New Photos Ignite Controversy in Michael Jackson Lawsuit

A half-naked boy grimaces at the camera as holds him in his arms in one image from a disturbing new trove of photos.

In the image, obtained by the Daily Mail and published for the first time, nine-year-old Dominic Cascio looks deeply uncomfortable and appears to recoil as Jackson puts his hand on his stomach and arm.

They are sitting on a bed in what the Cascio family believes is a hotel room in January 1996, during a period in which Dominic claims Jackson was abusing him.

Dominic, his brothers Edward and Aldo and his sister Marie-Nicole Porte are now suing Jackson's companies and estate. In the complaint they call Jackson 'a serial child predator' who sexually assaulted them, 'beginning when some of them were as young as seven or eight.'

Now 45, Dominic told the Daily Mail revisiting the image is deeply unsettling. 

'I can only imagine the face had to do with what I had experienced at the moment,' he said – a time, he suggests, where fear and confusion were already beginning to surface. 

'I assume I was really trying to process or make sense of whatever trauma I was undergoing.

'I can see the fear and confusion of what I was living.'

The lawsuit was filed at a federal court in Los Angeles and claims that Jackson drugged, raped and sexually assaulted each of the plaintiffs.

The alleged abuse went on for 'extended periods' at locations around the world, the lawsuit claims.

The complaint states that Jackson, who died in 2009, 'brainwashed' the Cascio children and made them sign 'deceptive' contracts to keep them quiet.

Lawyers for Jackson's estate have previously dismissed the claims as a 'desperate money grab' and pointed out that the Cascio family were supportive of Jackson for years.