Case Files: Boy Says Jackson Molested Him
LOS ANGELES (AP) _ The 13-year-old boy who claims Michael Jackson molested him told investigators their four-month relationship began with hugs and kisses, then escalated into sexual acts, case files showed.
″It really got out of hand,″ the boy said in investigative documents reviewed Thursday by The Associated Press.
In other developments today, Jackson returned to the concert stage after postponing a show for two days, citing illness; and there was a published report that videos taken from Jackson’s home showed no sign of wrongdoing.
In the documents, the boy told caseworker Ann T. Rosato with Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services that Jackson tongue-kissed him and performed oral sex on him while the two bathed together. The boy says he did not reciprocate.
Jackson’s lawyer, Howard Weitzman, described the allegations as ″totally false.″ He said he had not seen the papers, but had been told what they contained. A source who acted on condition of anonymity supplied the documents to the AP.
Attorneys for the boy’s divorced parents did not return calls to their offices Thursday. The boy is at the center of a bitter custody fight, according to court documents.
A Children’s Services spokesman said caseworkers are forbidden by state law to discuss cases publicly.
The allegations by the boy triggered a criminal investigation of Jackson by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Police have expanded their investigation of Jackson to include his relationship with at least four boys, the Los Angeles Times and KCAL-TV reported. Police declined to comment on the reports Thursday.
The Los Angeles Times reported that videotapes seized from Jackson’s home do not incriminate the entertainer, nor was there other physical evidence to support the abuse allegation.
Jackson has denied wrongdoing and said through his private investigator that the case grew out of allegations from somebody who tried to extort $20 million from him. Jackson rejected the extortion attempt, the investigator said.
In other developments, an 11-year-old Australian boy told a TV audience he shared a bed with Jackson but said it was all in slumber party-style fun and that the star is no child abuser.
″I was on one side of the bed and he was on the other. It was a big bed,″ Brett Barnes of Melbourne, Australia, told KNBC-TV late Wednesday.
Another of Jackson’s young friends came to the singer’s defense Thursday. Wade Robson, 10, told Fox Television that he had shared a bed with Jackson, but the entertainer never attempted any sexual contact.
Jackson, who turns 35 on Sunday, canceled two concerts in Thailand after news surfaced about the molestation investigation, blaming the cancellations on acute dehydration caused by his strenuous performance Tuesday in tropical heat. He returned to the stage today.
Superstar pal Elizabeth Taylor and sister Janet Jackson were flying today to meet Jackson in Singapore, where he is scheduled to perform this weekend, said concert promoter Brian Marcar.
According to the case files reviewed by the AP, the 13-year-old boy first met Jackson in February of this year when Jackson’s car broke down and he sought help from the boy’s stepfather, who runs a rental car company. The relationship ended in June, the documents say.
The caseworker’s report quoted the boy as saying Jackson ″graduated to kissing me on the mouth. One time he was kissing me and he put his tongue in my mouth and I said, ’I don’t do that.‴
The report also said, Jackson ″continued to rub up against me quite often″ and the entertainer became sexually aroused. Jackson told the boy on another occasion that ″their being together was ‘in the cosmos’ and ’meant to be,‴ the caseworker’s report said.
Jackson allegedly told the boy that masturbation ″was a wonderful thing″ and coerced the boy to bathe with Jackson and allow the entertainer to perform oral sex on the boy, the report says.
The boy discussed the sexual allegations in three hours of sessions with therapist Mathis Abrams, who immediately reported the situation to Children’s Services and Los Angeles police as required by law, the documents show.
Rosato of Children’s Services and two police officers then interviewed the boy, the documents say.
The boy told the therapist that during his relationship with Jackson the singer called him nearly every day and took him, his mother and stepsister on trips to Las Vegas, Florida and Monaco. The trips were documented at the time in news accounts and published photographs.