Michael Jackson (106 page)

Dr Katz further disclosed that Gavin’s brother Star said that on a flight from Miami to Los Angeles, he saw Michael lick Gavin’s
head as the boy slept against Michael’s chest. He said that Michael gave them all ‘wine, vodka and tequila on numerous occasions’.
He also said, according to the doctor, that one of Michael’s security guards threatened to ‘kill us and our parents if we
told about the alcohol’. He said that Michael ‘talked a lot about sex’, and that he and his brother ‘constantly sleep in Michael’s
room with Michael and his brother in Michael’s bed’. He then gave graphic details of two sexual encounters he says he witnessed
between Gavin and Michael.

Furthermore, Dr Katz wrote that Gavin’s sister Daveline says that Michael gave her wine, as well, and that she witnessed Michael
kissing her brother on the cheek, ‘hugging him and always rubbing him’.

According to the report, when asked about the DCFS inquiry, the family said that they were ‘made’ to say that Michael had
been a father figure and that nothing sexual had ever happened between him and Gavin. Katz, in his report, wrote that he believed
the family had not been forthcoming in the past but was now telling
him
the truth. ‘I don’t get the feeling the mom is lying about anything, though she may distort’, he wrote. ‘I really felt the
kids were credible.’

However, of Michael Jackson, Dr Katz also wrote in his report, ‘He doesn’t really qualify as a pedophile. He’s just a regressed
10-year-old.’

Exactly as happened in the Chandler case – the mental-health professional, Dr Stan Katz, was compelled by California law to
report the details of the recollected sexual abuse to the police. It evolved so quickly, everyone in the Jackson camp was
a little stunned by the swiftness of events, even though they suspected there might be trouble ahead. When told about the
report to the police, Michael’s mouth went agape. ‘Huh?’ he asked. ‘Are you kidding me? Really?’ He seemed lost for several
heartbeats. ‘But…’ He stammered. ‘But… I thought…
huh?
‘

The earlier (and important) denials of sexual abuse aside to Michael Jackson’s videographer and also to the DCFS, there are
elements of the case against Michael that are still questionable: evidence of dysfunction in the Arvizo family, and what such
strange and troubled dynamics may have to do with the charges against the singer, are important to review.

Years ago, in August 1998, the Arvizo family was detained on a shoplifting charge at a J.C. Penney department store in West
Covina, California. According to J.C. Penney, the boys – Gavin and Star – were sent out of the store by their father with an armload
of clothes, the family was then detained and Janet Ventura-Arvizo started a scuffle with three security officers. The family’s
side of the story, however, is that the boys were simply modelling clothes for J.C. Penney – odd in that there was no evidence
to support this notion – not stealing them.

The shoplifting charges were eventually dropped, but Gavin, Star and their mother filed a lawsuit against J.C. Penney’s for
$3 million. Janet then charged that, while being detained, she and her sons were ‘viciously’ beaten by the three security
officers, one of whom is a woman.

In more than 200 pages of documents pertaining to the case, a troubling picture of the family matriarch emerges. The psychiatrist
hired by J.C. Penney’s to evaluate Janet Ventura-Arvizo found her to be ‘schizophrenic’ and ‘delusional’. According to the
doctor, ‘She felt “sad over being a nobody.” With no job… a “sad housewife getting fat.”’ He reports that she was ‘treated
with Zoloft’. He wrote, ‘her depression may have lingered or worsened.’ Of course, that doctor was hired by the department
store; his report would not have been used by J.C. Penney had it not been favourable to their case. Janet’s own therapist
found her to be ‘anxious and depressed’ after the incident, but not delusional.

Most disturbing about the case, though, is that more than two years after the incident, Janet Ventura-Arvizo added a new charge:
she claimed that one of the two male security guards had ‘sexually fondled’ her breasts and pelvic area ‘for up to seven minutes’.
It seems odd that so many years passed before she decided to mention the sexual assault. During litigation, the store’s psychiatrist
asserted that she had rehearsed her sons to back up her ‘far-fetched story’, and that they had all – mother and sons – suffered
‘broken bones’ in addition to her sexual assault. ‘She just came up with this horror story, and ran with it,’ says Tom Griffin,
the attorney who represented J.C. Penney in the case. He insists there was no evidence to back up any of the allegations;
David Arvizo did not seem to want to be involved in this aspect of the allegations.

Ultimately the department store settled with the family, paying them $137,000 days before the scheduled trial in 2001. ‘It
was an incident that turned into, in my opinion, a scam to extract money from J.C. Penney,’ says Tom Griffin. ‘They’re going
for a home run this time,’ he concluded of the family’s action with Michael Jackson. ‘This is a shake down. Shake down, Part
Two.’

Making matters more complex and disturbing, Gavin’s parents – who were married as teenagers and divorced in their thirties – have
had an acrimonious relationship for years. Janet Ventura-Arvizo filed for divorce in late 2001, about a month after the J.C.
Penney settlement. By court order, David Arvizo has not seen his children since 2002 when he pleaded ‘no contest’ to spousal
abuse. A year later, he pleaded ‘no contest’ to child cruelty. A three-year restraining order was put into place. Since the
time of Michael’s arrest, David Arvizo has repeatedly petitioned the courts to allow him to see his offspring. Though he insists
that the children have been rehearsed by Janet to make statements against him, he has been denied the chance to see them,
every legal step along the way.

While the family’s troubles are unfortunate, some of their actions do cast a dark shadow over the case against Michael. There
seems, at least from appearances, to be a troubling history of exaggeration on Janet Ventura-Arvizo’s part, and maybe confabulation,
as well – which will be relevant in the trial, say sources in the Los Angeles legal community. ‘One wonders, is this a pattern?’
asks Karen Russell, a trial attorney in Los Angeles, not involved in the Jackson case. ‘What happened with J.C. Penney’s,
really? Does Mrs Ventura-Arvizo have a habit of not getting what she wants, and then coaching her kids into saying what she
wants them to say, and then proceeding legally? These are questions that will, no doubt, be posed at trial.’

Says Dr Robert Butterworth, a New York psychologist, again not associated with the Jackson case, ‘There’s a possibility for
a child to be told something so many times, he is not rehearsing it but, rather, actually believes it. It’s possible for a
child to become, in a sense, hypnotized by a parent to believe a reality that didn’t occur. They go over and over it again,
but the facts have been distorted. It’s a very troubling phenomenon, very disturbing, and it could be the death knell on this
case.’

It could be argued that Michael Jackson, a celebrity with a great deal to lose, should have made a decision to avoid Gavin’s
family at all costs, if he had known about their history (and he probably did, since he and Janet and Gavin were, apparently,
close enough to share confidences). However, the youngster was, and is, quite ill, and perhaps Michael felt he couldn’t abandon
him under those circumstances.

Also, who knows how many other families in Michael Jackson’s life over the years have had problems even more severe that those
of his present accuser’s? We don’t know about them because matters never escalated as they have with the Arvizo family at
the centre of the present investigation, but it’s likely there’ve been many similar stories over the years. Without exaggeration,
it would be impossible to count the number of disadvantaged families with whom Michael has formed emotional attachments in
the last ten, maybe fifteen, years – and equally impossible to fathom the number of boys he has known, befriended and taken
into his home and his confidence. There is simply no way to count them, there have been so many. He’s fortunate that only
two out of what must surely be hundreds have presented a problem for him.

Jesus Blood. Jesus Juice. Those two descriptions of red and white wine as ascribed to Michael Jackson made headlines in February
2004, as a result of a scathing article about him, by Maureen Orth in
Vanity Fair
. The allegation made by Orth is that Michael gave Gavin Arvizo and another boy wine – Jesus Juice – in Coke cans on a flight
from Florida in February 2003. Jackson, though, prefers Jesus Blood. This is a disturbing accusation, obviously, but even
more so because two of the charges against Michael have to do with giving a minor ‘intoxicating agents’ in order to wear him
down for sex with him.

Orth’s primary source for increasingly lurid stories about Jackson in
Vanity Fair
is his former business adviser Myung-Ho Lee. Lee was Jackson’s financial adviser from 1998 to 2001. He sued him for $14 million
in 2002, and hasn’t stopped talking about him since – even though Jackson settled the suit by giving him money. Lee is the person
who told Orth, in another
Vanity Fair
article, that Jackson hired a witch-doctor named Baba to sacrifice dozens of cows in order to put a curse on David Geffen
and Steven Spielberg. That’s hard to believe… even for Michael Jackson.

The wine story, however, is partially true. Michael
does
refer to white wine as ‘Jesus Juice’ and red wine as ‘Jesus Blood’. It’s an offbeat joke of his, probably not a very good
one, but everyone in his camp knows about it. Also, he
does
drink them both from soda cans. However, Orth reports that the concealment is Michael’s way of drinking alcohol without having
anyone know that he’s doing it. The truth is that he drinks wine out of soda pop cans so that
children
won’t see him doing it. ‘He’s always around kids, and he doesn’t want them to see him drinking,’ says someone in his camp.
‘It’s weird, but not criminal.’ Also, Jackson has always been afraid that he would be photographed with a glass of wine in
his hand, and he thinks that would be inappropriate for his image.

An in-flight passenger profile document that has become part of the public record in litigation between Jackson and XtraJet,
the private airline company he once hired, details the pop star’s food and beverage preferences and seems to further confirm
the wine anecdote. According to the document, dated Sept. 1, 2003: ‘White wine in a Diet Coke can’ was required ‘on every
[the word is underlined in the document for emphasis] flight.’ In addition, according to the passenger profile document, Michael
sometimes drank tequila, gin or Crown Royal on flights.

A strange requirement outlined in the documentation is Michael Jackson’s desire for fried chicken from Kentucky Fried Chicken,
the American fast-food restaurant, for
every
meal: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Michael demands the so-called ‘secret recipe’ with ‘original chicken breasts, mashed potatoes,
corn and biscuits with spray butter’. On short flights, according to the documents, he requests Big Red gum, mints, cheese
and crackers and fruit plates. He will not eat broccoli or ‘strong-scented foods’. Prince Michael I and Paris have a stricter
diet and are not permitted to eat peanut butter, sugar or chocolate. KFC is part of their regimen when flying, but it must
be stripped of all skin. According to the documents, the children ‘typically will ask for the same thing their Dad is eating
for every meal, but he’ll determine what they are allowed to eat, like crackers.’ Also, in bold letters next to their menu,
it reads ‘NO SUGAR!’ and ‘NO CHICKEN SKIN!’ The document says that Paris, in particular, ‘is good at cajoling you for sugar’.
Moreover, Prince Michael II, a.k.a. Blanket, is always fed by his nanny, Grace Rwamba (who, it is noted, will never eat KFC
chicken). The toddler gets the same KFC regimen – ‘cut up into pieces’ – in addition to crackers, grapes and juice or milk. Finally,
the in-flight behaviour of Michael Jackson – a ‘non-smoker’ – is described as ‘very timid… but will get out of his seat during
takeoff and landing. Be prepared to clean a lot after he deplanes.’