In the mid-1980s, Gordon began to manage La Toya Jackson along with her father Joseph, but he took over her management completely during the late 1980s. He married her in Reno, Nevada, on September 5, 1989, claiming that it was for her own protection against kidnapping by the Jackson family. La Toya Jackson stated that this was both unplanned and against her wishes. La Toya said: "I told him, 'No way, Jack! I can't marry you. You know what marriage means to me. I've never been in love; I don't even date.... It's not right. I don't love you. I don't have feelings for you.'" Jackson stated that she tried to run out of the chapel three times but bodyguard Antonio Rossi grabbed her saying, "There's some things you have to do. Even if you don't want to." Jackson told Ebony magazine the marriage was "strictly in name only. It has never been consummated." Six months into the marriage, Jackson asked Gordon for an annulment in Italy. In response, she claims that Gordon repeatedly bashed her head against the side of a table, saying that he would never let her go. Paparazzi subsequently photographed Jackson with black eyes, which Gordon claimed was caused by intruders. From this point forward, Jackson lost all contact with her family and wrote her autobiography La Toya: Growing up in the Jackson Family, which accused her father of child abuse.
