Jackson’s molestation trial under way

SANTA MARIA, Calif. – Jurors were given opposing images of Michael Jackson as the pop star’s trial opened Monday, with the prosecution portraying him as a perverted child molester and the defense saying he is the victim of a con artist who used her cancer-stricken son to prey on celebrities for money.

District Attorney Thomas Sneddon outlined a complicated and sometimes bizarre story alleging that Jackson had shown the boy sexually explicit material and groped him as his associates threatened to kill the boy’s mother if he told anyone.

Sneddon said the boy, now 15, will describe to the jury his sexual experiences with Jackson and show that the musician’s Neverland Ranch was a devilish lair.

“The private world of Michael Jackson will show that instead of reading them ‘Peter Pan,’ he’s showing them sexually explicit magazines. … Instead of cookies and milk, you can substitute wine, vodka and bourbon,” Sneddon said.

Jackson, 46, sat still as a statue with one hand pressed against his cheek as Sneddon outlined the accusations. In the front row of the courtroom, Jackson’s mother, Katherine, sat beside her son Jermaine. They were the only Jackson family members present.

Michael Jackson is charged with molesting the then-13-year-old cancer patient at Neverland in 2003, plying him with alcohol and conspiring to hold him and his family captive.

After the nearly three-hour opening statement by the prosecutor, defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. went on the attack, saying the mother of the accuser fraudulently claimed to many people that she was destitute and that her son needed money for chemotherapy. In truth, he said, the boy’s father was a member of a union that covered his medical bills.

Mesereau said the mother went to comedian Jay Leno for money and Leno was so suspicious that he called Santa Barbara, Calif., police to tell them he had been contacted and “something was wrong. They were looking for a mark.”

The mother also approached comedian George Lopez and a Los Angeles TV weatherman, who staged a fund-raiser for the child at a comedy club, the defense attorney said.

“At the fund-raiser, there was (the boy) in the lobby of the Laugh Factory with his hand out, prodded by (his mother),” Mesereau said.

He said celebrities including Mike Tyson and Jim Carrey turned the family away, but Jackson was too sympathetic and “vulnerable.”

But the prosecutor said Jackson had intended to use the boy as part of a comeback attempt by having the boy discuss in a television documentary how the singer had helped him through his cancer.

Before the interview with documentary maker Martin Bashir in 2002, Jackson privately told the boy what to say when he was in front of the camera, Sneddon said.