Smoke, but is there fire? By Robert Lusetich November 20, 2003 When news broke yesterday of a second allegation of child molestation against him, (Michael) Jackson inferred it was part of some conspiracy to derail his career, such as it is, because it coincided with the release of his latest album; a collection of his greatest hits, plus one new song, One More Chance, which has been virtually ignored by US radio stations. Yet, being strange, especially in this culture, is not a crime. Neither does it necessarily make Jackson a child molester. It has been 10 years since the allegations first surfaced that Jackson had sexually molested a 13-year-old boy named Jordy Chandler. Throughout the intervening years, one aspect of this case has proved particularly puzzling: Where are the other victims? Until yesterday's news that Santa Barbara authorities ?the same ones behind the investigation in 1993 ?had swarmed to Jackson's ranch in the scenic Santa Ynez mountains, about a 90-minute drive north of Los Angeles, as part of an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of another boy, no other such claims have been made against Jackson. Experts uniformly say pedophiles do not stop offending, and Jackson has admitted to having dozens of children stay with him at Neverland ?and in some cases sleep in his bed ?during those years. Yet no other child has come forward, nor news been leaked of any secret pay-offs. Jackson took cruises and travelled the world with young boys, including actors Macaulay and Kieran Caulkin, yet those who have spoken publicly have expressed bemusement at the allegations against their benefactor. According to Jackson, that is because he does not sexually abuse boys. "I have never and would never harm a child," he said earlier this year. "It sickens me that people have written things that portray me as a child abuser." His lifestyle choices came into sharp focus earlier this year in a controversial documentary by British journalist Martin Bashir which revealed, among other things, that Jackson continued to allow children to sleep in his bed, although he slept on the floor. "It's not sexual, we're going to sleep," Jackson says plaintively in the documentary, "I tuck them in ... it's very charming, it's very sweet." Those around him say Jackson is innocent; that he is merely living the childhood denied to him by an abusive father who saw his sons as a fast track to fame and fortune and worked them to the point of exhaustion and physical harm. "He never had a childhood," says Bert Fields, perhaps the most powerful lawyer in Hollywood, who once represented Jackson. "He is having one now. His buddies are 12-year-old kids. They have pillow fights and food fights." Two of his brothers, Marlon and Jermaine, have expressed scepticism about the allegations, Marlon equating them to "a modern-day lynching". "They can go and talk to these children all they want," says Jermaine, "They're not going to find anything. What they need to do is leave him alone." One of Jackson's close friends, the psychic and famous spoon-bender Uri Geller, yesterday also sprang to Jackson's defence. "I'm a father and I would never associate myself with anyone who'd do anything with a child," he says. Geller characterised Jackson as "gullible, innocent, maybe a little confused". Former New York police detective Lou Palumbo, who now runs a celebrity security service in Los Angeles, urged caution, too: "We have had allegations brought against him before. Let's not rush to judgment. This could just be another allegation from someone who wants money from him." The great tragedy of Chandler's case was that, if he really was abused by Jackson, his father set the price for his son's loss of innocence at $US20 million. Geraldine Hughes, a legal secretary who worked on Chandler's case, is reportedly writing a book about the affair in which she allegedly implicates Evan Chandler, an unstable Beverly Hills dentist who yearned to be a Hollywood screenwriter, and his lawyer, Barry Rothman, who has a history of unscrupulous practices, in a scheme to extort money from Jackson by "encouraging" Jordy's allegations. A 1994 investigation by GQ magazine raised similar suspicions, discovering that the boy only made the allegations after he had been injected by a dental anaesthetist with a powerful barbituate, sodium amytal, which is mistakenly believed to act as a truth serum. That magazine also uncovered a taped conversation in which Chandler claims: "Michael's career will be over . . . it will be a massacre if I don't get what I want." What he wanted, clearly, was money, because after settling out of court with Jackson in 1994, Evan Chandler refused to co-operate with the criminal case being brought against Jackson over his son's allegations, effectively killing it. Although Evan and Jordy Chandler have remained silent ?as would undoubtedly have been the terms of their legal settlement with Jackson, who said he settled to avoid a media circus ?Jordy's uncle, Raymond Chandler, has since claimed that Jackson set up Neverland to seduce young boys. "It's part of the sickness," he has said, "that he doesn't think he was doing anything wrong. For him, it was all milk and cookies." But it is difficult to take such claims seriously if those making them have not tried to stop Jackson. It should also be remembered that Jackson has fared well in court against people making accusations. In 1995, four ex-bodyguards who claimed they were fired because they knew about his alleged clandestine affairs with young boys had their case thrown out of an LA court. It was the fifth court case Jackson had won in what his lawyer Zia Modabber called attempted "shakedowns". "People think that if you file a lawsuit against Michael, he will be an easy target," she said five years ago, after winning $2.7 million from a paparazzo who claimed he'd seen a videotape ?which did not exist ?of Jackson having sex with a young boy. "But they are wrong. We're tired of him getting dogged. We're not settling. We're going to trial and winning," says Modabber. Diane Dimond, the former tabloid TV journalist whose Jackson "scoops" over the years have somehow avoided the attention of the Pulitzer Prize judges, said yesterday her inside sources say the family of the boy in these latest allegations is not interested in money but in justice. The coming days will tell. --

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