LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris is recovering well and responding to treatment after her suicide attempt in June, the late pop icon’s mother said in comments reported Tuesday.
The 15-year-old is being treated at a secluded residential center that specializes in caring for depression and grief management, said Katherine Jackson, the 83-year-old family matriarch named guardian of the singer’s three children after his 2009 death.
“She is in a good place, getting the help she needs,” she told Hello! magazine in an interview published two days before what would have been Jackson’s 55th birthday this Thursday.
She added: “The treatment is going good, really good. She’s my baby. It’s hard for me, really hard. All I wanted these kids to be is happy. The night Michael died Paris was crying and said: ‘I want to go and see daddy; I don’t want to be without him.'”
Paris Jackson was rushed to hospital after slashing her wrists and taking a large number of painkillers at the family home in Calabasas, northwest of Los Angeles, on June 5. She had previously been treated for depression.
She was more affected by her father’s death than her siblings Prince, 16, and Blanket, 11, according to TJ Jackson, the late King of Pop’s nephew and the children’s co-guardian, who testified in court in late June.
Katherine Jackson is suing tour promoter AEG Live, accusing it of negligently hiring Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted of involuntary manslaughter for giving the singer the drug that killed him.
Murray was found guilty in 2011 of administering the anesthetic propofol to Jackson to help him with chronic insomnia, as he rehearsed in Los Angeles for the planned “This Is It” comeback tour.
The AEG trial began in April, and continues in a downtown LA courtroom.
