Michael Jackson was born on August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana. He was the eighth of ten children in an African-American working-class family who lived in a 3-room house in Gary,[13] an industrial city near Chicago. His mother, Katherine Esther Scruse, was a devout Jehovah's Witness, and his father, Joseph Walter "Joe" Jackson, was a steel mill worker who performed with an R&B band called The Falcons. Jackson had three sisters: Rebbie, La Toya, and Janet, and five brothers: Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Randy.[14] A sixth brother, Brandon, who was a twin of older brother Marlon, died shortly after birth.[15]
Jackson had a troubled relationship with his father, Joe.[16][17][18] In 2003, Joe acknowledged that he regularly whipped Jackson as a boy.[18] He was also said to have verbally abused "Jackson", saying that he had a "fat nose" on numerous occasions.[19] Jackson stated that he was physically and emotionally abused during incessant rehearsals, though he also credited his father's strict discipline with playing a large role in his success.[16] He first spoke openly about his childhood abuse in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, broadcast in February 1993. He admitted that he had often cried from loneliness and he would vomit at the sight of his father. Jackson's deep dissatisfaction with his appearance, his nightmares and chronic sleep problems, his tendency to remain hyper-compliant, especially with his father, and to remain childlike throughout his adult life, are consistent with the effects of the maltreatment he endured as a young child.[20]
In an interview with Martin Bashir, later included in the 2003 broadcast of Living with Michael Jackson, Jackson acknowledged that his father hurt him when he was a child, but was nonetheless a "genius", as he admitted his father's strict discipline played a huge role in his success. When Bashir dismissed the positive