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Predator or prey? Debate on
Jurors were offered polarised images of Michael Jackson at the start of his trial on Monday, as a scheming, predatory paedophile or the innocent victim of a family of professional hustlers.
Jurors were offered polarised images of Michael Jackson at the start of his trial on Monday, as a scheming, predatory paedophile or the innocent victim of a family of professional hustlers.
In a three-hour opening statement full of explicit sexual detail, the prosecution laid out its case that the pop icon lured a 13-year-old cancer victim to his Neverland Ranch, plied him with alcohol, exposed him to pornography and then molested him.
The defence dismissed the charges as “bogus” and portrayed the child accuser’s mother as a money-grubbing con-artist who preyed on celebrities.
It was the first time the charges, that could send Jackson, 46, to jail for up to 20 years, had been laid out in lurid detail.
Zeroing in on Jackson’s public acknowledgement that he had shared his bedroom, and bed, with children, district attorney Tom Sneddon told the 12-member jury that the image of chaste sleepovers with bedtime stories and snacks was a fiction.
“It’s not children’s books, but visits to Internet porn sites ... magazines like Hustler, Playboy, Barely Legal,” he said of Jackson’s sprawling, fantasy-style estate in California that boasts a theme park and petting zoo.
