THE OTHER GLOVE FINALLY dropped. Last week representatives of Michael Jackson and the 14-year-old boy who accused him of sexual molestation agreed to settle the boy's civil suit. No promises were put in writing -- and no judge would tolerate such promises -- but it was understood that the boy will not testify in pending criminal investigations of Jackson being pursued by the Los Angeles and Santa Barbara district attorneys. Meanwhile, the star gets to maintain his innocence. The price tag was estimated between $15 million and $50 million -- part paid in cash, part to be fed into a trust fund for the boy.
Afterward, the two parties sounded as if they were the same side. Both professed to be pleased with the resolution; both blamed the media for snooping; both underlined that Jackson proclaims himself blameless; both implied that they settled to protect their sensitive clients. "A child can't heal until this is behind him," declared the boy's attorney, Larry Feldman, and the same could apply to the childlike Jackson. "Michael wants to get on with his life," said his lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, "and let the healing process begin."
For Michael that may take a while. His bodyguards, for example, are pressing their own suit against him, and court cases await over the cancellation of his tour. And Los Angeles D.A. Gil Garcetti insisted that his office has not closed the Jackson file. But California law does not allow the state to compel testimony from juveniles in sex-crime cases. Without the boy's evidence, the authorities may have only hearsay testimony -- probably not enough to win or even bring a case against Jackson. So for now his freedom is assured, if not his reputation. Neither he nor the boy will be required to relate bedtime intimacies under oath.
The agreement capped five months of tawdry wrangling in what now seems like the all-tabloid media. Maids and chauffeurs, lissome lads and their parents fed their accusations of misconduct or declarations of support to the avid press. Tracking the story was a full-time job for many newshounds -- 250 littered the lawn of the Superior Court building in Santa Monica last week to hear the announcement of the epochal compromise -- and for the two squads of lawyers. The main attorneys got high marks for their work. "Feldman publicized, publicized, publicized, and then got the big settlement," says New York City attorney Raoul Felder. "Cochran and Howard Weitzman did a good job by hobbling the criminal case."
Last August, at the beginning of the case, both sides were in disarray. The boy's first attorney, Gloria Allred, famous for trying cases in the media, didn't last long. For a while, Jackson's improbable front man was private detective Anthony Pellicano. As for Jackson's lawyers, one of them never met his client; the other spent only 30 minutes with him in Moscow and promptly departed for the South of France. They did not even know if Garcetti was issuing an arrest warrant for Jackson. The savviest legal and personal adviser was actress Elizabeth Taylor, whose own lawyer told her, "Cochran is the only man for the job."