Jackson 'rocked' by documentary

2005-02-28 19:58

Santa Maria - A British television documentary that led to a child sex investigation against Michael Jackson "rocked" the cash-strapped entertainer's world, prosecutor Tom Sneedon alleged on Monday.

"The defendant Michael Jackson's world was rocked," Sneddon told the jury in opening arguments of the long awaited celebrity trial in the California town of Santa Maria.

"It wasn't rocked in the musical sense; it was rocked in the real life sense," he said of the growing public and media outcry following the February 2003 broadcast of journalist Martin Bashir's documentary "Living With Michael Jackson."

"His life was rocked so badly, his close friend and confidant Marc Schaffel called it a train wreck," Sneddon said.

Sneddon alleged that for years the 1980s pop icon Jackson had been in tremendous financial debt, which led him and his aides to hatch a plot to kidnap the boy and his family and hold them against their will in order to limit the damage caused by the film.

- SAPA