Jackson accuser's sister testifies at trial
The sister of Michael Jackson’s accuser gave evidence in the pop star’s child molestation trial today.
Now 18 and a college student, she was called to testify about events two years ago when, prosecutors say, her brother was molested at Jackson’s Neverland ranch and the family was held captive.
The prosecution laid groundwork for the sister’s evidence by calling a Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department photographer who videotaped a November 2003, police raid on Neverland.
Jackson, 46, watched quietly, a finger pressed to his cheek, and the jury in Santa Maria, California, took notes.
Jackson’s mother, Katherine, and brother Jackie observed from the public benches.
The prosecution alleges that Jackson conspired to hold the family to force them to help with a rebuttal to the US airing of a British TV documentary in which Jackson said he allowed young boys to sleep in his bed.
Prosecutors allege that the boy, who appeared in the programme, was molested after the show aired.
The videotape gave jurors their first look at the singer’s master bedroom suite where he allegedly molested the then-13-year-old boy, a cancer patient befriended by Jackson.
The tape included shots of his cluttered bedroom, but none of the sexually explicit magazines that the prosecution has said were found in the suite.
The video showed a sparkling bedspread, pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple, several TVs and stacks of videos.
Two rooms that investigators called the doll room and the toy room were filled with dolls, mannequins and figurines of such characters as Bat Man, Superman and C3PO, Boba Fett and R2D2 from Star Wars, as well as SpongeBob SquarePants. There were dolls of every size and a dolls house.
Under cross-examination, the defence established that the nearby bedrooms of each of Jackson’s children had a lock with a code keypad.
Sheriff’s department cameraman Albert Lafferty also acknowledged that there was something that looked like a classroom but he couldn’t recall seeing little desks that a defence lawyer mentioned.
The defence has claimed that the boy and his brother, were sometimes out of control during visits to Neverland and got into private areas and onto the estate’s rides by memorising security codes.
The pictures presented by the prosecution also showed a clock in the foyer of Jackson’s home and a huge clock overlooking the train station in the amusement park area of Neverland.
The presence of the clocks may figure in the case because the accuser’s mother contends that during the alleged captivity she wasn’t even allowed to know what time it was.
Yesterday, the prosecution called Ann Marie Kite, who was hired by an ex-boyfriend to help rehabilitate Jackson’s public image after the documentary aired.
She testified that his associates arranged a smear campaign that was to include portraying the accuser’s mother as a crack whore.
But in an aggressive cross-examination, Kite said she was concerned during her six days of employment that Jackson was a victim of people in his inner circle who either botched his public relations or deliberately tried to damage his reputation.
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