Michael Jackson always said that he loved the Cascio family as his own.

In 1984, he formed a friendship with the head of the family, Dominic, at the Helmsley Palace hotel in New York. During that time, he was employed as the general manager, and Jacko frequently lodged there while visiting the city.

When he asked to meet his children, of course the starstruck Dominic agreed. What a thrill, to introduce them to a real-life pop star!

Dominic and his wife Connie had two little boys at the time, aged five and three. They went on to have three more children: two more boys and a girl. And in time Jackson, too, was added to the family roster.

There were family dinners –with grace said before every meal – at the Cascios’ modest house in New Jersey and shopping outings and trips to Disneyland.

The children would stay – with and without their parents – at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in California. Often, one or more of them would be dressed up in a fedora and dark glasses to look like a ‘mini-Michael’.

It was a friendship that went on for decades. When Jackson’s own children Prince, Paris and Blanket were born, the older Cascio boys would help look after them.

After he turned 18, the eldest son, Frank, started to work for Jackson as a personal assistant.

So loyal and devoted was he that Frank was one of Jackson’s most staunch supporters. When the star was first accused of abusing a young boy in 1993, and again in 2005, he leapt to his defence.

Frank even wrote a book about their deep but purportedly innocent friendship in 2011, called My Friend Michael: An Ordinary Friendship With An Extraordinary Man.

But in a horrifying turn of events, the singer now stands accused by the Cascios of grooming and abusing the entire family of five children over a period of more than 25 years.

Bombshell documents seen exclusively by The Mail on Sunday were filed in California earlier this month. They accuse Jackson of ‘grooming’, ‘sexually abusing’ and ‘brainwashing’ all of them.

In a ghastly twist, each of the five siblings believed that only they were targeted by Jackson in this way, and each thus carried the burden of the secret abuse alone into adulthood.

The scandal is potentially the biggest ever blow to Jackson’s already tattered reputation and may yet destroy it for good. A source familiar with the case confirmed that all five of the Cascio siblings, including Frank, claimed they were abused by Jackson.

‘It was everything sexual: sex with under-age children,’ the source said. ‘When they all realised what had been going on it was the most traumatic thing. Their story is insane.’

The source said that the case was going to be a ‘nightmare’ for the Jackson estate because of the severity of the claims.

At stake, as lawyers for Jackson’s estate agree, is one of the most lucrative slices of the entertainment world. A biopic, Michael, starring his nephew is due for release next year. Revenues are vast; his estate has earned £2.5billion since his death in 2009.

The spark that ignited this new scandal was the bombshell 2019 documentary, Leaving Neverland.

In it, Wade Robson and James Safechuck – two men, now in their 40s, who were befriended by Jackson as starstruck young boys, and who’d previously denied anything untoward had ever happened between them and their special friend – spoke in horrific detail about the abuse they had, in fact, suffered.

Safechuck said he was abused from 1988 to 1992 and Robson from 1990 to 1996 at Neverland and other locations.

Safechuck also claims that Jackson took him shopping for an engagement ring and later held a mock wedding. Both men are currently involved in legal action against the estate; Jackson fans accuse them of lies and extortion.

Watching the documentary, it seems that the Cascio children recognised patterns of behaviour, and the story of the singer and his alleged abuse of them all was finally shared.

Court documents detail ‘the Cascio siblings’ shock and trauma upon realising this had happened to all of them, unbeknownst to each other… following the release of the documentary Leaving Neverland and the Cascios’ subsequent disclosure of their shared experiences with each other for the first time’.

The filing at the Los Angeles County Superior Court says: ‘From the early 1980s until at least 2009, Michael Jackson had intimate contact with the Cascio children.

‘This abusive contact occurred over a span of decades and involved hundreds of instances.

‘Each of the Cascio children were groomed, brainwashed and severely manipulated to believe that each was uniquely “special” to Michael and that their relationship with him was exclusive.

‘This emotional manipulation was designed to secure each family member’s loyalty and ensure their silence, making them feel indebted to Michael and isolated from any source of protection or perspective.

‘Through years of psychological conditioning, Michael cultivated dependence and fear in the Cascios, making respondents believe they had no choice but to comply and no safe way to break free.

‘The effects of this conditioning persisted into adulthood, leaving respondents with a deeply ingrained belief that speaking out would constitute betrayal – a dynamic the estate has continued to exploit in its dealings with them.’

The filing accuses the Jackson estate of ‘exploiting the same patterns of trust, fear and conditioned loyalty’ that Michael had used, in order to persuade them to sign a settlement in 2020.

Estate representatives, meanwhile, describe an unusual meeting at the Sunset Marquis Hotel pool in Los Angeles, where the Cascios’ camp insisted participants wear only bathing suits ‘so that [Jackson’s] representatives could not wear a wire to record the conversation’.

In January 2020, the estate allegedly agreed to a confidential settlement to protect Jackson’s family. The agreement included payments over five years, reportedly totalling £13million, strict ‘non-disparagement’ terms and a clause requiring all disputes to be handled in private.

The Cascios’ lawyers – led by Mark Geragos, who represented the disgraced rapper P Diddy (real name Sean Combs) during his recent sex trafficking trial – say their silence was obtained coercively and deceptively.

Upon its expiration, the Cascios came back and said that they wanted £160million – sparking the court case which has been largely secret until now.

Their legal team argue that the Jackson estate discouraged the children from seeking independent legal advice, describing the initial settlement as ‘coercive’ and ‘unfavourable’.

Legal argument is now ongoing. The Cascio side say that the initial gagging agreement is void and unenforceable. They add that they are not ‘extorting’ the Jackson estate but that they are ‘seeking accountability’. 

The singer, who died in 2009 of ‘acute intoxication’ with the drug propofol, was dogged during his life by accusations and lawsuits connected with the abuse of young boys.

His friendship with the Cascios was one of his best defences. The superstar was a regular, and humble, visitor to the family home.

‘It was funny because he would just come up and enjoy family dinners and just be part of the family,’ said one of the children. 

‘He would always make sure that before every meal we say our prayers, say grace, and even afterward we’d have sit-downs and we’d all go through and talk about what we’re thankful for.’

In his book, Frank Cascio said: ‘Those early grade school years passed with Michael as a regular, if often unannounced, visitor to my family’s home in Hawthorne.

‘For the next few years, that’s the relationship that we had with Michael. The doorbell would ring late at night and [sibling name redacted] and I would know it was Michael.

‘We’d wake up, run to give him hugs and show him whatever new toys we had and tricks we had learned, the whole family talking… greeting him like a beloved relative from far away whose plane had arrived late.’

He and a brother first visited Neverland in 1993 when Frank was 12. In his book, Frank said: ‘We wanted to hang out with him. He was the spirit of the place.’

They even met Jordy Chandler, whose father later accused Jackson of sexually abusing his son when he was 13 and who reached a reported £16million settlement with the star in 1994, without any admission of guilt.

In his book Frank says Jordy was introduced as a ‘cousin’ of the singer – a lie – and that they’d played video games together. When news of Jordy’s case broke, Dominic Cascio told reporters how he’d asked his five children if anything ‘bad’ had happened with Michael, and they’d said ‘no’.

And so later that same year Frank and his brother joined Jackson in Israel, Turkey, Spain, Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico on tour.

Two of the brothers would stay in hotel suites with Jackson, and in his book Frank said they were ‘playful – tossing pillows around and stuff like that’.

Eventually their father left the tour to go back to work.

In the book Frank says Jackson wept and said: ‘I know you have to get back to work, but I am asking if Frank and [his brother] can stay here with me. I would really love for them to stay.’ Frank writes: ‘And so my brother and I were on tour with Michael Jackson.’

In 1995 they were pictured with Jackson at Disneyland Paris. This was around the time that Jackson split up with his wife, Lisa Marie Presley.

In his book Frank said: ‘When they split up Michael claimed that one of the main reasons was that Lisa was jealous of us and the relationship he had with us. He preferred spending time with us to spending it with her.’

Michael went to Europe in the summer of 1996 with Frank Cascio, who just had finished his second year at high school and would have been around 15 or 16. They went to London, Scotland and Switzerland together and Frank says he shared Jackson’s hotel suite as always.

During the HIStory tour, Frank says he was introduced to Omer Bhatti, another of Jackson’s young friends. Jackson told him that Bhatti was his son – another lie. ‘Going along with Michael’s benign story about Omer was hard to me,’ says Frank.

In 1998 Frank started to work for Jackson in a ‘Man Friday’ role and the following year, on another trip to Disneyland Paris, he had his own hotel room, recorded in the book as a first.

Frank was responsible for helping Jackson to take care of his children. ‘At dinnertime, we’d all gather around the kitchen table with Paris in her high chair. 

‘We’d cut up the kids’ food, feed them, bathe them, comb their hair, change their diapers and get them into their pyjamas… Prince slept in Michael’s bed and Paris slept in a crib next to mine. Paris, like her brother before her, liked to sleep in my arms.’

It’s beyond any doubt that they were close. Many of the Cascio family, including Frank’s mother Connie, known as ‘Momma Rubba’, are thanked in the sleeve notes to Jackson’s 2001 Invincible album.

At this point the youngest Cascio sibling – then aged around 12 –was travelling with Jackson, including a trip to Miami, having become the singer’s new companion. It was a situation that led to jealousy among the children. 

Journalist Roger Friedman published a letter apparently written by Frank Cascio’s sister around this time, in which she complained about her brothers ‘getting whatever they want, whenever they want’ while saying she wasn’t liked because she’s ‘just a girl’.

By this time, Jackson was addicted to drugs and this played a part in his once-close relationship with Frank cooling.

In 2003 Jackson’s Neverland ranch was raided after the singer told interviewer Martin Bashir that he slept in the same bed as children, including Gavin Arvizo – a young cancer survivor he’d befriended in 2000.

In 2005, when he was 15, Arvizo went on record to publicly accuse Jackson of abusing him, and the case went to court – finally ending with the star being acquitted.

Around this time Frank Cascio made the rounds of chat shows – including Oprah – to proclaim his friend’s innocence.

The last time Frank visited Neverland was in January 2004, according to his book.

For reasons known only to Frank, his account of Jackson’s behaviour now reads like fiction. In his book, he was clear: ‘Michael’s interest in young boys had absolutely nothing to do with sex. I say this with the unassailable confidence of first-hand experience, the confidence of a young boy who slept in the same room as Michael hundreds of times.’

Eight years later, he and the world sat down to watch, in horror, the Leaving Neverland documentary. Thanks to the testimony of Wade Robson and James Safechuck, the cloak that had shrouded Jackson and his activities for so long was finally lifted.

Given the Cascio family’s current claims, how dark Frank’s words now appear.

And could they finally bring the Jackson money-spinning juggernaut to a crashing halt?