Paris Jackson speaks on being ‘proud” of her roots, and other lessons learned from her late father in the February 2017 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. For the first time ever, the 19-year-old daughter of Michael Jackson goes on the record about her childhood, and why she believes that her father was murdered.
The teen blames her father’s death on Dr. Conrad Murray, MJ’s personal physician at the time of his passing, who was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
“He would drop hints about people being out to get him,” Paris says of her dad. “And at some point he was like, ‘They’re gonna’ kill me one day.’”
Paris’ and her older brother Prince are the children of Michael and Debbie Rowe, a former medical assistant to his dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein. Rowe and Michael married in 1996, not long after it was announced that she was pregnant. They divorced in 1999.
When asked about rumors that she’s not biologically related to the late King of Pop, Paris was adamant that Michael will “always” be her father.
“I consider myself black,” Paris says before sharing that MJ would “look me in the eyes and he’d point his finger at me and he’d be like, ‘You’re black. Be proud of your roots.’ And I’d be like, ‘OK, he’s my dad, why would he lie to me?’ So I just believe what he told me. ‘Cause, to my knowledge, he’s never lied to me.”
She added, “Most people that don’t know me call me white. I’ve got light skin and, especially since I’ve had my hair blond, I look like I was born in Finland or something.”
Paris also revealed that she was sexually assaulted by a stranger at age 14, and attempted suicide “multiple times,” although only one attempt became public.
“It was just self-hatred,” she says of trying to take her life. “Low self-esteem, thinking that I couldn’t do anything right, not thinking I was worthy of living anymore.”
Following her third suicide attempt, the hospital where she was being treated insisted that she enter a residential therapy program. Today, Paris is sober, and focusing on modeling.
Regarding her father’s 2009 death, she admits that time hasn’t healed her grief.
“They always say, ‘Time heals,’” she notes. “But it really doesn’t. You just get used to it. I live life with the mentality of ‘OK, I lost the only thing that has ever been important to me.’ So going forward, anything bad that happens can’t be nearly as bad as what happened before. So I can handle it.”
