Teen ‘can only describe two abuse incidents’

The teenager at the centre of abuse allegations against Michael Jackson said Jackson molested him five to seven times but could onlydescribe two of the incidents in detail, the lead investigator in the case testified yesterday.

District Attorney Tom Sneddon asked sheriff’s Sergeant Steve Robel about the numbers in order to account for differences that have emerged during evidence in Jackson’s trial.

Robel said yesterday that Gavin, now 15, twice told investigators he was molested five times. The boy himself testified earlier to only two molestations but said he believed there may have been more.

Robel yesterday said that the boy told him: “it happened between five and seven times but he could not articulate exactly” what happened every time.

The investigator said that since the first interviews with the boy in July 2003 he has only been able to provide detailed accounts of two alleged molestations. The possibility of the alleged victim not being aware or fully aware at certain times has been raised in testimony by the boy’s brother, who said he twice witnessed his brother being molested while asleep.

On Tuesday, Robel said he urged the boy and his family to go forward with his claims against the singer by promising them: “we’re going to try our best to make this case work.”

Defence lawyer Robert Sanger confronted Robel with those and other statements from recorded interviews, suggesting they indicated investigators were biased against Jackson from the beginning.

He quoted Robel as saying: “one thing I want to emphasise is you guys are doing the right thing here. ... I don’t care how much money they have. He’s the one who’s done wrong ... We’re going to try to bring him to justice.”

Sanger asked: “that’s not the statement of someone with an open mind who’s trying to find the truth, is it?” Robel said that during his training he was taught to make such a statement to alleged victims.

“That statement is to reassure them,” he said, “because they were terrified when they came forward. It took us two weeks to get them to come in.”

Sanger asked: “isn’t the technique you are taught to tell them to be honest and not to tell them they’re right, everyone else is wrong?”

The sergeant answered that that was not the technique he was taught.

Jackson is on trial in Santa Maria, accused of molesting the boy, then a cancer patient, when he was 13 and plying him with alcohol.