Post by IAMCAPER on Jun 14, 2005 7:56:28 GMT -4
That's all, folks
Since the early 1990s, Santa Barbara, Calif., cops and prosecutors have viewed Michael Jackson not as Peter Pan, but as the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood" (only this time he likes boys). Two kids have come forward before to accuse Jackson of molesting them, taken multimillion-dollar settlements from the star, and then refused to cooperate. Now the state has blown its chances of nailing him on charges of molesting a third boy, who said that two years ago, when he was 13, Jackson fondled him four or five times. Maybe the jury acquitted Jackson on all counts because the cops got it wrong. Or maybe the problem is that any family crazy enough to get intimately entangled with Jackson—and intimate the relationships are, sex or no sex—is too crazy to be believed, at least beyond a reasonable doubt.
Two different narratives emerged from the Jackson trial. The prosecution's story was that Jackson finds vulnerable families, often headed by single mothers, with whom he enters into an implicit bargain: Give me your son to sleep with (and fondle), and I'll buy you a Cartier bracelet, take you to the Caribbean, and (in one instance) put you on my payroll. In the defense's version, the gold-digging families seek out Jackson, and the bargain is an innocent one: Michael embraces your family as his own, which, no big deal, means letting your son share a bed with him. "I'm your daddy," Jackson wrote to the boy accusing him in a note read at the trial. "I'm very happy to be your daddy. Blanket, Prince Michael Jr., and Paris are your brothers and sister. Love, your daddy." This characterization of Jackson as playful father to a rotating series of Lost Boys wasn't entirely implausible, as my colleague Seth Stevenson has argued. It was also what defense lawyers had to work with, given that Jackson had talked about sharing his bed with young boys in the 2003 documentary Living With Michael Jackson that rekindled the interest of Santa Barbara police and social workers.
Juries are often willing to cut kids slack when they testify about being sexually abused. Jackson's accuser, now 15, wasn't great on the stand. On cross-examination, he couldn't remember when exactly the alleged fondlings took place. But he performed better in his initial interview with police investigators, a video of which the prosecution played at the close of the trial. In the video's most compelling moment, he asked the cops not to tell his mother what had happened, undermining the defense team's claim that she'd put him up to making false allegations and then coached him.
Since the early 1990s, Santa Barbara, Calif., cops and prosecutors have viewed Michael Jackson not as Peter Pan, but as the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood" (only this time he likes boys). Two kids have come forward before to accuse Jackson of molesting them, taken multimillion-dollar settlements from the star, and then refused to cooperate. Now the state has blown its chances of nailing him on charges of molesting a third boy, who said that two years ago, when he was 13, Jackson fondled him four or five times. Maybe the jury acquitted Jackson on all counts because the cops got it wrong. Or maybe the problem is that any family crazy enough to get intimately entangled with Jackson—and intimate the relationships are, sex or no sex—is too crazy to be believed, at least beyond a reasonable doubt.
Two different narratives emerged from the Jackson trial. The prosecution's story was that Jackson finds vulnerable families, often headed by single mothers, with whom he enters into an implicit bargain: Give me your son to sleep with (and fondle), and I'll buy you a Cartier bracelet, take you to the Caribbean, and (in one instance) put you on my payroll. In the defense's version, the gold-digging families seek out Jackson, and the bargain is an innocent one: Michael embraces your family as his own, which, no big deal, means letting your son share a bed with him. "I'm your daddy," Jackson wrote to the boy accusing him in a note read at the trial. "I'm very happy to be your daddy. Blanket, Prince Michael Jr., and Paris are your brothers and sister. Love, your daddy." This characterization of Jackson as playful father to a rotating series of Lost Boys wasn't entirely implausible, as my colleague Seth Stevenson has argued. It was also what defense lawyers had to work with, given that Jackson had talked about sharing his bed with young boys in the 2003 documentary Living With Michael Jackson that rekindled the interest of Santa Barbara police and social workers.
Juries are often willing to cut kids slack when they testify about being sexually abused. Jackson's accuser, now 15, wasn't great on the stand. On cross-examination, he couldn't remember when exactly the alleged fondlings took place. But he performed better in his initial interview with police investigators, a video of which the prosecution played at the close of the trial. In the video's most compelling moment, he asked the cops not to tell his mother what had happened, undermining the defense team's claim that she'd put him up to making false allegations and then coached him.