Boy claimed Jackson did not abuse him - document
A teenage cancer survivor accusing Michael Jackson of sexual abuse told social workers months ago that the star had never molested him, according to a document uncovered today.
The document, uncovered by a news website and featured on American television, concluded that the allegations against the pop star were “unfounded”.
It followed an investigation into the relationship between Jackson and the boy, who appeared on a documentary by Martin Bashir earlier this year.
In the programme, Jackson admitted sharing a bedroom with the boy, but not a bed.
That claim appears to be substantiated by the document drawn up by the Department of Children and Family Services in Los Angeles at the beginning of this year.
The document, featured on ABC’s Good Morning America, states: “On February 14, 2003, a Child Abuse Referral was called into the hotline by a school official…
“The allegations were for general neglect by mother and sexual abuse by ’an entertainer’.”
It said the call, relating to two children, aged 12 and 13 – one of them a cancer survivor – was prompted by a “broadcast on television in which the children had stated that they shared the same bed as ’the entertainer”’.
It went on: “The investigation by the Sensitive Case Unit concluded the allegations of neglect and sexual abuse to be unfounded both by the Los Angeles Police Department-Wilshire Division and the Department.”
It said the mother stated “that her son had slept in the same room as the entertainer but they did not share a bed”.
The boy was interviewed and “he denied any form of sexual abuse”, the document said.
The brothers’ older sister, 16, was also interviewed and said she had accompanied them to sleepovers and “had never seen anything sexually inappropriate between her brothers and the entertainer”.
The document was uncovered by the news website thesmokinggun.com.
Editor Bill Bastone told ABC’s Good Morning America that he contacted investigators in Santa Barbara, California, who are investigating the current allegations against Jackson, and briefed them on the existence of the document.
“They were very surprised and basically said California law does not allow them to comment on any degree of the investigation,” he said.
“They essentially confirmed that the document is real, as we already knew, but beyond that they couldn’t talk about it, which is what we expected.”
He did not not reveal how the document was obtained.
Jackson’s Neverland ranch in California was searched last month after a complaint by the teenager that he had been molested by the star.
Jackson answered a warrant and was led into a Santa Barbara police station in handcuffs, before having his mugshot taken.
He is free on €2.66m bail and at an “undisclosed location”, believed to be in Las Vegas.
He has called the charges against him a “big lie”.
