US: The sister of the boy accusing Michael Jackson of child molestation told the court yesterday that on one of the first times the family visited Neverland ranch, the boy asked if he could sleep in the singer's bedroom. The family agreed.
Gavin Arvizo's sister Davellin, now 18, also said that two years later, at the time of the alleged abuse, on a trip to Miami, Jackson (46) repeatedly took Gavin to a private room. Her brother would "act jumpy" afterwards. Her evidence came on day four of Jackson's trial in Santa Maria, California.
Ms Arvizo said Jackson came into contact with Gavin when he had cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. He subsequently recovered. Jackson would phone Gavin and invite the entire family to Neverland.
Her parents had a fierce argument on the first visit. Asked by district attorney Tom Sneddon, prosecuting, if her father had struck her mother on previous occasions, she replied: "Too many to count." Did he strike you and your brothers, he asked. "Yes," she replied, "lots of times."
It is thought the prosecution wants to show the mother's behaviour as attributable to beatings by her then husband, while the defence hopes to portray her as an inconsistent money-grabber who was prepared to manipulate her children for financial gain.
Defence attorney Thomas Mesereau has turned the testimony of the first two prosecution witnesses to his advantage. He intimidated Martin Bashir, the British journalist who made a documentary about Jackson, by repeatedly asking him if he had discussed his testimony with journalists and by pressing him on his contacts with the prosecution.
He manoeuvred the second witness, PR executive Ann Gabriel, employed by the Jackson camp in the days after the Bashir documentary, to corroborate the Jackson defence, that he is a naive, trusting, isolated figure, a victim of a conspiracy by the Arvizo family and of a conspiracy by those around him.