Santa Maria, Calif. – The mother of two of Michael Jackson’s children described the pop star Thursday as a “good father, great with kids” who became a victim of “opportunistic vultures” in his inner circle as they sought to make millions from his troubles.
The testimony about Jackson’s associates marked the second straight day that Jackson’s ex-wife Deborah Rowe turned the tables on prosecutors who called her to the stand in his child-molestation trial.
Rowe was called to bolster a charge that the singer and his associates conspired to hold the accuser’s family captive to make a video praising him. But Rowe instead portrayed Jackson as a victim of men now named as unindicted co-conspirators.
She said they recruited her to make a video praising Jackson, then sold it for millions and kept the money. She said the organizer of the video, Marc Schaffel, bragged to her about how much money he was making off Jackson.
“He was out to hurt Michael and in addition would hurt my children,” Rowe said.
She seemed to lament the state of her relationship with Jackson when a defense lawyer asked if she still considered Jackson a friend. “Yeah,” she said, adding, “if he’d talk to me.”
At one point when she was asked by the defense to describe Jackson, she caught her breath and said: “Generous to a fault, good father, great with kids, puts other people ahead of him. Brilliant businessman.”
Rowe only spoke positively of her ex-husband and reserved expressions of ill will for Schaffel and two other unindicted alleged co-conspirators, saying, “I think they’re opportunistic vultures.”
Rowe was a nurse for a Jackson doctor when they married in 1996, and they had two children together: Prince Michael, 8, and Paris, 7. The couple filed for divorce after three years of marriage, and Rowe is now locked in a family-court dispute over visitation with their children, who are in the singer’s custody.
