And that is how the tragedies of James Safechuck and Wade Robson unfold, through the pain in their eyes and the confusion in their voices and the moments where they tear up or swallow hard.

Safechuck, who works as a computer programmer, was raised in Simi Valley. He met Jackson when he was a 9-year-old child actor in 1987, starring with the singer in a Pepsi commercial. Jackson promised to make the boy the next Spielberg.

Robson, a dance teacher who did choreography for Britney Spears and ’N Sync, grew up on the other side of the world in Brisbane. He spent all his time dressing and dancing like Jackson. He won a dance contest in 1987 and got to meet Jackson, who was on tour in Australia, and dance onstage. Then, he was ensnared in the warped fantasy, a 7-year-old being initiated into sex at Neverland by the 31-year-old Jackson.

The mothers, Stephanie Safechuck and Joy Robson, knew that Jackson was ensorcelling their sons, even as he lured the mothers out of the frame with luxurious enticements. But they were stage mothers and fans, so they chose to believe Michael was a kind, lonely little boy at heart, not a heartless pedophile, and they did not dig deeper when their sons said nothing bad was going on.

“He flies you first class, you have a limo waiting for you at the airport, amazing, you know, it’s a life of the rich and famous,” Mrs. Safechuck gushes in the film, adding: “I got to meet Sean Connery. That was big for me. It was like, ‘Oh my God, Sean Connery!’” She also loved Neverland: “He had a beautiful wine cellar, really good wines, champagne, that was just something I enjoyed — it was a fairy tale every night.” After all, as she says, he was a genius and they were “just nobodies.” Jackson bought them a house after James testified on the singer’s behalf in a trial involving another boy.

It somehow made sense to James’s mother when she was told that she couldn’t be near the hotel rooms her son and Michael shared in Europe because the nicer suites she would prefer were farther away.

As Wade Robson puts it, “What you’d think would be standard kind of instincts and judgment seemed to go out the window.”