Michael Jackson’s team was ”extremely agitated” after the broadcast of a British documentary highlighting his friendships with children, a former employee of his company said on Wednesday.
The public relations executive Ann Gabriel told the court on the third day of Jackson’s trial on child molestation charges that the Martin Bashir documentary Living with Michael Jackson had become an ”absolute disaster” for the 46-year-old singer.
Asked by the prosecution attorney, Gordon Auchincloss, how she would rate on a scale of one to 10 the negative impact of the documentary, in which Jackson admitted sharing his bedroom with children, she replied: ”A 25.”
The Jackson team sought to make a video rebuttal involving the family at the centre of the allegations, and at one point had to scramble to bring them back to the pop star’s Neverland ranch, she said.
Jackson’s team later told the employee that they had the mother on tape and would make her look like a ”crack whore”.
Cross-examining Gabriel, Jackson’s lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, sought to undermine her integrity by forcing her to admit that she had never met the singer.
She also said Jackson was not in charge of the day-to-day management of his affairs, further buttressing the defence’s contention that the star was an isolated victim surrounded by advisers intent on exploiting him.
At the outset of the third day of the singer’s trial on charges of sexual molestation of a 13-year-old boy, administering alcohol to a boy and multiple charges of conspiracy involving extortion and false imprisonment, Jackson appeared animated and agitated.
Dressed in a black suit, white and gold waistcoat and his customary armband, he talked at length with his attorneys during a delay, gesticulating and frequently waving his arms around.
Gabriel described how she had been hired by Jackson’s company to undertake ”crisis management” in the wake of the Bashir documentary. ”I felt the documentary was put together in a way that portrayed Michael Jackson in a particularly negative way,” she said.
As the crisis deepened in the days after the broadcast: ”There were documents released on smokinggun.com that in conjunction with the documentary I felt were beyond a disaster.”
The documents related to the 1993 allegation of child sexual abuse against Jackson which were settled out of court.
A key element of the conspiracy charge is that Jackson and others kept the family at Neverland against their will and forced them to take part in a rebuttal video.
But 10 days after Bashir’s documentary, Gabriel said she had received a phone call from Marc Shaffel, a Jackson adviser, who told her that the mother had taken her two boys from the ranch early that morning.
Later the same day Shaffel called her to say that the family had been brought back and that the situation was ”under control”.
”I didn’t understand why he would be so concerned about them leaving the ranch,” she said.
Later she said to another Jackson associate, a lawyer named David Le Grand, ”Don’t make me believe that these people were hunted down like dogs and brought back.”
Le Grand, she said, replied: ”I can’t discuss this right now.”
The trial continues. – Guardian Unlimited Â