Santa Maria, Calif. – As they have through three months of sometimes bizarre testimony, lawyers for both sides in the child-molesting trial of Michael Jackson in their final arguments Thursday painted widely divergent portraits of a singer whose fame once rivaled that of Elvis and the Beatles, but who has in recent years retreated into a strange and private world.
A jury of eight women and four men will soon cast a verdict on the man and his world, with incalculable consequences for his career, his fortune, his reputation, even his health. But whatever the jury decides, Jackson has been indelibly damaged by his tribulation in a California courtroom, his secrets laid bare and his psyche picked apart.
The trial in Santa Maria is only the latest in a decade of reversals for Jackson, whose music career is stalled and whose debts are piling up at a dizzying pace. Even if he is acquitted, many people will continue to believe that he harbors an unhealthy fondness for young boys, whom he openly admits inviting into his bed. He insulates himself from reality at his 2,700-acre Neverland Valley Ranch, surrounded by zoo animals and well-paid loyalists who do not question his odd behavior.
Deputy District Attorney Ronald Zonen called Jackson a “predator” who feasted upon weak boys from fatherless homes, luring them into his bedroom with long conversations and lavish gifts, then softening them up for sexual molesting with alcohol and pornography. The accuser in this case, a 15-year-old recovering cancer patient, is but the latest in a line of victims that goes back more than a decade, the prosecutor said.
By day, Zonen said, the boys played at Neverland, driving customized go-carts, playing the latest video games, enjoying carnival rides and gorging themselves on candy and ice cream.
“At night,” Zonen said, “they entered into the world of the forbidden in Mr. Jackson’s bedroom. Mr. Jackson’s room was a veritable fortress, with locks and codes which the boys were given.
“And they learned about human sexuality from someone who was only too willing to be their teacher.”
Jackson’s lead lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, dismissed the prosecution’s lurid account as a fantasy woven by enemies of Jackson and by a family seeking to exploit his fame and riches to become wealthy themselves.
He described the accuser and his family as “con artists, actors and liars” who insinuated themselves into Jackson’s life and the lives of many other celebrities as part of a pattern of fraud and deceit.
Mesereau said Jackson, whom he described as “childlike and different and offbeat and naive,” has been the victim of such hustlers repeatedly in his life. That is why he is in constant financial trouble and frequently the target of schemers, he said.
The jury listened raptly to the statements of the two lawyers, which took all day Thursday and are expected to be completed by midday today.