Michael Jackson’s bid to see Limerick burn victims
Deemed inappropriate: Michael Jackson, pictured below, was advised not the meet Millie and Gavin Murray (above) in hospital in Crumlin after they suffered horrific burns in Moyross in 2006
CHILDREN burned in a horrific petrol bomb attack in Limerick missed out on the chance to meet music icon Michael Jackson, after a Dublin based surgeon advised him it would be inappropriate in light of child molestation allegations the singer was embroiled in at the time.
Two years after Jackson’s death, the Rolling Stone journalist Randall Sullivan has revealed in his new book how Jackson was anxious to meet the Limerick siblings in a Dublin hospital, where they were recovering from serious burns sustained in Moyross on September 10, 2006. On that day, a plastic bottle was filled with petrol, set alight and thrown in through the rear window of their mother Sheila’s Toyota Corolla in Moyross, after she refused to give someone a lift into the city.
Sullivan details in Untouchable: The Strange Life and Death of Michael Jackson, how Patrick Treacy, a cosmetic surgeon who treated Jackson while he was living in Ireland, told the singer that any visit to the children could be read in “totally the wrong way”.
Mr Treacy allegedly told the Jackson Five star that “seeing him [Jackson] go into a paediatric hospital so soon after the paedophilia case” could be misinterpreted.
Mr Treacy told The Sunday Times that he and Jackson became friends while he was in Ireland. He mentioned to the famous singer that he was going to see the children in the burns unit of the hospital, and said Jackson wanted to visit them too. “He was horrified about what happened to the children and would continually ask me if they were in pain, if they had been given morphine, and if they would be scarred,” he told the Sunday Times.
The book documents the final days of the singer, who was due to begin a new tour, including his six month stay in Ireland from June 2006, when he lived in counties Cork, Westmeath and Wicklow.
Mr Treacy said Jackson was particularly pained by what happened to the Limerick children, then aged five and seven, as he too had suffered horrific burns, while filming a Pepsi advertisement in 1994.
Now aged 10 and 12, Gavin and Millie are still bearing the scars of what happened that day, and their mum Sheila said they will require surgery and skin grafts for years to come.
She was not available to comment yesterday on the possible meeting with Jackson, but has previously declined to give interviews as she wants her children to avoid further attention from the media and public.
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