| SANTA MARIA, California (CNN) -- The mother of a boy who alleged Michael Jackson molested him in 1993 testified Monday that she allowed her son to start spending nights alone with the pop star after a sobbing Jackson pleaded with her to let them sleep together.
Taking the stand in Jackson's child molestation trial, the mother said she initially refused Jackson's requests for them to spend nights together. But she said she relented during a trip to Las Vegas in March 1993, after Jackson -- whom she described as "sobbing, crying, shaking and trembling" -- confronted her.
"You don't trust me. We're a family," she quoted the entertainer as saying. "There's nothing wrong. There's nothing going on. Why don't you trust me?"
After 30 to 40 minutes of pleading, the mother said she relented, and the singer and child then began sleeping in the same bed on nights when they were together. The boy was 13 at the time.
She said Jackson would visit the family's home in Santa Monica to spend the night with her son, leave in the morning after he went to school and then return in the afternoon when the boy came home. There was only one bed in the boy's room, she said.
By the fall of 1993, the mother said she became concerned about what was going on because her son had become withdrawn, sullen and "was not wanting to be with us anymore." She said he began dressing like Jackson and was "not as sweet as he normally was."
"[He] was spending too much time with Michael Jackson, and I was upset," she said. "I wanted my son back. ... It was getting out of hand."
In 1994, the boy's family reached a confidential multimillion-dollar settlement with Jackson over molestation allegations, in which Jackson did not admit guilt. Now 25, the alleged victim has decided not to testify in Jackson's trial because he does not want to get involved in the media spectacle surrounding it, his uncle has told CNN. | |
Wearing his pajamas in the street?