Kids are not to leave', said Jackson guard station note

Tim Molloy, Santa Maria California

But the witness, Brian Barron, also said under defence questioning that it would have been appropriate to keep child guests on the estate if their parents weren't present and that they probably would not let any children leave if they were unsupervised.

Mr Barron, a police officer for the town of Guadalupe, moonlighted at Neverland for about three years until leaving after the ranch was raided by Santa Barbara County sheriff's investigators. He said his superiors in Guadalupe suggested he not work there any longer because of the criminal investigation.

The witness also said that after the November 2003 raid for which he was not present the sheriff's department asked him to go back to work at Neverland as a law enforcement informant but that he refused.

The witness said the directive concerning the boy was written on a guard station greaseboard for a week-long period in January or February 2003. Mr Barron said he did not know who wrote it.

Under cross-examination by defence attorney Robert Sanger, Mr Barron acknowledged that as a police officer he would have been required to report anything illegal he saw at the ranch and that he never had grounds to do so.

Mr Sanger asked whether the directive might also have appeared in a log of activity at Neverland's gate. The attorney produced a page of the log dated February 19, 2003, that stated: "The kids are not to leave per Joe."

The name Joe referred to a ranch manager.

The February 19 date has surfaced previously in the trial as the day when the

accuser, his brother, sister and mother were taken to Los Angeles to record a so-called rebuttal video in which they praised Jackson as a father figure.

Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a 13-year-old cancer patient in February or March 2003 and giving him alcohol. He is also accused of conspiring to hold his family captive to get them to make a rebuttal video after the airing of a TV documentary in which Jackson said he let children sleep in his bed.