Michael Jackson and his mother, Katherine, arriving at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse in Santa Maria, California, yesterday. - REUTERS
SANTA MARIA, Reuters:
MICHAEL JACKSON'S 16-year-old cousin told jurors on Tuesday that she saw his accuser and the boy's younger brother steal wine from the pop star's kitchen late at night while they were staying at his Neverland Valley Ranch.
Simone Jackson was the first relative of the 46-year-old singer to testify in his defence and the latest witness to describe the two young boys at the centre of the case drinking alcohol on the sly at Neverland in February and March 2003.
The teenage girl said that at about 1 a.m. on March 3, 2003, she was sitting in a corner of Jackson's large kitchen area at Neverland, playing a video game, when she saw the two boys come in and take one bottle of wine each.
"They didn't see me, I was sitting off to the side," Simone Jackson said, speaking softly from the witness stand. "They grabbed it and (the accuser's brother) got a wine glass and (the accuser) just took the bottle."
When the boys then saw her, she said, "I told them they weren't supposed to do that, and they told me not to say anything."
Prosecutors have charged Jackson with furnishing his accuser, a recovering cancer patient, with alcohol in order to abuse him and both boys testified that it was the superstar who gave them wine. Both denied drinking when he was not around.
Jackson is also charged with four counts of molesting the boy, who was 13 in early 2003, and conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. He faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted on all 10 counts.
Simone Jackson said that during the three days that she spent at Neverland that March, she befriended the accuser's sister, who confided that the family was leaving for Brazil soon and that her mother was eager to go.
That testimony ran counter to the mother's claim that Jackson's associates tried to pack the family off to Brazil against her will after the broadcast of a damaging TV documentary about the self-proclaimed King of Pop.
