Months before Michael Jackson was arrested on allegations of child molestation, Los Angeles County child welfare investigators determined there was no basis to believe there had been abuse, according to a confidential memo revealed Tuesday.
Despite the memo, which officials said Tuesday was legitimate, Santa Barbara County officials say they still plan to file charges in the near future.
Outside legal experts said the denials of wrongdoing by the boy and his mother to Los Angeles officials could significantly help the defense case by establishing that Jackson’s accusers had made inconsistent statements in the last nine months.
The disclosure that Los Angeles authorities had investigated the accusations and were told by the boy and his family that nothing improper had taken place on Jackson’s Neverland Ranch prompted defense attorney Mark Geragos to call on officials in Santa Barbara to drop the case against Jackson.
“This revelation of the investigation is merely the tip of the iceberg and shows that Michael is not only innocent, but that all of this is much ado about money,” Geragos said.
A Feb. 6 broadcast of the documentary “Living With Michael Jackson” showed the star holding hands with the boy and saying that they had spent the night in the same room.
The Nov. 26 memo, disclosed on thesmokinggun.com, said Los Angeles County officials began their investigation after a call from an unidentified school official urging a probe into the broadcast comments by Jackson about sleepovers with children at his ranch.
“The investigation by the Sensitive Case Unit concluded the allegations of neglect and sexual abuse to be unfounded both by the LAPD-Wilshire Division and the Department,” wrote Jennifer Hottenroth, assistant regional administrator for the child services agency.
Hottenroth wrote in the memo that the boy’s mother said Jackson was like a father to her children and denied any sexual abuse. So did the boy, his brother and his sister. The boy’s mother said the same thing in a newspaper interview in February.
Defense lawyers said the memo was very strong evidence that would help Geragos try to convince jurors that the boy and his mother changed their testimony in the last year to extort money from Jackson.
“This looks really important to the defense,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, an expert in criminal law at the University of Southern California. “It could be sufficient evidence that this never goes to trial. But we don’t know what the prosecution has. It would take something like films of Michael and the boy or eyewitnesses, if the prosecution has such things.”
Robert Pugsley, a criminal law professor at Southwestern School of Law in Los Angeles, agreed that the February denials would be an important tool for Geragos. But he also warned that the prosecution’s evidence could turn out to be more persuasive.
“Whether this report in February is substantial enough to sway a jury has yet to be determined because there may well be other evidence out there,” Pugsley said.
Other sources said the prosecution is likely to counter that the mother’s story began to change after her initial interviews because she subsequently learned Jackson had been giving her son wine.
Several sources, including Bill Bastone, editor of The Smoking Gun Web site, said there are obviously many other documents that have not yet been revealed. “There has to be a whole case file, interview notes with the mother and the kids,” he said.
Jackson, 45, who settled an earlier child molestation case in 1993 for an estimated $15 million, was arrested Nov. 20 in Santa Barbara. He is scheduled to be arraigned in the north Santa Barbara County city of Santa Maria on Jan. 9 and has called the allegations against him “a big lie.”
