Urban legend has it that Janet Jackson may have given birth to a child when she was a teenager and married to James DeBarge. Supposedly that child was raised as her niece by sister Rebbie Jackson. Now that the news is out that Janet Jackson may be pregnant at 50, DeBarge is speaking out about the possibility that there’s actually a DeBarge-Jackson child somewhere out there.
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In an interview with Radar Online, DeBarge said that he was contacted by a young woman who claims that she’s his daughter.
“She called me ‘Papa,’” DeBarge told Radar about the anonymous woman. “She didn’t want to get her mom in trouble. She wanted to do it quietly. She didn’t even want Janet to know.”
When DeBarge and Jackson were together, DeBarge said, he was told that Jackson had an abortion when she found out that she was pregnant, but now he’s having second thoughts.
“I hadn’t known [that Janet had a baby] … not for sure,” he said. “I went on a search. Someone went through some serious changes to make it impossible for me to find. This had to be some serious inside work being done with the paperwork. Someone was working with them.”
DeBarge went on to say that had he’d known about a child, he would have been part of the child’s life.
“It would have to be hidden from me if she wasn’t a part of my life all the time and I didn’t know anything about her,” he explained. “There’s no way it could not have been hidden. I didn’t know. Had I known, I would never have kept it a [secret]. I would have been very proud of her.”
Well, there’s no telling who this mystery woman is because, for now, DeBarge is keeping her a secret. But this is nothing a visit to Maury Povich or MTV’s Catfish couldn’t solve.
Take a look at DeBarge talking about his drug addictions with his daughter Kristinia DeBarge on WeTV’s Growing Up Hip Hop.
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