Not all of his accusers recanted, and his personal computer had a ton of cp on it. That detail was excluded from trial for being prejudicial, and thus didn’t make headlines at the time.
So yeah, there were probably some parents who sold their kids, and other parents who coached their kids to inflate their accusations, and some kids who got molested. It’s likely some of the accusations weren’t true, but it’s also entirely unlikely that he was completely innocent.
I looked into this and what I found waaaass:
A) the prosecution’s case was leakier than a screen door on a submarine. Most of the witnesses had prior grievances against Jackson, had sold stories to tabloids instead of the police, claimed to be in impossible situations (for an example, Star Arvizo claimed to have been shown pornography that hadn’t been published until after the accusations; Janet Arvizo claimed to have been held hostage, but receipts showed she’d spent $7,000 shopping and dining out during that time), or straight up went against the prosecution and claimed the prosecution was lying.
B) the defense had hundreds of people (staff, celebrities, friends, visitors) who’d either spent time at Neverland Ranch with Jackson and/or knew him outside of the ranch, all of whom were ready to testify that they’d never witnessed any wrongdoing on Jackson’s part (though several staff members had said Star and Gavin Arvizo were horrible children, one of the staff members in particular had been threatened with a knife). Additionally, several celebrities acted as witnesses specifically against the prosecution, such as George Lopez and Jay Leno, alleging that the claimants had previously attempted to extort them for money and that they had tried to warn Jackson about the Arvizo family.
C) on the case of the child pornography. There was none. The FBI raided his house and supposedly found normal pornography, but no child pornography. However, the media claimed it was child pornography (so you’re wrong about it not making headlines). Additionally, the FBI had already been monitoring him since 1992 due to creditable death threats being made against him, and during over 10yrs of monitoring, they’d never once found any evidence of wrongdoing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse_accusations_against_Michael_Jackson https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Michael_Jackson https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_files_on_Michael_Jackson
