The former child star Macaulay Culkin on Wednesday denied that Michael Jackson had ever molested him, and dismissed the current charges against the pop singer as ”absolutely ridiculous”.
For the first time, Culkin, a defence witness at Jackson’s California trial on child molestation charges, admitted that as a child he had shared a bed with the 46-year-old singer on several occasions. But he added: ”He never molested me. I think I’d realise if something like that had happened.”
Culkin was just the first of a parade of celebrity witnesses expected to appear in court to defend Mr Jackson.
The singer denies molesting 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo, plying him with alcohol and conspiring to hold him and his family captive. He faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.
Culkin’s appearance at the trial breathed new life into the circus surrounding the court house as media crews and fans returned to the scene. Wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, he became flustered at times under cross-examination. But despite bruising questioning from a prosecutor, Ron Zonen, Culkin held his ground, insisting that his friendship with Jackson had been born of a shared history, rather than any desire by the singer to groom him, as the prosecutors allege.
”One day I was a normal kid who happened to be an actor and the next I was this thing and people were hiding in the bushes trying to take photographs of me,” he said. ”One of the first things that we talked about was, he said ‘if you ever need any help’ … It was a comfort.”
But despite Culkin’s glowing testimony, the prosecutors did partially succeed in portraying a similar process of grooming that they allege Jackson carried out with the boy in the current case.
Culkin was called by Jackson’s defence team to refute the prosecution’s claim that he was one of several men who were allegedly sexually molested by the singer when they were children. Prosecution witnesses had testified that Jackson inappropriately touched Culkin, who was a frequent guest of his as a child. A chef at the singer’s Neverland ranch testified that he had seen Jackson with his hand up the actor’s shorts.
Culkin described how he had met the singer. ”He kind of called me up out of the blue at about the time of the Home Alone movie,” he said.
He said he had first visited Neverland when he nine years old. He slept in Jackson’s bedroom, sometimes with his brother or sister, occasionally with other children. The relationship lasted for several years, with Jackson joining the boy on a week-long holiday to Bermuda, and the child actor frequently visiting Neverland. The visits stopped when the actor was 14, although the friendship was renewed when he reached 17.
Asked for his opinion of the current charges against Jackson, Culkin said: ”I think they’re absolutely ridiculous.” He also described how he had heard that it had been alleged on CNN that Jackson had molested him. ”I just couldn’t believe it. Nobody even approached me and asked if these allegations were true.”
Prosecutors pointed out to him that they had tried on numerous occasions to interview him in regard to the current charges, and at the time of an earlier investigation in 1993. Culkin claimed to be unaware that his attorneys had told prosecutors he would not grant them an interview.
The exchange is significant, said analysts, because it could lead the jury to conclude that if Culkin was not entirely honest about that, he might be misleading them about other events.
Culkin insisted that his friendship with Jackson had been ”like kids”, playing videogames and throwing water balloons. He also recounted receiving gifts from the singer, including a Rolex watch. Prosecutors have described how Jackson gave Gavin Arvizo an expensive watch.
But Culkin insisted that this was different. ”I wasn’t a person without money,” he said, ”so it wasn’t that awe inspiring.
”My father had a Rolex.”
When he told prosecutors that Jackson was ”childlike”, the prosecution asked him whether the sexually explicit material investigators found in Jackson’s bedroom was childlike.
”When I was 12 or 13 years old I had a couple of copies of Playboy hidden under my bed,” Culkin replied. – Guardian Unlimited Â