Michael Jackson Takes Pained Steps Into Court, And Out Again

An apparently hobbled Michael Jackson gets a hand as he leaves the courtroom. (Pool Photo Carlo Allegri)

SANTA MARIA, Calif., March 21 -- Michael Jackson walked slowly and haltingly into the courtroom Monday several minutes after the designated 8:30 a.m. start time for his child molestation trial. He leaned on the arm of his burly bodyguard, who guided him as gently as one might a fragile octogenarian or traction patient and then helped the pop star lower himself into his seat.

Jackson didn't stay there long. Within five minutes, the bailiff was radioing for the bodyguard, as Jackson seemed to dab at his face with a tissue. A man said to be Jackson's doctor quickly appeared at his side, wearing a varsity jacket over violet surgical scrubs, and then Jackson was reversing the apparently pained trip he had just made down the courtroom aisle.

It was a day that would see testimony from a psychologist describing the symptoms of child sexual abuse and from a flight attendant recounting how she used to fill empty Diet Coke cans with white wine for the defendant when working the Gulfstream jets he often chartered. And it started with Jackson in his most striking show of physical distress since the now infamous day earlier this month when he showed up to court in pajama bottoms.

What was ailing Jackson never became clear. Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville -- who had threatened to have the singer arrested when he showed up an hour late on March 10 complaining of back pains -- made no mention of the incident when court resumed around 9:15 a.m., after a half-hour absence by Jackson. According to the Associated Press, Jackson spokeswoman Raymone K. Bain said the singer complained late Sunday of severe and sometimes excruciating back pain.

Jackson wore a conservative charcoal suit and purple armband over a French-cuffed dress shirt and multicolored brocade vest. His dark pageboy hairstyle was unusually mussed.

Reporters asked Jackson as he left court at the end of the day if he was on medication. "Yes, by way of the doctor," he said, wincing. "I'm in pain."

As the state began the fourth week of its case against the singer, most of the day was devoted to testimony of an expert witness enlisted to make the case that the now 15-year-old accuser's sometimes erratic behavior -- seized upon last week by defense attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility -- is not unusual for young victims of sexual abuse.

Anthony J. Urquiza, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of California-Davis, said that children are typically molested by people they know very well and perhaps care about, and that those molesters generally woo or coerce their victims into silence. Those victims may take months or years before telling anyone, and then their stories may come out haltingly or incompletely, he said.

"It's a really hard thing to tell somebody something that is embarrassing or humiliating," especially if it involves sexual activity, Urquiza said. If asked before they are ready to talk about it, some victims may deny any abuse occurred, he said.

Urquiza's testimony seemed aimed at countering questions raised by the defense last week about Jackson's accuser giving conflicting accounts of what happened and at one point telling a school administrator that Jackson had not abused him.

Urquiza also noted that boys who have been molested often cope by acting aggressively or belligerently. Under cross-examination last week by Jackson attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr., the accuser acknowledged that he had racked up a series of disciplinary violations at his middle school.

Mesereau then turned on the psychologist, grilling him on how much research he had done into the subject of false accusations, which Urquiza insisted make up only a tiny percentage of child sexual abuse cases and generally only occur amid bitter custody disputes.

Mesereau also engaged Urquiza in something of a logic puzzle, trying to poke holes in the psychologist's description of abuse victims as evasive or aggressive. "You can be aggressive for a lot of different reasons," the defense attorney said, and later: "Just because they have new details, new dates [in telling their stories] doesn't mean they're not liars, right?"

Lauren Wallace, a former attendant for a charter-jet company who said she had served Jackson on 15 to 20 flights, appeared to smile nervously at the defendant, whom she described drinking as many as three glasses of wine and one or more glasses of gin or tequila on a cross-country flight.

She said another flight attendant tipped her off to Jackson's fondness for drinking wine from Diet Coke cans; whenever he was boarding one of her jets, she would prepare three cans for him on ice. Wallace said she also made a habit of hiding mini-bottles of liquor in the lavatory for Jackson, and that later she would sometimes find them empty.

Under cross-examination -- immediately shouted down by prosecutors as hearsay -- Wallace said the purpose of the secrecy was so that Jackson's children wouldn't see him drinking. She also testified that she had never seen intoxicated children on his flights.

Wallace also acknowledged that Jackson had never asked her to provide the mini-bottles; it was just, she said, her attempt to improve her in-flight service.