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During one of the first visits to Neverland, Jackson invited the boy and his brother to stay in his room but insisted they first get permission from their parents. The boy says his parents agreed. Did they believe that Jackson was the sinless benefactor he has always proclaimed himself to be, or were other forces--ignorance, celebrity fever, avarice--at play? Over the next two years, the boy, his mother and his younger brother and older sister were stay-over guests at Neverland. Jackson lavished gifts and attention on them and provided them an SUV and rides in limousines. Gradually, the accuser said, Jackson's fascination waned, even as the boy's condition worsened. He testified that the singer hid when the boy visited the ranch. A year later, in a near miracle, the cancer was declared to be in remission. No evidence of it has returned.
The family didn't hear from Jackson again until the fall of 2002, when British documentarian Martin Bashir was shooting a feature on the star. Jackson invited the boy to take part and supposedly told him that if he did a "good job acting" in this "audition," he might get acting jobs in film. Again the boy saw Jackson as "the coolest guy in the world, like my best friend ever." He and his family say they didn't know the film was for public, worldwide consumption.
When Living with Michael Jackson aired in the U.S. in February 2003, with the boy prominently on view, the Jackson camp, apparently worried that it showed the singer as child-obsessed, if not a child molester, quickly planned a rebuttal video. That brought the boy and his family back to Neverland, where again the boy and his brother slept in Jackson's bedroom.
The litany of alleged misbehavior--making prank phone calls, sneaking drinks, scanning porn sites, even a lesson in masturbation--is not unfamiliar for preteens. But such doings usually occur among peers. According to the boy, Jackson saw himself as the wise teacher. "If men don't masturbate," the boy recalled him saying, "they can get to a level where they might rape a girl or they can be kind of unstable."
The outcome of the trial will turn largely on the skill of the two law teams. Mesereau has paraded his courtroom savvy in cross-examining the accuser's brother and sister, who were forced into contradictions. Sneddon took heat from observers for unloading his heavy artillery in the second week of what is expected to be a four-month siege, with hundreds of witnesses. The suspicion is that the D.A., who has been itching to nail Jackson since an aborted 1993 molestation trial, just couldn't wait to see the star squirm.
But what kind of star is Jackson? He has not had a No. 1 hit since You Are Not Alone, in 1995. He has allowed surgeons to ravage his face until he resembles Peter Pan less than the Phantom of the Opera. He is now famous primarily for being notorious. Jackson is not the only celebrity who has been hypnotized by the limelight, who pampered his quirks instead of developing his work, who remained addicted to the high life long after the big money ebbed. (Prosecutors, angling for access to his financial statements, assert that he is near bankruptcy.) But it can be said that Jackson has pursued his dreams--like creating his own theme park and inviting lots of kids to come play there with him--to nightmare extremes.