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Guard testifies he saw Jackson sex acts

BY TINA SUSMAN | STAFF CORRESPONDENT

April 8, 2005

Michael Jackson departs the Santa Barbara County courthouse during the sixth week of his trial Thursday in Santa Maria, Calif. (Getty Images Photo / April 7, 2005)

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - A former security guard at Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch testified yesterday that he saw the pop star performing oral sex on a young boy, and that another time he spotted Jackson kissing the boy passionately and groping his crotch as they stood illuminated in front of a twinkling window display showing Peter Pan and Tinkerbell.

In the most lurid day of testimony yet in Jackson's child molestation trial, another former Neverland employee said she stumbled upon Jackson kissing another youth, then-child star Macaulay Culkin, and running his hands over Culkin's rear end. Culkin and at least three other boys who were frequent visitors to Neverland in the early 1990s also shared Jackson's bed, the witness said.

Defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. moved to discredit both witnesses as money-grubbing, lying malcontents with axes to grind against Jackson, 46, and his security guards. Both were part of a failed attempt to sue Jackson for millions, alleging unfair dismissal and harassment. In countersuits filed by Jackson, each was found to have stolen goods from Neverland.

Nevertheless, their testimony was startling in its sordidness, marking the first time anyone has claimed to have seen Jackson performing oral sex.

Jackson has pleaded innocent to 10 charges related to accusations that he molested a boy, then 13, at Neverland two years ago. The current witnesses are part of the prosecution's attempt to show that the alleged crimes were part of a pattern involving other youngsters.

The former security guard, Ralph Chacon, said that sometime in late 1992 or early 1993 he saw Jackson and a boy enter the hot tub. After frolicking in the water, he said, the two entered a bathroom nearby.

Chacon, peering inside the bathroom from a window, "saw them standing in the nude ... facing each other," he told prosecutor Tom Sneddon. "I saw that Mr. Jackson was caressing the boy's hair."

As Chacon watched, he said Jackson continued kissing the boy, moving his lips lower down the body, and then performed oral sex.

"Did you actually see that?" Sneddon asked.

"Yes," Chacon replied.

Asked where Jackson's hands were, Chacon said: "They were all over his body."

Sometime later - weeks or possibly months - Chacon said Jackson and the same boy were standing in front of a lighted window display showing Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. Jackson "turned him around and kissed him. It was passionate," Chacon said. "Then his hands went down to his crotch area."

The boy sued Jackson alleging molestation. The case was settled in 1994. Criminal charges were never filed.

In her testimony, former maid Adrian Marie McManus said in her four years at Neverland she saw Jackson kissing and groping the same boy, in addition to two others, including Culkin. Culkin has denied being molested. The boys were all described as between 9 and 11.

Both witnesses were subjected to withering cross-examination that focused on their resentment over the security guards Jackson hired in the mid-1990s, whose arrival led to both of them leaving their jobs. McManus also admitted that she had lied during an earlier deposition, saying she never witnessed Jackson doing anything improper with young boys.

Whatever the credibility of the witnesses, their allegations were enough to drive Jackson's mother, Katherine, from the courtroom early in the day. Asked later whether he was embarrassed for her, Jackson said only, "I love my mother."