SANTA MARIA, California - The mother of the teenager who accused Michael Jackson of sex abuse claimed Monday that the star has "fooled the world" about his relationships with children.
In round two of a testy head-to-head courtroom struggle with Jackson's lead attorney Thomas Mesereau, the woman suggested that the superstar's interest in children was not innocent.
"He's managed to fool the world," she told the trial jury that could jail the star for up to 20 years.
"What he puts out in the world is not who he really is. Because of this criminal proceeding, people know who he really is," she said of the pop icon, accused of molesting her then 13-year-old son.
When Mesereau asked on a second fiery day of cross-examination why she told police Jackson had failed to hire a tutor for her three children, she said the entertainer did not have the youngster's interests at heart.
She claimed the actions indicated that Jackson "didn't care about children, he just cares about what he's doing with children."
The woman's testimony is crucial to the prosecution, which is trying to prove that Jackson molested the woman's son -- at the time a 13 year-old cancer patient -- in February and March of 2003, plied him with alcohol to seduce him, then plotted to kidnap him and his family.
Jackson, 46, has denied all 10 charges.
Mesereau, a former boxer, is moving to expose the combative witness as a greed-driven "professional plaintiff" with a history of lying under oath and coaching her children to lie in order to win cash settlements in lawsuits.
On Friday the mother admitted lying under oath in a lawsuit she filed against a department store in 2000 in which she won a 152,000-dollar settlement over claims of wrongful arrest and sexual assault by security guards.
When Mesereau asked her Monday if she rehearsed her children about what to say in that case, she turned to jurors and said: "He's giving me too much credit. No I did not."
The woman also claimed that Jackson aides told her the lives of her boyfriend and parents were in danger, which is why she never raised the alarm during her alleged three weeks of captivity at Jackson's Neverland Ranch and a Los Angeles-area hotel.
Under renewed grilling by Mesereau, the woman admitted she was surrounded by police officers and other officials when she claims she was taken under duress by Jackson employees to a government building in Los Angeles to apply for passports for her and her children.
"I wanted to reach for them so bad. At that point my parents' life was in danger," she said explaining why she did not shout out for help if she believed she had been kidnapped.
The woman also conceded she first told authorities about the alleged death threats more than four months after her alleged captivity, and only after she had met with a lawyer who represented a teenager who won more than 20 million dollars from Jackson to settle 1993 sex abuse allegations.
The woman admitted she allowed her son and her two other children to return to Neverland several times after she claims to have caught Jackson licking her son's head on a plane before the alleged sex abuse to place.
"Poor judgement on my part," conceded the woman, who earlier tearfully begged jurors not to judge her on her actions.
The woman also reiterated her claim that Jackson aides forced her into praising the star and describing him as a father figure in a video aimed at clearing him of any suspicion of abusing her son.
Prosecutors claim that Jackson and five employees held the family prisoner until they agreed to make the so-called rebuttal video.
In a prickly exchange with Mesereau on Friday, the witness cited attorney-client privilege when refusing to answer key question about whether she told her lawyer about her alleged imprisonment and said she had only hazy recollections of other events.
"She's a very difficult witness," legal analyst Jim Moret said, pointing out that even the prosecution had requested that parts of her testimony be stricken from the official court record.
04/18/2005 21:27 GMT