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Counselor: Jackson's accuser was a disciplinary problem

BY TINA SUSMAN | STAFF CORRESPONDENT

8:36 PM EDT, April 19, 2005

Michael Jackson (April 19, 2005)

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - A school counselor said Tuesday that the boy Michael Jackson allegedly molested was a constant disciplinary problem, who "acted up" in class, talked back to teachers and received poor grades both before and after his alleged captivity at Jackson's Neverland Valley ranch, testimony that contradicted family claims that he only became a problem after his time at Neverland.

The counselor and teacher, Michael Davy, was one of the final witnesses who will be called by prosecutors, who expect to rest their case against the pop star next week and whose latest witnesses have described a sea change in the boy's behavior in March 2003. That's when prosecutors allege he, his mother, and two siblings finally escaped Neverland, where they say they were held for about three weeks to prevent any damaging information about Jackson from becoming public.

Davy appeared to corroborate some of their allegations when he said that the boy and his siblings began missing school constantly in February 2003 and were finally withdrawn in March -- the time the captivity is said to have occurred.

He identified the person who came to check the children out of school as a Jackson associate and said the mother was not present. In her testimony, which ended earlier yesterday, the mother said Jackson yanked her children from school as part of a plan to whisk the family out of the country.

Under cross-examination, though, Davy offered a far different view of the boy, who was then 13, than those of his mother, stepfather and grandmother, all of whom say he was a sweet and loving child who became problematic only after March 2003, when the molestation is alleged to have occurred.

Davy acknowledged writing in a school report that within a few months of the boy first enrolling at the school in fall 2002, "it became readily apparent he was a discipline problem." He showed no sign of change when he was re-enrolled in late March 2003, Davy said, after the alleged captivity.

Earlier, defense attorney Tom Mesereau Jr. sought one last time to cast the woman as con artist by quizzing her about thousands of dollars put into a Washington Mutual bank account opened on her son's behalf in 2000, when he was suffering from cancer, and on injuries she claimed resulted from a 1998 beating by J.C. Penney security guards. A civil suit over that incident netted the family $152,000.

Under questioning, the woman insisted she had no control over the bank account, although she was the sole signatory. "I did what David told me," she said, referring to her ex-husband, whom she says forced her to give him whatever money was collected. She denied using the money for, among other things, cosmetic surgery.