Posted on 04/14/2005 2:08:13 PM PDT by COUNTrecount
SANTA MARIA, Calif. - The mother of the boy who has accused Michael Jackson of child molestation testified Thursday that she was sad and confused when she appeared in a video in which she praised the pop star as a father figure.
Prosecutors contend the woman and her family made the video under duress and that Jackson associates wanted her and her children to do it to rebut a TV documentary that aired about two weeks earlier. In the TV show, Jackson was seen with the boy and said he allowed children to sleep in his bed, but that it was innocent.
The woman said she was given a script to follow and that during the video shoot she was read scripted questions.
She said she was instructed to say repeatedly, "That he's a wonderful father. Basically, in summary, that he's a wonderful father ... to my children."
Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen asked if she really believed the things she said on the video.
"I was confused, I was sad, so basically I was acting," she said.
On the tape, the woman continually praised Jackson and occasionally laughed and joked with her children between takes.
The mother said Jackson associated Dieter Wiesner, who prosecutors have named as one of the singer's unindicted co-conspirators, was responsible for scripting the questions and answers.
She testified Wednesday that Wiesner was one of the "Germans" she didn't like because they made her feel pressured. Both Wiesner and another unindicted alleged co-conspirator, Ronald Konitzer, are German.
The woman said that the day after making the rebuttal video, she and her children were interviewed by Los Angeles County child welfare authorities about whether she or Jackson had mistreated the children.
She said that during the interview a Jackson bodyguard pulled her aside and gave her instructions on how to deal with the case workers, implying her parents could be harmed if she didn't protect Jackson's image.
"He told me if I put Michael in a bad light he knew where my parents lived," she testified.
Jackson's associates told her not to allow the children to be separated during the interview, to make sure the case workers described the allegations against Jackson that they were investigating and to allow Jackson associates to tape the interview with a hidden recording device, she said.
They also told her she had to play the case workers a DVD made at Neverland in 2000 which showed Jackson and the boy walking and occasionally holding hands to the strains of Jackson's songs including "I'll Be There."
Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a 13-year-old former cancer patient, plying the boy with alcohol, and holding his family captive in February and March 2003 to get them to help rebut the documentary.
The accuser's mother first took the stand Wednesday, and in jumbled and tearful testimony said she originally trusted the singer and associates to protect her family from unidentified "killers," but later decided Jackson was the one to fear.
Judge Rodney S. Melville allowed her to testify despite her refusal to discuss alleged welfare fraud - an issue on which the defense had hoped to attack her credibility. She invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid questions about it.
The woman said that after the documentary aired, the pop star convinced her in a "lovey-dovey speech" that her children were in danger, that there were "killers" after them, and that he was the only one who could protect them.
"I thought, 'What a nice guy,'" she said.
She said Jackson spoke to her family "in a very male voice" in a Miami hotel room, and told them "that he loves us, that he cares about us, we're family. ... That we were in the back of the line, now we're in the front of the line, that he's going to protect us from those killers."
Later she said of Jackson and his associates: "And you know what? They ended up being the killers."
She also testified that she saw Jackson lick her son's head during a February 2003 flight from Miami to California on a private jet. Asked about the event, she turned to jurors and pleaded, "Please don't judge me."
"Everyone was asleep. I had not slept for so long," she said. "I got up. I figured this was my chance to figure out what was going on back there. And that's when I saw Michael licking (the boy's) head."
She sobbed, pounded her chest and said, "I thought I was seeing things. I thought it was me."
Jurors were in a jovial mood as they returned from a break after the head-licking testimony. Several were smiling or laughing, and an alternate stuck his tongue out at a juror as he passed her on the way to his seat. There was no way of knowing the nature of their jokes.
During more than four hours of testimony Wednesday, defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. did not make a single objection. Zonen, however, instructed the witness several times to answer his questions briefly instead of offering lengthy, sometimes off-topic answers.
Before court recessed Wednesday, Zonen played tape-recorded phone conversations between the woman and a man identified as Jackson aide Frank Tyson, whom prosecutors have named as an unindicted co-conspirator.
"Let us take care of you. Let us protect you," Tyson is heard saying. "Trust me. ... Now is not the time to be out there alone."
On the tape, Tyson's gentle, high-pitched voice is startlingly reminiscent of the speaking voice Jackson sometimes uses.
"I thought he was a good guy," the woman said of Tyson, "and he ended up being the worst of all of them."
She said she eventually returned to Jackson's Neverland ranch, gave an interview to a private investigator and appeared on the rebuttal video.
Defense attorneys have raised questions about the woman's credibility by accusing her in opening statements of bilking other celebrities and committing welfare fraud. District Attorney Thomas Sneddon said in his opening statement the woman would admit she took welfare payments to which she wasn't entitled.
The judge read a statement to jurors saying the woman had taken the Fifth outside of their presence and that attorneys did not realize she would do so when they delivered their opening statements.
Defense attorney Robert Sanger vehemently objected to the testimony, saying Jackson had a constitutional right to have his attorneys cross-examine the woman on every issue. The judge rejected a defense request for a mistrial or to require her to take the Fifth in front of jurors.
"It wasn't Michael JACKSON who molested my son, it was Michael DOUGLAS! So sorry! Oh, and it wasn't my son, it was my neighbor's daughter! Other than that, everything else I've said is 100% true! What planet is this, by the way?"
She's a fraud. As I've said all along, Wacko Jacko walks. He sure knows how to pick 'em.
And Jackson's a shiny paragon of virtue? Jackson may yet walk, but it'll be after days, maybe weeks of deliberation, not minutes or hours.
It really doesn't matter. Jackson will carve his face up till his brain fall out. But you're correct. Jackson walks to molest another day. he'll never get caught again. He'll just start going to Indonesia to get his supply of young meat.
Maybe Mikey thought it was a giant gingerbread man.
If he walks it would be best if he checks himself into a recovery program for sexaholics. Not likely to happen though, as long as he keeps getting let off the hook for his actions.
Yeah, right. But, that's not enough to convict. Her testimony had to be enough to give at least one person on the jury reasonable doubt. The freak show walks.
I have no idea if Jackson is guilty or not, although he probably is. One thing I do know for sure though, IMO, is that woman and her kids are guilty of being scam artists. I've said so from the beginning.
If Jackson gets off, I hope he sues those people for every cent they plan to make off of books and movies!
And I hope he returns to his religious roots and changes his life around, no matter what the virdict is.
God have mercy on his soul.
Exactly. Michael Jackson is a person who should not be on trial for anything. He is in my opinion a human being who is completely insane. He should be in a mental hospital much like you would put someone in a hospital who has any other type of disease. Michael Jackson is mentally deranged, and why is he being treated like he is normal? Look at him, look at what he has done to himself. To me if his lawyer was any type of lawyer with an ounce of integrity, he would get Michael to plead insanity. No jury on earth is going to doubt that, why? Because it`s the truth.
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