I remember all that, but my point is, an innocent person is an innocent person. In sensitive situations like this all efforts should be made to clear the name. It just takes one pay off to start the domino effect.The charges and the whole media hoopla were messing up his tour and causing him to be dependent on pain killers. He had a real addiction at the time and his family and friends including Elizabeth Taylor were urging him to settle because they felt the stress was going to kill him. He wasn’t eating and had lost a lot of weight but was still doing shows day in and day out. Settling was a way of putting the whole thing behind him so he could get back to “normal”.
I’m not sure how old you are so i’m not trying to come off condescending, but if you remember back in the early 90’s Michael Jackson & Madonna WERE the Tabloid fodder of the time. The National Inquirer was like the TMZ of that time period and on their front pages they went from calling him “Wacko Jacko” to “Sicko Jacko” They were the ones who reported that the Police had to take pictures of him naked to see if his genitalia matched the description the boy gave them. It was all pretty traumatizing for him and going to court would have just exacerbated all of it