La Toya Jackson has spoken about her ”forced” marriage to Jack Gordon, accusing him of locking her in a cupboard if she disobeyed him and isolating her from her friends and family.
La Toya, 55, has revealed her manager, the late Jack Gordon, “forced” her into marriage in 1989 against her will and then systematically bullied her and cut her off from her family and friends throughout their relationship to control her.
If she ever disobeyed him he would imprison her in a cupboard and beat her.
She said: “I didn’t marry the late Jack Gordon. He married me. It was a forced decision. He’d lock me in a closet, and if I didn’t act normal and smile afterwards and if I showed my hurts I’d have another beating. I couldn’t read magazines or newspapers or have friends. I couldn’t pick up a phone.”
“We met when my father got him to accompany me on my first tour to Japan. But immediately, Gordon took my passport away. He said I’d lose it. My father and he had many fights afterwards.”
La Toya, who has previously revealed Jack threatened to kill members of her family and once hit her until she was unconscious, even kicking her in the face, admits the experiences were alien to her because she had led such a sheltered life growing up.
Jackson, who is releasing a memoir, ‘Starting Over’ about her brother Michael’s death in 2009, explained in an interview with the New York Post newspaper: “I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. We’d go door to door helping people. That’s all I knew. I grew up not knowing street people. I’ve never taken a drug. I’d never met a con artist before. I’d never been around people who fight.”
