Club owner: Accuser's mother said Jackson was holding family
Man who put boy in touch with singer recalls phone call
 |  Michael Jackson leaves the courthouse Tuesday. |
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 Prosecutors will be allowed to introduce evidence of past allegations.
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SANTA MARIA, California (CNN) -- The mother of Michael Jackson's accuser made a frantic phone call to the owner of a Los Angeles comedy club saying she and her children were being held against their will at the pop star's Neverland Ranch, the club owner testified Tuesday.
"She said, 'They hold me here with my kid against my will,'" said Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada in testimony Tuesday at Jackson's child molestation trial.
An Israeli émigré who speaks in accented English, Masada said he and the mother discussed calling the police, but they did not.
Masada originally put Jackson in touch with the boy in 2000 when the child was suffering from cancer.
Masada testified the mother was crying during the call, which came after her son and Jackson appeared together in a controversial TV documentary in February 2003.
In their indictment against Jackson, prosecutors allege that he and five associates conspired to hold the family against their will.
The defense has repeatedly scoffed at the charge, noting that no one in the family tried to call police or get away during the time they were allegedly being held captive.
Masada also said he put the mother in touch with a lawyer to prevent the use of the boy's picture in the documentary by British journalist Martin Bashir.
Masada said the boy was being teased and called names at school because of his appearance in the program, which showed him holding hands with Jackson.
Masada testified he first met Jackson's accuser in the summer of 1999, when the boy, his brother and his sister attended a comedy camp for disadvantaged children at the Laugh Factory.
The next year, after the boy was diagnosed with cancer, Masada said he visited him in the hospital frequently and also began giving the family money.
Masada said he began encouraging the boy to eat, to regain his strength, even giving him $50 bills as a reward.
So when the boy saw Jackson on a TV in the hospital and told Masada that he would like to meet him, Masada said he told the boy, "OK, if you eat."
But because Masada had never met Jackson, he said he began calling "anybody I could" who might have a way to contact the pop star.
The next day, Jackson called the boy in the hospital, and he was "so impressed, so grateful to hear from Michael," Masada said.
Club owner upset by documentary
Masada said after the Bashir documentary aired, he was contacted by the Jackson camp, through the boy's mother, to appear in a rebuttal video.
He said he was upset with Bashir for exposing the boy's identity, and he believed his role in the video was to "say something about Bashir." But he said he was also encouraged "to talk about Michael."
Asked if he had ever met Jackson, Masada said he had not, until Tuesday in court. Then, he greeted Jackson, saying, "How are you?"
Masada testified the boy's father repeatedly asked him for money during the boy's bout with cancer, but the boy's mother did not.
He said when he told the mother that a "particular person," whom he didn't identify, was willing to "Give you whatever amount of money you need," and even a house, she responded that all she wanted was "prayers."
The defense has been trying to paint the boy's mother as the greedy and vengeful force behind the molestation allegations.
Prosecutors have countered with testimony that it was the father, not the mother, who pestered celebrities for money as the boy battled cancer, which has since gone into remission.
Jackson's accuser and his father became estranged after his parents split up in 2001, about two years before he says Jackson molested him at age 13.
Masada testified that after the boy left Neverland, he seemed "kind of withdrawn," supporting earlier testimony from the boy's sister that his demeanor changed after his time with Jackson.
Testimony about plane flight
Also taking the stand Tuesday was Cynthia Ann Bell, a flight attendant on a private jet that carried Jackson, the accuser and his family from Miami, Florida, to California after the Bashir documentary aired in February 2003.
Bell, who said she flew with Jackson between three and six times, said she served him wine disguised in a Diet Coke can throughout the flight, although he did not instruct her to do so.
She said she did not see Jackson share the can with anybody else and did not see any children drinking.
The accuser and his brother have testified that during the flight, they drank wine from the soda can, which Jackson referred to as "Jesus juice."
Bell said she did not see the accuser intoxicated. But she described him as loud, obnoxious and "unusually rude," complaining about how his dinner was prepared and talking very loudly about a valuable watch Jackson had just given him.
The boy earlier testified that Jackson took the watch off his wrist and handed it to him as a gift, telling him it was worth $75,000.
The prosecution contends that the watch was part of a pattern of Jackson giving gifts to obtain silence from his alleged victims and their families.
Jackson, wearing a black jacket with a gold cross on the pocket, a gold vest and a red-and-gold armband, attended court Tuesday with his parents, as he has most days of the trial.
Despite a serious setback in his defense the day before, he appeared upbeat, waving to cheering fans outside the courthouse.
On Monday, Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville ruled prosecutors could present witnesses to try to prove the pop star had a pattern of grooming young boys for sexual abuse. (Full story)
Jackson was indicted last April by a state grand jury on 10 felony counts for incidents that allegedly occurred in February and March 2003.
The 46-year-old singer is accused of molesting the boy, now 15, at Neverland, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold the boy's family captive in 2003.
Jackson has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
CNN's Dree DeClamecy contributed to this report.
