In a turbulent and emotional day in the Michael Jackson sex abuse trial, the mother of his teenage accuser told the court on Wednesday that the singer and his associates persuaded her that her family was in mortal danger from ”killers” after the broadcast of the Martin Bashir documentary, Living with Michael Jackson.
Frequently breaking down in tears, she told the court that she had seen Jackson lick her son’s head ”over and over” and that the family had been held against their will at the singer’s Neverland ranch.
Janet Arvizo said that in the wake of the documentary Jackson had summoned the family to take part in a Miami press conference. The 46-year-old singer and his associates, she said, told her that killers were looking for her children and they would only be safe if they did what he said.
”He spoke to all three of my kids,” she told the jury. ”He spoke in a very normal way, in a male voice, telling us that we were in danger, that he was a father figure, that he knew what to do in this situation because he had read hundreds of books on psychology.”
But the press conference never took place, she said, and on their return flight to California she witnessed Jackson licking her son’s head as he slept.
”I believed you,” she said, pointing at Jackson sitting barely 15ft from her in court.
Dressed soberly in a pink trouser suit and unrecognisable as the person seen by the jury in a video shown on Tuesday, the mother took the stand midway through the morning to declare: ”My name is Janet Jackson.”
Arvizo changed her name last year following her marriage to another man surnamed Jackson.
Asked by the prosecution attorney Ronald Zonen whom she understood the ”killers” to be, the former Arvizo replied, ”Him [pointing at Jackson], all of them … they were the ones who ended up being the killers.”
Her testimony was marked by a tendency to ramble and to direct personal comments at Jackson. While prosecutors struggled to restrict her testimony to the points under examination, the defence was happy to let her talk.
But her emotional contribution seemed to alienate some members of the jury. One elderly female juror, who has taken notes throughout the six-week trial, put aside her notebook and sat with her arms folded across her chest as the witness cried.
Arvizo, a key witness for the prosecution, almost did not testify. The trial was thrown into confusion in the morning when she told the judge she would not answer questions about her financial probity.
She took the fifth amendment under which witnesses do not have to answer questions that might incriminate them. The judge, Rodney Melville, assented, ruling that she could testify on some matters but not others. Some observers believe that the decision may make any conviction of the singer extremely vulnerable on appeal.
The defence alleges that Arvizo was engaged in fraudulently obtaining welfare payments. – Guardian Unlimited Â