Family of Jackson’s accuser offer praise in video

SANTA MARIA, California - The mother of Michael Jackson's teenage accuser praised the entertainer as an "ideal family man" who had made her children happier than they had ever been in a two-year-old videotape played for jurors in Jackson's molestation trial.

"He spreads his wings. He makes sure my kids are safe and happy - happiness they have never had," the mother of Jackson's 15-year-old accuser said on the videotape played in court. "He's a true family man. He is an ideal family man and I appreciate him with all my heart. "

The video was recorded shortly after a February 2003 TV documentary showed the 46-year-old entertainer holding hands with his then-13-year-old accuser and discussing his habit of sharing his bed with children.

Prosecutors argue that the public backlash from the documentary by British journalist Martin Bashir sent Jackson's camp into a panic as they moved to isolate the accuser's family members and then coerced them into cooperating with a "rebuttal video" to salvage Jackson's public image.

The self-styled "King of Pop" is charged with molesting the boy, a cancer survivor who had stayed as a guest at his Neverland Valley Ranch in central California, after plying him with wine and alcohol concealed in soda cans.

Jackson, who has pleaded innocent, faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

In the videotape, the family of Jackson's accuser, including the boy, his younger brother, older sister and mother, all praised the entertainer as a kind of father figure who had treated them with kindness.

The mother said that Jackson had been especially supportive when they first met at the time her then-10-year-old son was battling with what doctors thought would be fatal cancer.

"Michael would give me the faith," she said on the tape. "He would give me a view toward the future. "

The tape was shown as the 18-year-old sister of Jackson's accuser returned to the witness stand in the Santa Maria, California courtroom for a second day of questioning.

She wiped tears from her eyes as she watched the tape and cried as she described the changes that came over her brother after his time mostly alone with Jackson.

"He didn't want to be hugged. He didn't want to be kissed, " she said. "It just hurt because I'm his older sister. "

The girl, now a college student, said she had been coached by Jackson's aides on what to say in the video praising the pop star.

But under cross-examination, Jackson lawyer Tom Mesereau suggested that it was the girl's mother and prosecutors who had coached her on what to say on the witness stand. Defence lawyers contend Jackson became the unwitting victim of a scam by his accuser's mother in a bid to wrest money from him.

Earlier testimony from the girl offered jurors the first direct account of the events at Neverland around the time in early 2003 prosecutors say Jackson's aides moved to intimidate her family and the entertainer molested her younger brother.

Over the objection of Mesereau, the girl described how she had seen the entertainer hugging her brother and kissing him repeatedly on the head and the cheek.

"He would constantly be hugging (him), kissing him," she said. "Anytime I saw them, really. "

After she left Neverland to stay with her grandparents in El Monte, California, the girl said that she was followed home from school one day by one of Jackson's bodyguards who videotaped her from a black car.

The previous night she and her grandmother heard rocks hitting the roof of the house. When they went outside, she said, they saw a man running back to the same black car she saw Jackson's bodyguard in the next day.

- REUTERS