Jackson 'never touched me'

2005-05-17 19:58

Santa Maria - Michael Jackson's child-sex accuser told social workers two years ago the star had never touched him inappropriately, the pop icon's trial heard on Tuesday.

Social worker Irene Peters, of the sensitive-case unit of the Los Angeles child welfare department, said she interviewed the 13-year-old on February 20 2003, the same general period during which Jackson is accused of abusing him and holding him and his family captive.

She quoted the child as saying "everybody thinks Michael Jackson abused me".

"He has never touched me," he added during the interview at the home of his mother's then-boyfriend.

The boy also said he had never slept in the same bed as Jackson, 46, although the star himself said in an explosive television documentary that sparked the molestation investigation against him that the two had shared a bed.

The social worker said: "I asked him point-blankly: 'Did you ever sleep in a bed with Michael Jackson?'. He told me, 'no'."

'Nothing untoward had ever happened'

Peters said the boy's mother, accused by the defence of inventing the allegations against Jackson in order to extort him, also praised the star and said that nothing untoward had ever happened between the singer and her son.

The woman also showed the social workers a video of Jackson and her son walking around and looking at swans.

"She said she wanted to show us how caring and loving Michael was," Peters told jurors.

"She said Michael had been like a father to her children."

Peters said that two Jackson aides were present when the social workers arrived at the flat, but they were asked to leave the room before the interviews began.

Jackson has denied 10 charges, including child abuse, plying the boy with alcohol to seduce him and holding him and his family prisoner for three weeks in late February and March 2003.

Claimed she was 'menaced'

But Peters said the woman never complained to her of being held against her will by Jackson and his aides.

The alleged victim's mother claimed during her testimony that she was menaced into lying about Jackson's conduct with her child to the social workers by the two Jackson's aides who were present at the home and recorded the interview.

The woman told social workers she was "totally appalled by the negative attention her children were getting" after the February 6 2003 broadcast of the documentary in which her son was seen holding hands with Jackson, who admitted to sleeping in the same bed as children, Peters said.

- AFP