I’m still reeling from Leaving Neverland, the documentary detailing allegations of years of child abuse that James Safechuck and Wade Robson say they were subjected to by Michael Jackson starting when they were aged 10 and seven respectively.

The Jackson estate denies all allegations, as the singer himself did during the last 16 years of his life when he was the subject of numerous similar ones by other boys (one of whom accepted an out of court settlement, the other of whom went to trial where Jackson was acquitted).

The accounts of the now adult Safechuck and Robson of what they say they suffered at Jackson’s hands after he gently and effectively seduced them and their families with his money, fame and talent and then gradually isolated them from each other are painfully detailed and beyond harrowing. But once the initial horror and shock at what you have heard from them subsides, you are left with an odd feeling of hope.

Lucy Mangan on why we have to accept that musical geniuses can be abusers