Mood:
incredulous
by Dr. K. C. ArceneauxNovember 13, 2004
The release of redacted documents, on November 12, 2004, that are among the evidence in the child molestation case against Michael Jackson could collapse the case, or at the very least, cast serious doubt on the conspiracy charges against him. The documents include correspondence between then Jackson attorney Mark Geragos and William Dickerman, attorney for "Jane Doe," the mother of Jackson's accuser. The letters were sent immediately following the period during which Ms. Doe said she was imprisoned by Jackson employees and was fearful for her life. However, the letters are very mundane, if combative, and concern the return of household belongings. There is no mention of events remotely resembling the accusations made in the Grand Jury indictment.
The letters reveal a prolonged and acrimonious exchange between the attorneys, beginning on March 26 and ending on May 17, 2003. The letters concern return of items that had been removed from Ms. Doe's home and placed in storage. In the letters, there is squabbling about when and where to deliver the belongings, and concern about who would make payments on a storage facility. And yet, this exchange occurs immediately after the period that Ms. Doe claims she and her children were falsely imprisoned by Jackson's staff. The question here is simple. If Ms. Doe thought she and her children had been imprisoned and her life threatened, as she later claimed, why did she not tell Dickerman, her attorney? Kidnapping is a much more serious issue than who will pay for the storage of furniture.
Ms. Doe's accusations against Jackson are similar to charges she made against her now-ex husband in a divorce dispute. About the Jackson case, Ms. Doe said in a police interview leaked to the media in September, 2004, that she felt that "Somebody was going to kill the kids and me. Mostly the kids." In the divorce dispute, she accused her husband of molesting their daughter, kidnapping, and threatening her life. In judge's chambers, the daughter recanted statements she had made earlier, and said that the father did not make death threats. Russell Halpern, attorney for the boy's father, said that he believes the mother scripted her children. 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. I remember my client showing me, bringing the paperwork to me."
The charges against Michael Jackson are not the first time Ms.Doe has leveled charges of sexual abuse against someone. It is the third. In addition to the charges made against her husband, Ms. Doe also accused security guards of sexually abusing her by fondling her breasts and crotch in a parking lot. The guards had followed her son and husband from the store and accused them of shoplifting. The boy reportedly was carrying a stack of unpaid-for clothing. Ms. Doe alleged that the abuse went on for seven minutes, as her family apparently looked on helplessly. As in the Jackson case, there was a memory delay before accusations were made. Ms. Doe remembered two years after the parking lot incident that she had been (allegedly) sexually abused; these accusations were added to her three million dollar civil case against J.C. Penney.
Tom Griffen, Penney's attorney, said in an interview by Mike Taibbi on the Abrams Report, March 4, 2004,"It became readily apparent that this was an incident, in my opinion, a scam to extract money from J. C. Penney." The case was settled out of court, for a reported $137,000. According to Griffen, the settlement was to avoid the risk of losing in a jury trial. One also assumes that the negative publicity would not have been desirable for the company. The psychiatrist retained by Penney to examine Ms. Doe said that he felt she scripted her children's stories to match hers.
Veracity seems to be a serious problem with this family. In the first indictment Jackson was charged with seven counts of child molestation. In the second indictment, by a grand jury presided over by Santa Barbara prosecutor Tom Sneddon, the instances of molestation had declined from seven to three, with one alleged molestation attempt. Where did the other three molestations go? Did the boy in question, now a mature teenager, testify to seven instances of molestation and then remember that three of them did not happen? Or, now that he is older and wiser, is he less cooperative? Inexplicably, the grand jury indictment added charges not present in the first indictment. Jackson now has been accused of conspiracy to commit twenty-eight felony acts, including conspiring to commit child abduction; false imprisonment; extortion; committing lewd acts upon a child; attempting to commit a lewd act; and administering an intoxicating agent to a child.
The timeframe of the alleged molestations has changed, as well. In the first indictment, the dates were given as from February 7, 2003, to March 10, 2003. These dates were changed in the grand jury indictment, from February 20 to March 12. In a pre-trial hearing on November 8, 2004, Jackson attorney Susan Yu said, "The chronologies are critical to the defense because the dates of the alleged molestations in the original complaint (in December) are different from the dates in the indictment (in April)." Yu said, "These dates are different because the (accuser's) family changed their story. They changed their story because they are not telling the truth."
Copyright, first American serial rights, Nov. 14, 2004
Source: MJRedemption/MJJForum
Discuss this article on MJJForum: MJJForum Article