LOS ANGELES (AP) – The district attorney making child molestation allegations against Michael Jackson apologized for joking last week when authorities announced an arrest warrant had been issued for the pop icon.
Santa Barbara County District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon was responding to criticism about his demeanor at the Nov. 19 news conference.
At one point, the prosecutor drew chuckles when he welcomed reporters to Santa Barbara with the line, “I hope that you all stay long and spend lots of money because we need your sales tax to support our offices.”
In a CNN interview Tuesday, Sneddon said, “I think the criticism was valid, I think to some extent (the comment) was inappropriate. I feel bad about it because I should have known better.”
The apology came as questions emerged about the credibility of the family of Jackson’s accuser and as the singer’s attorney, Mark Geragos, vowed to “land like a ton of bricks” on anyone who besmirches his reputation.
“If anybody doesn’t think based upon what’s happened so far that the true motivation of these charges and these allegations is anything but money and the seeking of money, then they’re living in their own Neverland,” Geragos said Tuesday, referring to the singer’s Santa Barbara County estate.
The statement followed revelations that Geragos and Jackson were secretly videotaped while flying on a private jet to Santa Barbara last week for Jackson’s surrender and booking.
Geragos claimed in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against Santa Monica-based XtraJet that the charter company covertly installed two cameras in the plane’s cabin.
The cameras “were recording attorney-client conversations and then somebody had the unmitigated gall to shop those tapes around to media outlets in order to sell them to the highest bidder,” he said.
The tapes’ existence came to light when representatives of XtraJet showed it to several news organizations, saying they had found two videotapes aboard one of their jets and wanted to know whether it was legal to distribute or sell them.
The attorney for XtraJet did not immediately return a call for comment. The FBI said it seized tapes from XtraJet and were trying to assess whether there had been a violation of federal law.
“Michael Jackson is not going to be abused,” Geragos said. “Michael Jackson is not going to be slammed. He is not going to be a pinata for every person who has financial motives.”
The developments came as details about the boy’s family began to emerge, including two previous cases that involved abuse allegations: a lawsuit in which the family said they were battered by mall security guards, and a divorce fight in which the father pleaded no contest to spousal abuse and child cruelty.
In November 2001, J.C. Penney Co. paid the boy’s family $137,500 to settle a lawsuit alleging security guards beat the boy, his mother and his brother in a parking lot in 1998 after the boy left the store with clothes that hadn’t been paid for, court records show.
The mother also contended that she was sexually assaulted by one of the guards during the confrontation.
A month before the settlement, the boy’s mother had filed for divorce, beginning a bitter fight that would include criminal charges of abuse. The father’s attorney, Russell Halpern, said the mother had lied about the abuse and had a “Svengali-like” ability to make her children repeat her lies.
Halpern said the father once showed him a script his wife had allegedly written for their children to use when they were questioned in a civil deposition.
“She wrote out all their testimony. I actually saw the script,” Halpern said Tuesday. “I remember my client showing me, bringing the paperwork to me.”
The Associated Press does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse. The child’s mother has an unlisted number and could not be located for comment. J.C. Penney lawyers did not return a call seeking comment.
The family’s past legal cases could be critical in the current molestation case, if Jackson attorneys can show the mother or the accuser lacks credibility, said Leonard Levine, a defense attorney who specializes in sexual assault cases.
“It sounds like music to a defense attorney’s ears – that there have been other cases where they have sued and there is at least an argument that the allegations are similar to the ones here,” Levine said.
Jackson’s spokesman, Stuart Backerman, declined to comment about the past lawsuits involving the accuser’s family. The Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office declined to comment Tuesday.
In 2002, the boy’s father was charged with four counts of child cruelty, and one count each of injuring a child, making a threat and false imprisonment. He pleaded no contest to one count of child cruelty but it was unclear from court records which of his children was involved. The other charges were dismissed.
The father also pleaded no contest to spousal abuse in 2001.
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AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch also contributed to this report.
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AP-ES-11-26-03 1238EST
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