‘It’s no longer about one kid. It’s about Jackson’s character’

WITH one ruling, Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial has been transformed from a courtroom drama focusing on one child to a retrospective covering a decade’s worth of accusations against Jackson.

Now there are five additional boys, who have grown to be men in the years since they visited Jackson’s Neverland ranch.

Now there are intimations from the prosecutor that Jackson is not just a molester of one child but a serial molester who preys on the young.

Now there is a movie star involved - Macaulay Culkin - and two boys who took multi-million-dollar payoffs from Jackson to go away.

“This is a turning point in the case,” Loyola University Law School Professor Laurie Levenson said. “It’s a different trial. It’s no longer about one kid. It’s about Jackson’s character.”

She said the stakes are higher after California Judge Rodney Melville’s ruling, which allows jurors in Santa Maria to hear evidence about five past allegations.

“This is going to be a dogfight,” Levenson said. Defence lawyer Tom Mesereau “is a very good lawyer, but you may need a magician”.

The prosecution will rely primarily on third party witnesses because all but one of the previous accusers is refusing to testify.

Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville said he’d allow nine witnesses who allege past sex offences and a pattern by Jackson of “grooming” or preparing boys for molestation.

The witnesses include an alleged victim who received a $2.4 million settlement in 1993 from Jackson; the mother of that witness; and the mother of a second alleged victim who got a $20m settlement in 1994 from the pop star.

Jackson was never charged in those incidents.

Witnesses also include former employees at Jackson’s Neverland Valley Ranch. At least one will testify about seeing Jackson engaging in misconduct with former child actor Macaulay Culkin, star of the Home Alone films, Jackson’s lawyer Tom Mesereau said. Culkin has denied anything happened.

Prosecutor Tom Sneddon said testimony would show incidents ranging from kissing to touching boys inside their clothing.

Melville ruled for the prosecution despite Mesereau’s claims that battling over the credibility of the new witnesses would “prolong this trial interminably”. The trial is in its fifth week.

Sneddon said he would begin calling the witnesses in two weeks. Their allegations of a pattern of molestation by Jackson could bolster the testimony of the alleged victim in the current case. The boy, now 15, told the jury Jackson molested him twice at Neverland in 2003. His brother, 14, testified that he saw Jackson molesting the alleged victim twice while the boy was sleeping.

Jackson also is charged with giving the boy alcohol and conspiring to abduct, falsely imprison and extort the boy and his family. Jackson says the family made up the allegations to get money from him.