by Patrick Moser
SANTA MARIA, California - Michael Jackson`s teenage accuser said Tuesday he did not tell a school administrator about the alleged sex abuse because he was afraid he classmates would make fun of him.
The claim came a day after the 15-year-old former cancer patient dealt a serious blow to the prosecution in the superstar`s child sex trial by admitting that he had told the teacher Jackson had never molested him.
The boy, wrapping up four days of crucial and often feisty testimony, also conceded Tuesday that he no longer liked the man who he once considered a hero and dubbed "Daddy Michael."
As Jackson`s lead lawyer Thomas Mesereau ended a damaging grilling of the boy that began last Thursday, prosecutor Tom Sneddon tried to rehabilitate the credibility of his star witness by asking him why he had not told the senior teacher about the alleged abuse.
"Because all the kids were already making fun of me at school and I didn`t want to say it happened," the confident youth said.
The boy reluctantly conceded Monday during a relentless cross-examination by Mesereau that while the teacher had directly asked if Jackson had touched him inappropriately two years ago, he denied any abuse had taken place.
"I said Michael didn`t do anything to me," he said.
Before allowing the boy to leave the witness stand Tuesday, Sneddon also moved to limit the damage from a host of other apparent contradictions in the boy`s statements to the trial jury, to police and to the grand jury that issued a 10-count indictment against Jackson in April 2004.
"When you were before the grand jury did you tell the truth?" Sneddon asked the boy. "Yes," the youth replied.
Mesereau on Monday uncovered several discrepancies in the various accounts of the crimes that allegedly took place at Jackson`s Neverland Ranch.
The attorney pointed out that the boy initially claimed he was molested before he and his family appeared on a videotape in which they heaped praise on Jackson and dismissing any suggestion the star would harm a child.
But on Monday the teenager claimed he was sexually abused after the taping -- which took place the same day social workers interviewed the family about his relationship with the entertainer.
Mesereau had suggested that the boy had invented his claims against his Jackson because he felt rejected by Jackson as a father figure after the star took back a car he had given him and stopped taking his phone calls.
On Tuesday, the boy, whose often testy exchanges with Mesereau have provided courtroom fireworks, said he no longer regarded the faded 46-year-old "King of Pop" as his father-figure and a best friend.
"I don`t really like him anymore," the young witness said of the pop icon to whom he once wrote a letter addressed to "Daddy Michael from your son."
"I don`t think he is worthy of the respect I was giving him as the `coolest guy in the world,`" the boy said.
Jackson has pleaded innocent to 10 counts of sexually molesting the then 13-year-old boy, plying him with alcohol to seduce him and conspiring to kidnap the youth and his family and keep them prisoner at Neverland.
Father-of-three Jackson could face 20 years behind bars if found guilty.
His young accuser told in graphic detail last week how the superstar had masturbated him on his bed at Neverland on at least two occasions in February or March 2003.
The boy`s younger brother, the only eye-witness to the alleged molestation, told jurors earlier that he had witnessed two incidents of molestation in the split-level bedroom.
But Mesereau got the accuser`s now 14-year-old brother and his older sister to admit that had lied to authorities about various aspects of the case.
Testimony by the teenager`s mother, who Jackson`s camp have painted as a financial predator who coached her children to lie under oath to win cash settlements in lawsuits, is eagerly awaited.
03/15/2005 18:45 GMT