Jackson held
2003-11-20 22:11
Santa Barbara - Pop star Michael Jackson has been arrested on child molestation charges.
He flew to Santa Barbara from Las Vegas to turn himself in at the Santa Barbara county sheriff's office.
The plane parked in a hangar so that disembarking passengers were hidden from view, said Fox News.
A swarm of reporters was eagerly awaiting his arrival at the airport and the sheriff's office.
Jackson's high-profile attorney, Mark Geragos, reached a deal with authorities earlier on Thursday concerning terms of the singer's surrender.
"I have made arrangements with the sheriff and the district attorney for Mr Jackson to come back and confront these charges," Geragos said.
Once Jackson turns himself in to authorities, he'll be booked - fingerprinted, photographed and checked for weapons. Authorities also planned to take his passport.
There has been a warrant out for Jackson's arrest since Wednesday.
Reports of a Thursday surrender had been circulating since the previous night. Prosecutors said they would ask that bail be set at $3m.
A 12-year-old cancer patient at the centre of the Jackson child molestation scandal may have confessed to his psychiatrist that the pop singer plied him with wine and sleeping pills when he allegedly molested him, sources said.
They also said Jackson's camp had been preparing to face such accusations for months.
They plan to hold the boy's mother up to severe scrutiny, and will likely argue that when Jackson tried to end his financial support of the boy and his family, the mother became, quoting a Jackson insider, "a scorned woman".
"She's very screwed up," said one source. "There's videotape of her acting weird, too. And Michael was very kind to her, even getting an apartment for her boyfriend."
Jackson's team's argument will be, according to sources, that when the boy's mother was told by Jackson's people that the free ride was over, she ran to a lawyer.
But another source told Fox News the boy's family wasn't looking for any monetary settlement, but instead wanted justice served through the court system.