On Wednesday we heard a disturbing story that one of the Jackson children was taunting his cousins, Michael’s children, with a stun gun that he purchased online. Rumor had it that Jafaar Jackson, Jermaine’s 13 year-old son, had ordered either one or two 3,000 volt stun guns online and had run around the family mansion in Encino, CA with one of them, threatening Michael’s youngest son Blanket, 8, and letting his other cousins play with the weapon. Katherine Jackson, Michael’s mother, acknowledged that Jafaar had purchased the gun but said in a statement that the boy had only tested it on a piece of paper and at no time was Blanket or any other child in contact with it. The California Department of Children and Family Services launched an investigation after the incident, and has made at least two visits to the home to interview the no less than 14 people who regularly live there.

There was some speculation as to who reported the incident to DCFS, considering that Katherine Jackson denied that any of the children were in danger. According to paparazzi agency X17, the Jackson family’s longterm nanny, Grace Rwaramba, notified the agency. They claim that there’s a longstanding feud between Grace and Katherine, and say that Katherine “is afraid to get rid of Rwaramba because she has been threatening to write a tell-all book.”

X17online can report exclusively that the Jackson family suspects the children’s nanny Grace Rwaramba is the leak from within their Encino home, who made the initial call to the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services. She’s also suspected of spilling information to a tabloid website.

Our Jackson family source tells us that “Grace is trying to get custody of Michael’s kids while trying to paint Katherine as an unfit guardian. She’s throwing it in Katherine’s face! The children absolutely despise Grace.”

The source tells us Michael Jackson fired Rwaramba five times. Once the singer died, the nanny made her return to the Hayvenhurst home and was kicked off the property by Michael’s younger brother, Randy. Sources tell us that Katherine is afraid to get rid of Rwaramba because she has been threatening to write a tell-all book.

The recent stun gun incident involving Jermaine Jackson’s 13-year old son Jaafar has brought to the forefront the strained relationship between the former nanny and the Jackson family.

A video showing Jaafar Jackson pushing his 9-year old brother Jermajesty was sold to a website recently and X17online has been told that the Jackson family believes Grace Rwaramba released this tape.

Since the stun gun story “leaked,” Rwaramba has been mysteriously absent from the home. Jackson family sources tell X17 that her days are numbered.

[From X17]

X17 has run some bogus stories in the past. (Particularly when they got duped by a woman who claimed she was having an affair with Tony Parker and ended up being a hooker who ran scams like that in the past. It really is an incredible story if you’re interested in reading the background.) That said, they have a lot of people on the ground who are privvy to insider information. This could be true, and even if all they know is that Grace took off after the stun gun incident it does make it look like she’s the one who reported it.

We’ve heard stories of a feud between Grace and Katherine in the past. The National Enquirer claimed that Grace and Katherine were fighting over the care of the children after Michael passed. They even reported that Grace and Michael’s sister, Rebbie, got into a physical altercation that came to blows.

TMZ has more, including the detail that one of the women living in the home, Alejandra Oaziaza Jackson, is in the process of divorcing Jermaine and has an issue with the way he gave her child support – in Ralph’s grocery store gift cards. Alejandro has four children in total that all live in the home. She had two of them with Randy Jackson in the 90s, and then two more with Randy’s brother Jermaine, Jafaar, 13, and Jermajesty, 9. All of this is background for how Jafaar got the credit card to buy the stun gun. Apparently he bought a credit card from Ralph’s supermarket, and it may have been one of those pre-paid cards that are easier to obtain. He probably just swiped a gift card from his mom to buy the credit card.

TMZ also notes that Jackson mansion has 26 bathrooms and 12 bedrooms, which sounds more than adequate to house 14 people, even if some of them are currently divorcing. It sounds incredibly chaotic, though, especially when the children’s main caregiver has left abruptly after fighting with their grandmother. Katherine Jackson, 79, is responsible for eight children in total, although there is also a second nanny, a woman named Sister Rose from the Nation of Islam, who shares childcare along with maybe-fired Grace.

Grace on July 1, 2009, credit: INFphoto.com

Grace Rwaramba is shown in Las Vegas with Michael Jackson’s children in January, 2007. Credit: Ben/Victor/Bauer-Griffin

Three weeks ago, we heard that Michael Jackson’s oldest sibling, his sister Rebbie, 59, would be helping her mother Katherine raise Michael’s three children. Katherine Jackson is 79 and many people wonder if she’s up to the task of caring for her grandchildren and how long she’ll be able to be responsible for them. It’s reassuring to hear that Rebbie, who has been married for over forty years and has three grown children, will be involved.

Michael’s longterm nanny, Grace Rwaramba, told a reporter from the Times of London that she was in touch with Katherine Jackson following Michael’s death, but I don’t remember reading that she was helping her with the children. The National Enquirer has a new story that claims that Grace was consulted about possibly helping with Michael’s children: Prince Michael, 12, Paris, 11, and Blanket, 7, but that she wasn’t hired due to violent argument with Rebbie. Grace supposedly lit into Katherine about how she should be caring for the children, and Rebbie fired back, eventually smacking Grace. Then Grace defended herself and it’s said to have escalated into a full-on fist fight!

The former nanny for Michael Jackson’s three children got into a brawl recently with Jackson’s sister during a heated dispute over how the children are being raised, The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively.

In the ugly incident, longtime nanny Grace Rwaramba came to blows with Michael’s 59-year-old sister Rebbie after an argument between the two women exploded out of control, say sources.

What started as a confrontation over the parenting skills of the singer’s mother Katherine – who has been named permanent guardian of his children – quickly turned violent. After heated words were exchanged, Rebbie punched Grace, starting a nasty donnybrook [free-for-all], according to a Jackson family insider.

Sources told The ENQUIRER the fight erupted last month at Katherine’s home in Encino, Calif., where Prince Michael, 12, Paris, 11, and 7-year-old Prince Michael II (nicknamed Blanket) have been living since their father’s June 25 death.

“Grace the nanny paid a visit to check on the children,” disclosed the family insider.

“She had been fired by Michael a few weeks before his death, but she still loves the kids and is concerned about their welfare.

“The family had even considered re-hiring Grace to help with the transition in the aftermath of Michael’s death – but that’s now out the window after what happened between her and Rebbie.

“Grace went on a tirade about how the kids should be cared for. Grace questioned Katherine on what time the kids were going to bed and everything else.

“Katherine was trying to be civil, and said, ‘I’m the grandmother, and it was me who Michael appointed to raise them should something happen to him.’

“But Grace kept on being critical, and Rebbie became incensed with the way she was speaking to her mother.

“Rebbie finally had enough and smacked Grace, and Grace fought back and the two women came to blows!

[From The National Enquirer]

If this is true, I only hope that none of the children had to see it. They loved Grace and lived with her for years, and it’s terrible that their aunt would smack her for expressing her opinion. Grace should have left instead of fighting back, but Rebbie never should have hit her, either. Out of all the Jackson children, it was thought that the oldest, Rebbie, was the most stable and had escaped the terrible influence of her abusive father. It looks like that isn’t the case and that she still sees violence as an acceptable way to handle an argument. The worst part is that she’s modeling that behavior for the children.

The Times of London has a fascinating and perhaps partially embellished interview with Grace Rwaramba, Michael Jackson’s nanny for over ten years. Grace was fired by Jackson in December when she tried to stage an intervention for the drug-addicted star. The story paints a sad picture of the last few years of Jackson’s life as Grace describes how he wasted every scrap of money that came in and refused to trust the people who cared about him. As he pushed Grace and his family away, other people came in to fill the void and take advantage of him. In the end the frail singer was taking a cocktail of powerful drugs and living in a dirty rented home, incapable of paying a maid despite shelling out six figures in monthly rent and without the money to have a birthday party for his daughter. Grace’s statements are consistent with the details that are coming out in this case and with what we’ve read about Jackson in the press. According to people close to Grace, she was in a vulnerable place when she talked to the journalist, whom she considered a friend, and her words are being taken out of context and embellished:

Here are the highlights by topic:

On Jackson’s mother Katherine looking for money after his death:
Early on Friday, Jackson’s mother, Katherine, contacted Grace from his house. Shockingly, she wanted to know where his money was. Grace recounted: “Katherine just called me. She said, ‘Grace, the children are crying. They are asking about you. They can’t believe that their father died. Grace, you remember Michael used to hide cash at the house. I am here. Where can it be?’

“I told her to look at the garbage bags and under the carpets. But, Daphne, can you believe this? This woman just lost her son a few hours ago and she is calling me to know where the money is!

“I asked to speak to the children. She said they were sleeping. But she just said they were crying. She never let me speak to them. She said, ‘Grace, where are you? Come. I will pick you up from the airport.’ She sounded so strong. So strong!”

On Jackson’s sad personal state:
“I don’t know what to do. He doesn’t let me see my babies. I have written to him. He doesn’t answer. I can’t call him because he changed his phone number. These poor babies . . . I am getting phone calls that they are being neglected. Nobody is cleaning the rooms, because he didn’t pay the housekeeper.

“I just got a phone call that Michael is in such a bad shape. He is not clean. He has not shaved . . . His nails . . . He is not eating well. I used to do all this for him.

On Jackson’s drug use:
Grace was a witness to Jackson’s abuse of prescription drugs. She said he took a mixture of them — in her words, “he always ate too little and mixed too much”.

“I had to pump his stomach many times . . . He always mixed so much of it. There was one period that it was so bad that I didn’t let the children see him.”

She claims he was furious with her for getting his mother and sister Janet to help. “We tried to do an intervention. It was me, Janet, his mother. I co-ordinated it. He was so angry with me.

“He screamed at me, ‘You betrayed my trust. You called them behind my back.’ I told him, ‘Michael I didn’t betray your trust. I try to help you.’ But he didn’t want to listen. That was one of the times he let me go.”

On his sponsorship by the son of the King of Bahrain – he didn’t fulfill his promise:
Her account of the money and hospitality he received after his trial from Sheikh Abdullah, the son of the King of Bahrain, reveals a man who had no understanding of of money.

“During the trial Jermaine (his older brother) suddenly connected him to Sheikh Abdullah. I was happy because he was so down. He was scared. Nobody else called. So Michael was spending hours on the phone with Abdullah. He is the one who is sending the money for the lawyers.”

Abdullah, she said, called her one day and asked for her bank account. “I said why? He said he was sending money to Michael through my account. He sent $1m. Then another $35,000.

“Katherine needed money too. So Michael told me to give her my ATM card. She was cashing out of the machine every day. I checked it.”

Last year, Abdullah sued Jackson in the London High Court for £4.7m for reneging on a music contract that would have paid back this and other loans. Grace told me: “When Abdullah sued Michael last year, Michael said in the beginning, ‘Oh, I never got money from him.’ He tried to frame me that I took the money.”

“From the time we flew to Bahrain, we actually didn’t have a home. At the beginning they put us in the palace. The idea was that Michael would create a charity and a CD with Abdullah.

“But when Michael failed to do it, I felt that the atmosphere changed. After several weeks, we were told that the uncle of Abdullah was coming back and needed to have his house.”

On Jackson squandering money when they had nowhere to live:
“Suddenly — I can’t remember now how it came — he received some money. Instead of buying a small house, so that we won’t go from one hotel to another or stay with friends, he told me, ‘Grace, you have to go immediately to Florence to buy antiques.’ He wanted me to spend £1m.

I flew on my credit card. When I arrived in Florence and saw these antiques, I called him and said, ‘This is not worth anything.’ Michael never listened to me. He said, ‘Buy it. Buy it.’ We didn’t even have a home to live in so we had to put the antiques in some storage.”

On staying with friends in small homes and moving from hotel to hotel
All the time, they had the three children in tow. Grace was getting tired of “running with them from hotel to hotel” so she accepted an invitation to take Jackson and the children to stay with friends of her own near Dun Laoghaire on the outskirts of Dublin in Ireland.

“They own a recording studio. They were so nice to us. They did a favour for me. Michael left them bills, he never paid them back.”

By then it was mid-2007. The entourage’s next stop was in New Jersey, the modest family home of Frank Tyson, a Jackson aide named as one of the five “co-conspirators” during the sex abuse trial.

Grace said: “Frank’s family is not rich. They have a small house. We stayed there for weeks. Michael stayed there downstairs alone.

“The kids slept with me in one room. I didn’t mind because I tried to make it fun for them. But I felt so bad that we were staying such a long time at this family’s small home.

“I tried to develop a friendship with Frank’s mother just to tell them thank you but when Michael saw we were getting friendly he said, ‘Don’t trust her. She is not interested in you. She just talks to you because of me.’

On the Nation of Islam taking advantage of him
Back in California, Jackson rented a house from the Nation of Islam. According to Grace, he was grossly overcharged.

“The Nation of Islam was telling him that the house we had in Los Angeles, after Neverland was sold, cost $100,000 a month. I checked with many real estate agencies.

“To rent this house should not have cost more than $20,000-$25,000. He had no clue.”

[From TimesOnline.co.uk]

Grace suffers from lupus, but had no health insurance while she was employed by Jackson. She also wasn’t paid after October of last year. This is a sad, kind of heartbreaking account of a man who was a shy musical genius but became an addict incapable of managing money and unable to accept help or trust anyone close to him. It does put the last two decades of Jackson’s life in another light – if he was taking so many drugs in such dangerous combinations, no wonder he appeared so eccentric to the public. He was whacked out of his mind on heavy prescription painkillers and various drugs. So many people assumed that Jackson was just a strange kind of marginal character who was trying in vain to live his lost childhood. That was surely a large part of it, but ultimately it was the drugs that did him in, and the drugs that probably changed him from an eccentric best selling artist to a frail, paranoid addict who was unable to financially support his family despite earning hundreds of millions during his storied career.

Deepak Chopra’s daughter: Grace was taken advantage of for that story
Malika Chopra, Deepak Chopra’s daughter, is friends with Grace and penned an essay about this interview for The Huffington Post. Malika claims that the author of the piece in The Times, Daphne Barak, took advantage of Grace and used her friendship to get information on Jackson at a vulnerable time. It’s not true that Grace pumped Jackson’s stomach, claims Malika, although she doesn’t deny Grace’s account of Jackson’s drug abuse. Not all of the quotes are accurate, and Grace does want Jackson’s mother to get custody of his three children.

Grace’s quotes are now being picked up by other tabloids and will find their way into more magazines and articles. (People Magazine is also featuring some today, including the inaccurate claim the Grace pumped Michael’s stomach several times. For the record, Grace never pumped Michael’s stomach. She has no idea how she would even do such a thing.) Which quotes are true, which are in context, (many are not) to me frankly doesn’t matter. I will not be surprised if Daphne releases audios or videos soon.

Grace feels used, insecure and shaken that she could have been so naïve, particularly having witnessed so many vultures in Michael’s world over the years. She made a mistake. The sad truth is that when you are a celebrity, or a close friend or family of one, in a world of tabloids, you must be impeccable in what you say and to whom. Michael probably faced the epitome of vultures, bloodsuckers and hanger-ons displayed in his endless cycle of managers, enabling doctors, and new business partners. How could anyone blame him for becoming so paranoid in his life?

In the article, Daphne tries to portray a rift between Katherine Jackson and Grace. This is not true.

I would like to go on record, with Grace’s permission, to say that Grace firmly hopes that the Jackson family gets custody of Prince, Paris and Michael. It would be detrimental to the children to be separated, and they should be with Michael’s family. They should know their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and they should learn about who he was as a person, not just as an icon. She has no interest in custody, and just wants the children to be happy and secure. She will be there for them whenever they need or want her.

As for the appetite for the salacious details of Michael’s life, my hope is that we let him go in peace. We already know he led a tortured life. He also led a great one in which he loved, and was loved, by many.

[From The Huffington Post]

I guess we can’t be surprised that now that Michael is gone, those close to him are being exploited too. Malika Chopra explains this well, asking “Michael probably faced the epitome of vultures, bloodsuckers and hanger-ons displayed in his endless cycle of managers, enabling doctors, and new business partners. How could anyone blame him for becoming so paranoid in his life?” I still think it had a lot more to do with the drugs.

Grace Rwaramba is shown in Las Vegas with Michael Jackson’s children. Credit: Ben/Victor/Bauer-Griffin

Apparently people were all up in a tizzy saying Michael Jackson was getting married. To a woman. A genetically original woman. I didn’t hear anything about said tizzy, but it was big enough to require Jacko’s people to release an official statement. Apparently it’s not true. Though he’s such a weird guy and there’s so much mystery surrounding him that I wouldn’t rule anything out. He probably did get married, it was just to a coffee maker or other random household appliance instead of a woman.

“Michael Jackson and his kids remain the only ones donning the veils in the family. The singer’s rep issued a firm denial Thursday in response to a sudden flurry of reports stating that the self-proclaimed King of Pop had swapped vows with his children’s nanny, Grace Rwaramba, a frequent fixture in the courtroom during his trial on child-molestation charges in 2005.

“‘Wide spreading reports regarding Michael Jackson being married are not true,’ publicist and resident rumor-buster Raymone Bain said in a statement to E! News. ‘Documents stating otherwise are a hoax.’

“Earlier Thursday, the National Enquirer’s Website quoted a source supposedly close to the pair who said, ‘Grace was happy to go along with it. She’s always been devoted to Michael and has raised the kids since the day they were born. Michael knew she’d make a perfect stepmother.’
“The tabloid also said that it had obtained a real estate document on which Jackson referred to himself as a ‘married man.’”

[From E! News]

How does Michael Jackson keep getting so many ladies? He looks like a lady! Michael’s got some serious financial worries. He’s being sued by just about every business in America, and a least three quarters of the American public. I’m guessing that – if he did marry the kids’ nanny – he just did it to save money since he wouldn’t have to pay her a salary anymore. But let’s be honest, being the King of Pop’s wife has its advantages. You always have access to blankets when you’re cold – just reach over and pull one off a random kid. You have unlimited Jesus Juice. All the monkeys you can handle. And the guy will never bother you for sex at three in the morning. In fact you probably won’t even have to share a bed with him. Sounds like an ideal marriage to me. Especially the monkeys.

Picture Note by Jaybird: Images thanks to PR Photos.