Evidence From ‘90s Is Allowed in Jackson Trial

Prosecutors in the Michael Jackson child-molestation trial won a major victory Monday when a judge said he will allow them to present evidence that the entertainer molested or inappropriately touched five boys in the 1990s -- and paid legal settlements to two of them.

Legal experts say the decision will bolster the prosecution’s case, but it is also expected to substantially lengthen the trial.

Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon said the evidence will corroborate testimony from a Los Angeles boy who earlier this month told jurors that Jackson molested him at his Neverland ranch in 2003.

The testimony, he said, is particularly relevant because it is “very similar, if not identical,” to the current case. Each of the boys was between 10 and 13 years old during the alleged incidents; the current alleged victim said he was 13 when Jackson molested him.

Jackson’s lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., said the evidence would unfairly inflate a case that prosecutors were losing. He said that several of the witnesses are disgruntled ex-Jackson employees who sold their stories to tabloids or unsuccessfully sued after they were fired for stealing.

“Where is the fairness in allowing that kind of testimony, that kind of evidence, when their underlying case looks so weak and problematic?” Mesereau asked.

Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville decided to admit the past allegations under a 1995 California law that allows prosecutors to present evidence of previous sexual allegations, even if the acts are decades old and no charges were filed.

Jackson paid substantial sums to settle allegations of sexual abuse that date to 1990 and 1993. The alleged victim in the older case, the son of Jackson’s former maid, is expected to testify that the entertainer sexually fondled him three times and that the allegations led Jackson to pay the boy’s family to avoid a civil lawsuit.

The alleged victim in the 1993 case is not expected to testify, but his mother is. The boy’s uncle, Raymond Chandler, said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show Monday that his nephew had left the country to avoid testifying because he does not wish to have his life further exposed to the public.

A third allegation that prosecutors plan to present to the jury involves actor Macaulay Culkin, the “Home Alone” star who became a close friend of Jackson.

Culkin has defended Jackson, 46. Unlike the other alleged victims, who have not commented on the allegations, he has publicly denied having been molested.

“Nothing happened,” he said during an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in May 2004.

On Monday, Culkin’s publicist, Michelle Bega, said: “Mr. Culkin is not involved in the proceedings at this time, and we do not expect this to change.”

Bega would answer no questions about whether Culkin had been interviewed by law enforcement officials, or about his long-standing friendship with Jackson.

“I have no further information for you,” she said.

As a child, Culkin, now 24, was a frequent visitor to Neverland in the Santa Ynez Valley, according to testimony in the current case. In 1993, a sign along the ranch’s train tracks pointed to “Mac and Mike’s Waterforts” -- a range Jackson and Culkin would use for water-pistol fights.

But while Culkin is not expected to testify, prosecutors are expected to call four witnesses to describe his relationship with Jackson.

Prosecutors plan to also present testimony from former Jackson employees, including a former cook and a security guard who say they saw Jackson hugging, kissing or fondling boys.

Sneddon said he does not expect to call witnesses to the alleged past sexual acts for about two weeks.

The most significant witness could be the maid’s son, who is expected to be the only alleged victim to testify. He spoke to detectives about the incident in 1993, but no charges were filed.

“My investigators felt he was very credible at the time they interviewed him,” said Jim Thomas, who was Santa Barbara County sheriff at the time of the 1993 investigation. “It was stuff that’s fairly similar [to the current accuser], comments made and things done that mirror each other. The thing that’s interesting is it’s never been public, so you’ll have two boys giving the same story under the same circumstances, and they’ve never met.”

Mesereau is expected to challenge the maid’s credibility because she acknowledged selling her story to a television tabloid news program. He said that by allowing testimony about the other alleged victims, the trial will now include five mini-trials that will significantly lengthen it. The trial was already expected to last into June.

“There’s no reason to think these alleged offenses would not be defended as vigorously as the case before the court is being defended,” Mesereau said. “You can’t deny a criminally accused in a situation like this the right for a full-blown opposition and full-blown defense to these types of allegations.”

According to a 1994 Jackson biography, “Unauthorized,” by Christopher Andersen, the maid said she once found her son and Jackson alone in a darkened room and later found $300 in her son’s pants pocket. According to the book, the maid said Jackson gave her $100 tips when she saw him with young boys.

“He says that whatever I saw is none of anybody’s business. And that he liked me, and that if I was ever asked by anyone, not to tell anything about him,” she said in the book.

The maid gave a deposition for a 1993 civil lawsuit filed by the family of the second alleged molestation victim. She testified at the deposition that she saw Jackson naked or partly clothed with a number of young boys, sometimes in bed, other times in a hot tub or a shower.

The second alleged victim’s family had filed suit against Jackson for child molestation. That suit was reportedly settled for $15 million to $25 million. A Los Angeles County criminal case against Jackson was never brought to trial because the boy decided not to testify.

That settlement and the scrapped criminal case were the first public allegations of sexual impropriety involving Jackson.

In 2004, Chandler, an attorney from Santa Barbara, published a book, “All That Glitters,” which detailed the impact the multimillion-dollar legal settlement had on the family. He said the boy is now “a happy, healthy, heterosexual young man who has lived through an unprecedented ordeal and survived with flying colors.”

Like Jackson’s current accuser, Chandler’s nephew had divorced parents and was fascinated by show business. While the current accuser attended “comedy camp” in Hollywood and befriended big-name entertainers such as Chris Tucker, the boy in the 1993 case wanted to become a film director.

Both the current accuser and the 1993 accuser had been crazy about Jackson for years. The latter had so wowed a family gathering with his animated Jackson dance routines that his grandmother knitted him a sequined glove, according to Chandler. At the time, the boy was 8.

The similarities that have been of the most intense interest to both prosecutors and defense attorneys are those in the boys’ accounts of their alleged molestations. Both described a gradual process that began with long telephone calls, progressed to lavish gifts and finally culminated in sharing a bed and sexual contact.

Jackson allegedly slept in the boy’s room at his mother’s home in Los Angeles for 30 nights in a row in 1993.

Defense attorneys probably will challenge testimony about the boy by trying to prove that the family was angling for a large sum of money from Jackson before they alerted authorities to their son’s alleged molestation.

They also have pointed out that before approaching the police, Jackson’s current accuser conferred with Larry Feldman, the attorney who won the settlement from Jackson in 1993.

The final two alleged victims from the 1990s each praised Jackson at a news conference after his ranch was searched in 1993.

“Michael is a very, very kind person, really nice and sweet,” said one of the boys, then 10 years old.

“Sure, I slept with him on dozens of occasions. But the bed we shared was huge. He sleeps on one side, I sleep on the other. We just go to sleep ... “

Another boy, then 11, also acknowledged sharing a bed with Jackson but stressed that nothing sexual ever occurred.

“It’s like I’ve known him all my life and in a past life,” the boy said. “He loves you like he is your own brother or sister or father or mother. He hugs and kisses, but nothing more.”