NEW DELHI: In the history of contemporary music and dance, very few artistes have been able to garner success as gargantuan and infamy as demeaning as American popstar Michael Jackson. Although ‘The King of Pop’ was riddled with accusations of child sexual abuse during his later years, his former doctor, acclaimed Irish surgeon Patrick Treacy, reveals that he never put much thought into those claims.

“I personally never found any evidence of Michael Jackson having paedophilic tendencies either in his conversation or behaviour,” Treacy, who is in India for promoting his memoir, Behind the Mask: The Extraordinary Story of the Irishman Who Became Michael Jackson’s Doctor, told IANS.

Treacy has also defended Jackson in his book where he writes about Jackson’s empathy towards children suffering from HIV in Rwanda and expressed his desire to do a concert from them. He also shed light on Jackson’s philanthropy when he donated $1.5 million to a children’s burns unit in Los Angeles.

During his lifetime, Jackson — who died in 2009 due to acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication — repeatedly went under the knife, and in the process, bleached his skin for a whiter skin tone.

Treacy refuted popular opinion that the superstar did that purposefully and asserted that it was due to a medical condition called vitiligo.

“He had a medical condition called vitiligo. We were mostly treating Michael for that and other cosmetic enhancements. He may have had some level of body dysmorphia that contributed to his willingness to undergo cosmetic surgical techniques,” Treacy said.