Did the mother of Michael Jackson's accuser go looking for support from the readers of a local newspaper?
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Main News
MJJF eNews #460 - Monday Jan 3, 2005

Did the mother of Michael Jackson's accuser go looking for support from the readers of a local newspaper? That's what "Celebrity Justice" is exclusively reporting.

It is said that in 2000, the year that Jackson first met his accuser, an article about the boy and his family appeared in Mid Valley News, a community paper of the town El Monte, just outside of Los Angeles. The paper ran a emotional appear to its readers, asking for financial charity.

"Our car has been repossessed," the boy's mother was quoted as having said. "One chemotherapy injection costs more than $12,000."

Connie Keenan, Mid Valley News editor, has come forward and spoke exclusively with "CJ" regarding the incident. She characterizes the accuser's mother most uncharitably.

"My gut level: she's a shark. She was after money," Keenan said to the show. "My readers were used. My staff was used. It's sickening."

In this same year (2000), Keenan also explained, the mother had approached the newspaper and pitched her story. "She pleaded her case that her son needed all sorts of medical care and they had no financial means to provide it."

Keenan agreed to run the story inviting her readers to assist the family, however, she recalled that almost from the very beginning, there were signals, including the fact that the mother "wanted the money sent to her in her name, at her home address."

That is said to be just the beginning. According to Keenan, the story regarding the family's plight was assigned to reporter Christie Causer, who was so touched by what she had heard that she brought food to the family on Thanksgiving Day. But, Keenan relayed that "the mother, instead of being grateful that this woman brought her a complete Thanksgiving dinner, said 'I'd rather have the money. This is nice, but I'd rather have the money.'"

Keenan promised that her paper would solicit funds to cover the ailing boy's medical expenses only if his mother opened a trust account to receive them. "CJ" reports that nine days before the story ran in the paper, the mother opened an account in her name for the benefit of her son at a Washington Mutual Bank and deposited one cent. That account, they say, was not a trust account.

The Mid Valley News article provided its readers with a road map as to how to make their donations: the name of the bank, the account number, and even the routing number. In the first three weeks following the run of the article, $965 was deposited into the account and $750 was promptly withdrawn.

Keenan said that the raised money wasn't enough for the boy's mother.

"She really wanted another story done on her son because they just didn't make enough money on the first article," Keenan remarked. "And I told her -- and I can be a crusty old broad -- 'we're not doing another story on your son.'"

Keenan recalled the mother having told her, "'Well, I'll take it someplace else,'" and Keenan said she responded to her with a "'Fine.'"

There's more. It turns out that the boy in question was then being treated at Kaiser Permanente at absolutely no cost to the family. There were no medical bills. All treatments the boy was receiving at the time were covered by insurance. The boy's father had been a teamster member who worked at a supermarket facility in the Los Angeles area.

Paul Kenny, head of a teamster's union in Los Angeles, spoke with "CJ" and confirmed that the teamsters negotiated a super health care coverage deal for members.

"They're covered 100% under HMOs," Kenny stated. "Including Kaiser, which is an HMO."

Kenny added, "There was no cost to [the boy's father] out of pocket, at all. Everything should be covered 100% under his contract. Everything. There is [sic] no exceptions."

When Keenan was asked if it was her impression that the family had to pay for the boy's treatment out-of-pocket, she said that it was.

"Of course it was," she was quoted.

Years following the article's run, when Santa Barbara prosecutor Thomas Sneddon filed molestation charges against Jackson, Keenan realized that the boy from her paper's article and Jackson's accuser were one and the same, and made contact with Jackson's former counsel Mark Geragos.

"I just had this gut feeling that something was wrong here. So I sent a copy of the [Mid Valley News] to Mr. Geragos, who was representing Michael Jackson at the time," Keenan stated. "Because maybe there's a grain of truth to what Michael Jackson is saying -- 'I didn't do it' -- or maybe it's just to stop a shark."

Both Keenan and Causer reported that Jackson?s defense team has recently contacted them.

A source close to the accuser's mother insisted that none of the money collected was misspent. The source wouldn't reveal how exactly the money was spent.

Source: Celebrity Justice/MJJForum





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