Here is another article on the children regaring the Jehovah Witness for anyone who wants to know.
The night was supposed to belong to R&B glamour puss Beyonce Knowles, but in the end it was three sweet-faced kids who stole the show. At the 52nd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles this week, Michael Jackson's children took to the stage to accept a posthumous lifetime achievement award in honour of their father who died of a heart attack last June.
Prince Michael (12) and Paris Michael (11) spoke with remarkable composure about their superstar daddy while wearing miniature versions of the shiny black suits with red armbands that were Jackson's onstage trademark. Their seven-year-old brother, Prince Michael II (aka 'Blanket'), watched from backstage.
It was their first public appearance since Jackson's memorial in July, when a tearful Paris told the world that "Daddy had been the best father you could ever imagine".
Since Jackson's death, the world has heard little about the three children who have been kept in relative isolation in the Californian mansion belonging to their guardian and grandmother, Katherine Jackson.
But in an exclusive interview this week with a Jackson family lawyer, the Irish Independent has learned how the King of Pop's kids are adapting to their new life, and how they are coping with the death of Jackson -- the only parent they have ever known.
"It is a mixed bag," said Brian Oxman. "On the one hand, they are doing extremely well with Katherine Jackson. They are very comfortable there and they like it.
"On the other hand. . . they have to deal with the death of their father, and the constant reminders of that do not go away -- from the news media, to friends, to court proceedings. It is always a constant reminder for them, so they have a very mixed emotional experience."
When he was alive, Jackson spent enormous effort and money shielding his children from public view, hiding their faces behind bizarre masks and keeping them away from the public with a platoon of burly framed bodyguards.
The children never spent a day in school. They never had friends over to play. And beholden to Jackson's eccentricities and legal woes, they always lacked a permanent home, hop-scotching all over the world from Bahrain to Dublin to Las Vegas to Switzerland.
"As Michael's children, they lived a sort of a vagabond life. They went from city to city, hotel to hotel. Michael essentially lived in hotels," said Oxman, who has worked with the Jackson family since 1989, and was one of Jackson's lawyers on his 2005 child-molestation trial.
"So their life has always been travelling from place to place to place. This is the first time that they've ever had a truly stable home where they put their heads down on the same pillow each night."
'Home' is now a sprawling mansion in Encino, California -- the hub of the Jackson family empire -- run by the sprightly but fierce family matriarch, 79-year-old Katherine Jackson.
"Mrs Jackson is the pied piper of children. They follow her around. She has the chefs make them cookies and candy," said Oxman.
Apart from weekly karate classes, the children rarely leave the premises. They are home-schooled by tutors who arrive at the mansion gates each day to provide lessons. Their only contact with other children is the legion of Jackson cousins who drop by regularly to provide a steady source of raucous entertainment. "There are usually anywhere from five to 10 additional kids who are at the house and they just have a good time," Oxman said.
Even their controversial grandfather, Joe Jackson, who no longer lives in the Jackson family home, seems to be playing a role in their life -- despite the tortured relationship he endured with his son prior to his death.
"Mr Jackson will visit on a regular basis. He will go places where they are. He is not actively involved in raising the kids but he is an ever-present factor in their life. They love him," said Oxman.
Living under the same roof as a devout Jehovah's Witness, the children must now learn to adhere to their grandmother's strict religious principles -- which means no birthday parties or Christmas celebrations.
"Mrs Jackson is a Jehovah's Witness so she does not celebrate with the party hats and the streamers and the birthday cake," Oxman said. "Those things are considered to be pagan. They just don't do the celebration that we usually attribute to birthdays."
On his last Christmas, Michael Jackson had surprised his children by arranging for Carrie Fisher to drop by the house on Christmas Eve and reprise her role as Princess Leia in Star Wars. "They were so excited," said family friend Stephen Price. "She did her famous speech for them -- the 'Help me, Obi-Wan' speech."
On their first Christmas without their father, Katherine Jackson sent her grandchildren away with their long-term nanny Grace Rwaramba -- the closest person they have ever had to a mother -- so they could enjoy the holidays and be lavished with gifts like other children, said Oxman.
Despite his much-publicised eccentricities -- the plastic surgeries, dangling babies out of hotel windows and taking his kids shopping at 3am -- Jackson was a devoted father, said Oxman, and his children "are his greatest work".
Prince is a "substantial" young man and the most outgoing of the three. Paris is polite and reserved, and very protective of her younger brother, Blanket. They are, said Stephen Price, "the greatest kids you'll ever meet".
"I think the public is very surprised at how well these kids have turned out," said Oxman. "However, the people in the family, and those of us who knew Michael, we're not surprised in the slightest.
"What else could possibly have been the result for Michael Jackson's children? They were raised to be kind, gracious, smart. This is the way Michael wanted them to turn out and we who knew him knew that this would be the product of Michael's work."
But Jackson's three heirs -- set to inherit a vast fortune after the death of their grandmother -- will have to work hard to keep their feet on the ground. Last month, a judge ordered the children's monthly allowance from their father's estate to be raised to $60,000 (€44,000). Their grandfather Joe -- who is represented by Oxman -- is locked in a bitter legal battle with the administrators of his son's estate to provide him with a monthly allowance and will return to court next week to fight his case.
Ultimately, Jackson wanted to give his kids the idyllic childhood that he was deprived of, said Oxman. But his tragic death has changed all that, and his kids are having to grow up sooner than he had planned.
"And that's nothing that Mrs Jackson can control. It's nothing that anybody else can control. When a parent is no longer there, a child has to grow up real fast, and I think at the Grammys we saw kids who were coping with it pretty doggone well."
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/the-strange--nobirthday-world-of-jackos-kids-2051035.html
