t want you to have a best friend. I just want me and you. I don’t want to share you”.’

At Jackson’s request, Aldo left school and asked to be home-schooled. For the first time, his request rang alarm bells for his mother, prompting her to ask if Jackson was ‘doing anything’ to him. ‘I realised I had to tell my mum no, just like always,’ he says.

Around this time, Jackson stayed with the family for four months following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and that’s when Marie Nicole says he began abusing her, too.

‘He talked about how it’s very normal for men and women to be naked,’ she recalls. ‘He asked me to take off my clothes. So, I did what he said.’

After a year of home-schooling, Aldo went back to mainstream education. It was then that the enormity of his horrific ordeal began to overwhelm him.

Since his death, Jackson’s estate has generated some $3billion (£2.2billion) in revenue

‘I realised how wrong this is and how much it had affected me and that my life was over,’ he says.

Their final telephone conversation came when Aldo was 18, just three days before the singer died from an overdose of Propofol on June 25, 2009. ‘I tried to say “Oh, hi” and act normal. “The tour’s going to be fun…”’ he says.

But even then, Jackson took the subject back to his malignant desires. ‘The first thing he brings up is the sex and molestation and he starts talking about it with me again, but I knew going into this call I’m not doing this any more.

‘And when he asks me are we going to do this when we see each other, I said, “No, I don’t want to do this any more”. And he just became silent and… just hung up.’

Aldo remembers working hard to control his emotions. ‘I couldn’t say “F*** you, you’re a piece of s***”. I still had to be nice. I was walking on eggshells there.’

As the world responded to Jackson’s death with an outpouring of shock and grief, Aldo felt ‘relief’. ‘I also had to act sad. I knew that I had to play this double role.’

Traumatised, Aldo would scream into his pillow, cursing Jackson’s name. ‘Why did he do this to me? I hated him and knew I couldn’t free myself of it. I had to live my whole life alone with this and it was hell.

‘I wasn’t able to put my mind to anything. I wasn’t able to have a girlfriend… a relationship… a family because I knew I was keeping this secret in. And I knew that I was never going to tell anyone.’

Jackson pictured arriving at Santa Maria Superior Court before testimony in his child molestation trial on March 16, 2005

That changed in 2018, when he read of the claims being made by James Safechuck and Wade Robson about abuse they’d received at Jackson’s hands, claims which were aired in the docu-series Leaving Neverland. ‘I’m like, holy f***ing s***. He’s doing this to other people,’ Aldo recalls.

He sat his family down and told them the documentary was true because the same thing had happened to him. The revelation devastated his parents. 

‘I feel responsible for all this,’ says Connie. ‘I should have known what was happening to my kids, and I didn’t… I saw [Jackson] being so lonely and lost because his career was diminishing.’

Aldo says: ‘I told them over and over, this is not your fault. My mum and dad were just broken.’

Shortly afterwards, Aldo’s brothers Frank, Eddie and Dominic revealed the abuse they’d suffered, too – as, eventually, did his sister Marie Nicole. 

The siblings say they were pressured into signing a deal with Jackson’s estate in 2020 without legal representation and before they understood their rights, which, they claim, took advantage of their vulnerability. 

For its part, the estate has denied all allegations of abuse, characterising the siblings’ attempted lawsuit as a $213million ‘shakedown’. 

Since launching legal action, suspicion has lingered on the Cascios, given their previous support for Jackson. 

Frank even wrote a book on their apparently innocent relationship in 2011 called My Friend Michael: An Ordinary Friendship With An Extraordinary Man. 

But today, the family are united in their fury at Jackson’s betrayal. Dominic says: ‘He got away with it. He is dead. I would have loved him to face trial and be punished.’ 

It is far too late for that, but Connie says: ‘If I can help another family that is being abused, I have to speak out.’  

• Daphne’s interviews can be seen on The Late Show Live – March 1, GB News 
• Daphne Barak is a renowned interviewer and documentary film maker, whose subjects have included Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Johnny Depp and Michael Jackson among many others. Daphne is also a cancer survivor. She has a fast-growing charity with the University of California, San Diego: www.gamechangerevents.org