Jackson lawyers move top punch holes in accuser's mom's kidnap claim
8 minutes ago Entertainment - AFP
SANTA MARIA, United States (AFP) - In an explosive courtroom showdown, Michael Jackson's lawyers began trying expose the mother of his child sex accuser as a rapacious liar driven by financial greed.
Lead defense lawyer Thomas Mesereau began his cross-examining the 37-year-old woman in one of the most combative face-offs of the seven week old trial in a bid to shatter her credibility in the eyes of jurors.
After listening quietly for two days as the woman claimed she and her children were held prisoner by Jackson and his aides who allegedly told her they were being stalked by "killers," Mesereau finally turned his guns on the woman he blames for Jackson's legal woes.
"It's very tense," said legal analyst Jim Moret who is following Jackson's molestation trial in California. "The defense is trying to show that her (the mother's) grasp of reality is not our grasp of reality."
Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor two years ago, plying him with alcohol and conspiring to hold him and his family against their will at his Neverland Ranch and a Los Angeles area hotel.
In a series of tense exchanges with the defiant witness, Mesereau suggested that her stories of kidnapping were a tissue of lies and that in fact she was living in the lap of luxury as Jackson's guest at Neverland.
"You didn't escape from Neverland at all, did you," Mesereau asked the woman provocatively. "Oh yes I did," responded the woman who Mesereau has said coached her children to lie in order to extort celebrities.
"How many times, in your mind, did you escape from that dungeon, Neverland?" Mesereau asked, getting the woman to admit that she had in fact left the ranch and then returned three times during her alleged captivity.
In a surprise revelation, she also conceded under the cross-examination that could make or break the conspiracy allegations against Jackson that her son -- the star's alleged child sex victim -- had once accused his own mother of abuse.
The combative woman however gave as good as she got in her extremely testy sparring match against former boxer Mesereau.
She pointedly corrected him on details of his account of her earlier testimony and even turned directly to jurors on several occasions, telling them: "His statement is inaccurate."
The war of words came a day after the woman wrapped up a complex and frequently baffling account of how Jackson's aides allegedly used fear and intimidation to keep her family prisoner for three weeks in late February and early March 2003.
She told the panel she agreed to allow the entertainer's entourage to whisk her family off to Brazil, because she feared her loved ones would be killed if she refused to cooperate.
Asked why she signed passport applications for herself and her three children in early 2003 when she claimed she did not want to leave the United States, she said: "Because of my parents' life and (boyfriend's) life."
"Because they were going to be killed," she said.
Her testimony is crucial to the allegations of conspiracy against Jackson.
Prosecutors claim the panicked singer and his aides held the family against their will and plotted to whisk them overseas after the airing of a television documentary in which Jackson held his future accuser's hand and admitted that children shared his bed.
The woman said her family was later coerced into describing Jackson as a father figure in a "rebuttal video."
But, she said, Jackson's helpers told her she "had not done an adequate job on the video and we were going to have to proceed with leaving out of the country" because she refused to say that the star healed her son's cancer.
But Jackson's lawyers have pointed out that during her claimed captivity the woman was taken on shopping sprees paid for by the star as well as to a beauty salon for a leg wax and to an orthodontist.
They have said the accuser's family were "professional plaintiffs" who sought cash settlements in a quiver of legal actions and who had a history of bilking celebrities.
"I'm going to show you how the trap was set," Mesereau vowed in opening arguments.
Jackson has pleaded innocent to 10 charges that could see him jailed for up to 20 years if convicted.