Created: Saturday, 21 May 2005
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
On day 54 a social worker testified Tuesday at Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial that she met privately with the accuser and his family during the time they claim they were Mr. Jackson’s captives, and they praised the singer and denied any sexual abuse.
Irene Lavern Peters, a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, said she met with the mother and her three children on Feb. 20, 2003, after the airing of a documentary that drew attention to Mr. Jackson’s relationship with the boy who is now his accuser.
Peters said that two Mr. Jackson aides were present when the social workers arrived at the apartment, but they were asked to leave the room before the interviews began.
Peters said the future accuser’s mother never complained to her of being held against her will by Mr. Jackson and his aides.
The social worker’s supervisor, who was also at the 2003 interview, gave similar testimony.
“I asked him if he had ever been sexually abused by Michael Jackson and he became upset. He said, ‘Everybody thinks Michael Mr. Jackson sexually abused me. He never touched me,'” Peters testified that the accuser emphatically insisted. She said the accuser told her Mr. Jackson “was very kind to him and treated him like a father.”
Peters said when she interviewed the mother, the boy, his younger brother and older sister on Feb. 20, all of them praised Mr. Jackson. She said the mother, who was present at each child’s individual interview, even gave Mr. Jackson credit for curing her son.
Rather than wanting to flee Mr. Jackson’s Neverland ranch, the mother initially asked if the social worker could do her interview at Mr. Jackson’s estate, Peters said.
Peters said, however, that she wanted to see where they were living, so she was invited to the home of the mother’s boyfriend, who is now her husband.
“She denied all allegations of general neglect,” Peters said. “I asked her about the relationship with Michael Jackson. She went on to say he was like a father to her children and she felt he was responsible for helping (the boy) to survive his cancer, for his cancer to go into remission.
“I asked her if the kids ever slept in Michael Jackson’s room and she said no, that never happened.”
Under questioning by defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr., Peters said the family members never mentioned being held against their will.
The interview took place the morning after the family made the rebuttal video, which they later claimed they were forced to do by Mr. Jackson’s associates.
The social worker said that after interviewing the family she wrote in a report that the “allegations of sex abuse by Michael Jackson were unfounded at the time based on the information received.”
The mother of the now 15-year-old alleged victim called her and her office on several occasions after the interview, but never made any claims of wrongdoing against Mr. Jackson.
However the woman did report that “Michael wanted to send her to Brazil, but she didn’t want to go,” Peters said, adding that the accuser’s mother referred to Brazil as “that dump.”
But a 16-year-old cousin of Mr. Jackson, Simone Jackson, gave a different version, saying the accuser’s sister told her at the time “her mother wanted to go, but she didn’t want to go.”
Simone Jackson also told jurors she once caught the accuser and his brother stealing wine from the kitchen late at night at Neverland. “They each had a bottle,” she said.
Simone Jackson was the first relative to testify in his defense and the latest witness to describe the two young boys at the center of the case drinking alcohol on the sly at Neverland in February and March 2003.
The teenage girl said that at about 1 a.m. on March 3, 2003, she was sitting in a corner of Mr. Jackson’s large kitchen area at Neverland, playing a video game, when she saw the two boys come in and take one bottle of wine each.
“They didn’t see me, I was sitting off to the side,” Simone Mr. Jackson said, speaking softly from the witness stand. “They grabbed it and (the accuser’s brother) got a wine glass and (the accuser) just took the bottle.”
When the boys then saw her, she said, “I told them they weren’t supposed to do that, and they told me not to say anything.”
Also on the stand: Angel Vivanco, the former Neverland chef’s assistant, who wrapped his second day of testimony.
Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville ruled Vivanco couldn’t talk about potentially salacious conversations with the accuser’s sister-Vivanco’s most pointed testimony, that the accuser’s younger brother pulled a nine-inch knife on him in the Neverland kitchen, was blunted by the prosecution.
When asked by prosecutor Ronald J. Zonen, if Vivanco thought the boy was joking, Vivanco said he did.
In March, the prosecution pulled a similar ploy on its own witness, former Neverland housekeeper Kiki Fournier, who under questioning by the defense revealed that she, too, had had a knife pulled on her by the younger brother. With Fournier’s help, the prosecution was able to suggest that that move was all for play.
The defense didn’t let Vivanco’s story go down without a fight. Mr. Jackson attorney Robert M. Sanger asked Vivanco if he thought the boy’s joke was funny. “Not really,” Vivanco said.
Then Sanger asked if the knife was dull or sharp. “It was sharp,” Vivanco said.
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