|
Author revisits early Jackson case
By SCOTT HADLY
NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER
Just days before Michael Jackson is set to watch the court testimony by the mother of the boy he is accused of molesting, a new book purports to detail the pop star's alleged intimate relationship with another boy more than a decade ago.
In his self-published work, "All That Glitters: The Crime and the Cover Up," Santa Barbara lawyer Ray Chandler, the uncle of the boy who accused Michael Jackson of molestation in 1993, includes what he says are transcripts of interviews between the boy and his psychiatrist and details from tape recordings of interviews with the boy's father from that time.
The News-Press had no way of confirming the authenticity of the documents - which were posted on the Internet - on Sunday. Mr. Chandler said the interview with the boy and another interview with his father were tape-recorded, and those recordings were later transcribed. The October 1993 interview between the boy and his psychiatrist has also been edited, and some names have been changed, Mr. Chandler said.
Mr. Chandler, who is scheduled to appear on several network television shows this week, said the publication of his book isn't about money. In an interview with the News-Press on Sunday, he said a BBC documentary about the pop star shown last year prompted him to write it now. He said he thought it was important to come forward and tell what he knew.
The News-Press was unable to get a comment from Mr. Jackson's lawyers regarding the book. The singer and his legal team are constrained by a gag order in the current case, but he has consistently denied both the current charges against him and the allegations dating back to the 1993 case. Last week, he released a statement saying he would never harm a child and that a civil settlement related to the decade-old case and another case were made to spare his family from a public trial.
The 46-year-old entertainer has pleaded not guilty to charges of child molestation, conspiracy and administering an intoxicating agent.
His trial is set to begin early next year, but, in a series of pre-trial hearings, his defense team has attacked the prosecution's case, accusing District Attorney Thomas Sneddon of misusing his power and carrying a vendetta against their client dating back to the failed 1993 case.
The details from that investigation have come up in other ways in the current criminal case. Two individuals involved in the 1993 case, the family's lawyer and a psychiatrist testified before the criminal grand jury in the spring, and recently Mr. Jackson's defense team has asked for access to photographs taken during the search of Mr. Jackson's Neverland Valley Ranch a decade ago.
In a recent defense motion, Mr. Jackson's lawyers asked for other evidence in a 1993-94 investigation.
"Mr. Jackson's right to receive exculpatory information from the prosecution also requires production of materials from the prior investigation," Mr. Jackson's lawyer Steve Cochran said in the motion.
Prosecutors never charged Mr. Jackson in that case because the boy refused to cooperate after he and his family accepted a multimillion-dollar settlement. Part of the settlement includes a confidentiality agreement that prohibits the family from discussing the case, but Mr. Chandler is not bound by the agreement.
He said he has not spoken to either his brother or his nephew for several years but took extensive notes and accumulated the documents back in 1993 and 1994.
Mr. Chandler said he doesn't know anything about the current case, but he had planned to write a book about the case involving his nephew 10 years ago. At that time, his brother's lawyer had asked him to wait.
The idea was put on the back burner until early last year when he saw Martin Bashir's documentary "Living with Michael Jackson." Seeing a boy sitting on Mr. Jackson's lap and listening to the entertainer describe sharing his bed with young boys troubled Mr. Chandler, he said.
"I had a visceral reaction," he said. "I would have thought that after '93 no parent would have had allowed their kid to hang around him."
The most striking document, which along with several others is posted on Mr. Chandler's Web site, www.allthatglittersbook.com, is what the author says is a transcript from his nephew's interview with a psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Gardner, who is now dead, about the boy's relationship with Mr. Jackson.
"I tell you I have a lot of documents and evidence," Mr. Chandler said in the interview with the News-Press. "But yes, that's probably the most important. I think in the past people have had snippets - a piece here and there - but they've never been able to see a clear picture of what happened."
In the alleged transcripts, the boy and Dr. Gardner break the boy's relationship with Mr. Jackson into several phases, going from long phone conversations, to innocently sharing the same bed, to graphic sexual encounters. Although some of the details have been published before, including a signed sworn declaration from the boy, the depth of detail presented in the 55-page document has not before been seen.
In one section, the boy is quoted as telling Dr. Gardner that Mr. Jackson told him he had to keep their relationship secret.
"He (Michael) said that we had a little box, and this was a secret - and it's a box that only he and I could share. You put the secret in the box, and nobody can know about what's in the box but him and me," the boy is quoted as saying. "He said that we weren't conditioned, but if this box were revealed to the other people, like regular people of today's society, they're conditioned so they would believe it was wrong. And so that's why I shouldn't reveal what's in the box."
In another section, the boy is quoted lamenting that he didn't do enough to stop Mr. Jackson and allowed for the alleged contact to get more and more intimate. He allowed it to go on because at first he didn't think anything was wrong with the behavior, according to the document.
Dr. Gardner then allegedly asked, "Do you see the wrong in it now?"
"Of course," the 13-year-old boy is quoted as saying.
"He's a grown-up, and he's using his experience of his age
in manipulating and coercing younger people who don't have as much
experience as him, and don't have the ability to say no to someone
powerful like that. He's using his power, his experience, his age
- his overwhelmingness - to get what he wants."
|
