Post by Emerald City on Apr 28, 2005 16:17:55 GMT -5
SANTA MARIA, Calif. - The mother of two of Michael Jackson's children took the stand in his molestation trial again Thursday and depicted the pop star as a victim of a cabal of "opportunistic vultures" in his inner circle who sought to make millions from his troubles and hurt him.
Deborah Rowe, completing testimony that turned the tables on the prosecutors who called her, said a group of men now named as unindicted co-conspirators with Jackson were actually conspiring against her ex-husband.
She said they recruited her to make a video praising Jackson, then sold it for millions and kept the money. She said the organizer of the video, Marc Schaffel, bragged to her about how much money he was making off Jackson.
"He was out to hurt Michael and in addition would hurt my children," Rowe said.
Rowe, who is in a family court fight with Jackson over visitation with her son, Prince Michael, 8, and daughter, Paris, 7, only spoke well of Jackson and reserved expressions of ill will for others around him.
Asked what she thought of Schaffel and two other unindicted alleged co-conspirators, Dieter Wiesner and Ronald Konitzer, Rowe said, "I think they're opportunistic vultures."
Jackson is accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy in 2003, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold the accuser's family captive to get them to rebut the "Living With Michael Jackson" documentary in which the boy appeared and Jackson said he allowed children to sleep in his bed but that it was non-sexual.
Rowe's second day of testimony came after Jackson's lawyers tried to abort her appearance with a motion to strike everything she said on Wednesday — a move they dropped after Thursday's questioning elicited more positive testimony about Jackson.
Their reason for the motion was not made public immediately but appeared to relate to the fact that she was offered by the prosecution as a witness on one specific fact — a claim that the co-conspirators scripted her videotaped interview just as they allegedly scripted one for the mother of Jackson's accuser to rebut the documentary.
As late as Monday, Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen told the court Rowe would say she was scripted.
But when she took the stand Wednesday she said exactly the opposite and she continued to maintain on Thursday that there was no script, that the person who interviewed her on camera had a list of 105 questions in front of him but that she never looked at them because she wanted to be spontaneous.
