NEVERLAND RANCH PRIESTS REASSIGNED AFTER JACKSON’S ARREST
SANTA BARBARA, CA Priests at the small chapel on Michael Jackson’s Neverland Valley Ranch were notified late this afternoon that they would immediately be reassigned to other parishes. As with other reassignments following child abuse all
Rides for young choir boys at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch
egations, the church did not release the names of the priests affected or the locations of the parishes to which those priests would be reassigned.
The move came in the wake of news leaks that, at Jackson’s request, choir boys at the Neverland Ranch church were required to wear chaps when singing for Jackson, and that priests at the church had done nothing to discourage the practice.
“Michael loved music, that’s all,” Jackson spokesman Stuart Backerman explained from his San Francisco office. “No one should draw inappropriate conclusions from the fact that all the choir boys wore cowboy costumes. Chaps have rich history here in the west.”
Officials with the local Sheriff’s Department refused to comment except to confirm that all of the priests at Neverland Ranch had been reassigned there from the Boston diocese.