Photo: Greg Hernandez · CC BY 2.0
The family · the fifth child
La Toya Jackson
Singer, model, author, and reality-TV mainstay — and the sibling whose story includes the family's most painful chapter: accusations she made about Michael during an abusive marriage, which she later publicly retracted, and a long road back to her family.
Beginnings
The fifth Jackson child
Born May 29, 1956 in Gary, Indiana, La Toya is the middle daughter — between older sister Rebbie and younger sister Janet. She first reached the public on the family's CBS variety series The Jacksons (1976–77), then launched a solo career in 1980, releasing roughly nine albums over the next fifteen years. Her highest-charting US single, "Heart Don't Lie" (1984), reached #56 on the Hot 100. She later posed for Playboy (1989 and 1991), framing it as an assertion of independence from a strict upbringing.
The Jack Gordon years
An abusive marriage
In the mid-1980s, manager Jack Gordon took over La Toya's career and, in 1989, married her in Reno — a marriage she has consistently described as forced. By her account, Gordon isolated her from her family, controlled her finances, confiscated her passport abroad, and physically abused her over years (a relationship in which he had a prior assault arrest). She escaped in 1996, reportedly with help from her brother Randy, and divorced him; Gordon died in 2005. This documented abuse is the essential context for what she said during those years.
The hardest chapter
The accusations — and the retraction
Everything below is La Toya's own speech — first accusations she made, then the recantation in which she said she was coerced. None of it is presented as a finding of fact about Michael, who was never charged in the 1993 matter (it was settled civilly).
In her 1991 autobiography, La Toya alleged that their father had abused the children. Then, at a December 1993 press conference in Tel Aviv, she publicly stated that the abuse allegations then facing Michael were true. At the time, these were presented as her own accusations.
She later publicly retracted them. In her telling, Jack Gordon orchestrated the Tel Aviv event and forced her to read a prepared statement under threat — an account she gave in interviews and in her 2011 second memoir, Starting Over, in which she withdrew the accusations against both Michael and her father. "I never believed for a minute my brother was guilty of anything like that," she has said. After escaping Gordon, she reconciled with her family; by her account, Michael had forgiven her by around 2003.
After 2009
Defending Michael
After Michael's death in June 2009, La Toya became one of his most vocal defenders — affirming his innocence of the abuse allegations (consistent with her recantation). Separately, she has publicly voiced a contested personal belief that Michael was killed by people around him; that conspiracy claim is her own opinion and should not be confused with the established record — the coroner ruled the death a homicide and his physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The death & investigation →
A second act
Reality TV, books & business
In her later career La Toya became a reality-TV regular: she trained as and served as a reserve police officer in Muncie, Indiana for Armed & Famous (2007), appeared on Celebrity Big Brother UK (2009) and The Celebrity Apprentice, and starred in her own OWN series Life with La Toya (2013–14). She authored two best-selling memoirs — La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family (1991) and Starting Over (2011) — and has run fashion, fragrance, and product ventures.