Pop star Michael Jackson today hit back over a "tawdry" documentary he helped make for British television, saying he would never harm a child.
In Monday's programme - a rare look at the American singer's private life that was shot over eight months - Jackson admitted sharing a bedroom with children at his Neverland ranch.
"Today I feel more betrayed than perhaps ever before, that someone who had got to know my children, my staff and me, whom I let into my heart and told the truth, could then sacrifice the trust I placed in him and produce this terrible and unfair programme," Jackson (44) said in a statement released in London.
"Everyone who knows me will know the truth, which is that my children come first in my life and that I would never harm any child".
The statement added that Jackson regarded the programme - due to be broadcast in the United States this evening - "as a gross distortion of the truth and a tawdry attempt to misrepresent his life and his abilities as a father".
In the documentary, the eccentric star insisted there was nothing wrong with having children in his bedroom and vowed to kill himself if there were no kids left in the world.
His two older children, five-year-old Prince Michael I and four-year-old Paris, appeared on film with Jackson wearing party masks. He fed his third child - who he has nicknamed "Blanket" with a bottle of milk while draping a veil over his head.
But Granada Television, which produced the film Living with Michael Jackson, stood by journalist Mr Martin Bashir but said it was maybe "inevitable" Jackson would be upset.
Jackson has been dogged by controversy and rumour since 1993 when he reached a multi-million dollar settlement with a 14-year-old boy who had accused him of sexual molestation.