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Michael Jackson Used Gore and Kiddie Porn to 'Groom' Children for Sex, Says Police Report

"There's not much question in my mind that Michael was guilty of child molestation."
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

A newly released police report from 2003 says that cops recovered a trove of child pornography, bondage, and animal torture images during a raid on Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, Radar Online reports.

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department raided the King of Pop's compound in the fall of 2003 during its child sex abuse investigation. During the search, officers cracked into Jackson's storage unit, where a report published by Radar describes finding "notes, diaries, documents, photographs, audiotapes and videotapes," as well as more than 80 video recordings and hard drives.

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The documents collected by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department, one of the case investigators told Radar, "paint a dark and frightening picture of Jackson."

The images included animal torture, S&M, and gore, as well as porn that edited children's faces onto naked adult bodies. "Based on my training," the report reads, "this type of material can be used as part of a 'grooming' process by which people (those seeking to molest children) are able to lower the inhibitions of their intended victims and facilitate the molestation of said victims."

Ron Zonen, the former Santa Barbara senior assistant district attorney who prosecuted Jackson during his case, told Radar, "There's not much question in my mind that Michael was guilty of child molestation."

Jackson was acquitted of the child molestation charges during his 2005 trial and passed away a few years later, in 2009.

Read: Urban Exploring Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch