'I don't regret it': Joe Jackson confesses to beating Michael after wife Katherine demands he reveal truth about abuse

Michael Jackson's father has confessed for the first time that he beat his children.
During an interview with US talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, Joe Jackson admitted hitting his children with a strap.
'I don't [regret the beatings],' he said. 'It kept them out of jail and kept them right.'
Joe was initially defensive about his relationship with Michael, insisting: 'I don't think he was afraid of me. What he was afraid of, he may do something wrong and I'd chastise him but not beat him. I never beat him like the media tried to say.'

 Joe Jackson said he never beat the young Michael, but was a strict parent
But he was forced to admit he used the strap on his nine children when his wife Katherine stepped in.
'You might as well admit it, that's the way black people raised their children,' she said. 'He used a strap. Yes, he did use a strap.'

During an emotional interview, Katherine told Oprah she believed her son was addicted to plastic surgery.

Joe then chastised his wife for being too soft.
'Katherine is too easy with people... just like Michael,' he said.
Joe joined his wife Katherine for a section of the chat which was filmed last month at their house in Encino, California.
Both Jacksons denied to Oprah that they were divorced despite widespread media reports that they had separated.

In her emotional interview, Katherine said she believed her son had been addicted to plastic surgery.
'He'd say "I'm just so ugly, I don't want to go out there"', she said. 'I'd say "You're not." To a mother, all her children are always beautiful.'
And the star's hatred of his own appearance prompted him to get a nose job.
'One day he just got up and decided "I'm going to get my nose done. It's too big,"' Katherine recalled.
'One day he just made up his mind and he just left. When I enquired about where he was, he had gone down to get his nose done. 

Katherine became emotional while discussing Michael's death last July.

'He thought I might try to talk him out of it I think. He was so unhappy. He thought he was so ugly.'
The matriarch, who is the guardian of Michael's three children Prince Michael, 13, Paris, 12, and eight-year-old Blanket, also rubbished the star's claims that he had only ever had two surgeries - both on his nose.
'He had more than two, he was just embarrassed,' she said.
'It was like a toothpick at one time. I thought it was too small.
'I hear that people get addicted to plastic surgery and I think that's what happened to him.
'I had told him "That's enough. Why do you keep going?" I even talked to the plastic surgeon and said "If he comes there and he wants you to work on his nose just tell him you did it and do the same thing and don't change it."'
Katherine became emotional when she was asked about her son's death last year.
'The worst day of my life,' she recalled.
'My heart dropped. And so they called me and said "Come to the hospital. Michael's in the hospital."
'They made the doctor tell me. The doctor had to tell us...Dr [Conrad] Murray.'
'He came out, and he was talking and it took him so long,' said Katherine.
'He said, "No, he's gone. That's all I remember," she said, tearing up. "I'm sorry."
Murray is charged with involuntary manslaughter for allegedly improperly administering a mixture of sedatives, including the anaesthetic proposal, in an attempt to get Michael, a chronic insomniac, to sleep.
Murray has pleaded not guilty.

Strained relationship: Michael, pictured with his dad Joe at his trial for child molestation in 2005 was scared of his father