The anguished voice of Wade Robson’s father will always haunt me. Back in 1993, when the first charges of sexual abuse were leveled at Michael Jackson by a 13-year-old boy named Jordan “Jordie” Chandler, I was assigned to write about the case for Vanity Fair. I naturally wanted to know if Jackson had befriended any other young boys, and it wasn’t long before I heard the names Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck.

Wade’s mother, Joy, wasn’t talking, but his father, Dennis, surprised me by returning my call from his home in Australia. Dennis explained that Joy had taken Wade and his sister to Los Angeles so Wade could be with Jackson, adding that he was afraid that he might lose his son if he said anything against the pop superstar. Dennis’s sorrow was compounded by his own dark secret: he himself had been molested as a child, he told me, and had been unable to bring himself to tell anyone for 30 years.

Then, a week later, Dennis Robson called me back. He had just gotten through to his wife and now he wanted to change his story and give me a quote praising Jackson. I asked him what had prompted this sudden change of heart. He paused. It was all just a mixup, he said. Dennis, who had been diagnosed as bipolar shortly before his wife left, never got over losing his family, all because his son, then five, had won a local dance contest, and the first prize was a meeting with his idol, Michael Jackson.

In 2002, Dennis Robson committed suicide. In the new HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, Wade Robson says he never fully understood what caused his father’s pain; his father died without ever being close to his son again.

The two-part documentary, which premieres on HBO this Sunday, gives Robson and Safechuck, together with their surviving family members, the opportunity to tell their stories of being first befriended and then seduced, emotionally and—they allege—sexually, by Michael Jackson. What struck me most, as someone who spent more than a decade reporting on allegations against Jackson, was how closely Robson’s and Safechuck’s stories mirrored those of Jordie Chandler and Gavin Arvizo, the 13-year-old whose allegations prompted the 2005 trial in which Jackson was acquitted on 10 felony counts, including four counts of child molestation and one of attempted child molestation. Another boy, Jason Francia, whose mother worked as a housekeeper for Jackson, testified under oath that he was molested by Jackson, bringing to five the number of young men who’ve sworn that Jackson showed them pornography, masturbated them, or introduced them to sex when they were between the ages of 7 and 12.

So many details of each case were the same: the targeting of boys from troubled families, the skillful grooming, the gifts, the seduction, the Jacuzzis, the way sex was performed, the fear and threats of what would befall them if they ever told anyone what Jackson had done. Their dismissals followed a similar pattern, too: as puberty approached, Robson and Safechuck say in the documentary, they were abruptly thrown to the curb and replaced with a new, younger kid.

Even their families got similar treatment: the sisters were put off to the side by Michael, the supposed adorer of all children; the parents were whisked around in limos and private jets, taken shopping, and treated to vintage wine from Neverland’s cellar. Jordie Chandler’s mother got trips to Monaco and Las Vegas, along with a diamond bracelet. Jimmy Safechuck’s parents got a whole house; the documentary never mentions the cars they received, or the permanent residence visa that Wade Robson’s mother testified in 2005 to having received by funneling whatever wages she had received through the Michael Jackson Corporation. Joy Robson also acknowledged accepting a car, a $10,000 payment from Jackson, and a $10,000 loan from Jackson’s investigator.