Dan Reed defends timeline error in Leaving Neverland documentary

Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed has defended Michael Jackson sex assault accuser James Safechuck over a date mix up in the film.
Critics have questioned the documentary’s accuracy after Safechuck made a timeline error in his allegations against the late King of Pop, referring to an incident in a part of Jackson’s Santa Barbara, California home which wasn’t built at the time.
The mistake was spotted by Jackson biographer Mike Smallcombe.
Safechuck claims he was abused at Neverland’s train station, prompting Smallcombe to share construction plans on Twitter of the building, which clearly show it opened in 1994 – the year after the date of an alleged assault made by the accuser on camera.
Leaving Neverland director Reed has responded to the tweet, stating: “Yeah there seems to be no doubt about the station date.”
But he insists that’s just a timeline error and he’s still convinced everything Safechuck and fellow accuser Wade Robson said on camera is true: “The date they have wrong is the end of the abuse,” he adds.
Reed has also released a statement to NME, insisting the abuse continued after the construction of the train station.
“James Safechuck was present at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Valley Ranch both before and after the construction of the train station there,” he said. “The two still photographs of the train station shown in the documentary were taken by Safechuck and provided to the filmmaker by him.
“Safechuck’s testimony in the film is that he was abused by Jackson in multiple places over several years, into his teens.”
Biographer Smallcombe also claims Robson lied in the documentary when he said his family travelled to the Grand Canyon for several days and left him alone with Jackson at Neverland. He claims Wade’s mother Joy testified “under oath in a deposition in 1993/1994 in relation to the Jordie Chandler case” that Wade had travelled to the Grand Canyon with his family.
“These are two extremely detailed and key stories in the documentary,” he tells the NME, “and while this doesn’t categorically rule out that Jackson abused them, it does make you wonder, if they’ve fabricated these stories, what about the rest?”
The documentary, which aired in the U.S. and the U.K. last month (Mar19), features interviews with Safechuck and Robson, who both allege they were abused by the late singer on numerous occasions and at various locations when they were children. Officials for the Michael Jackson Estate vehemently deny the allegations.