Accuser's mom: Family held as virtual prisoners
Woman says she was 'acting' in video praising Jackson
 |  Michael Jackson and his attorney, Thomas Mesereau Jr., leave the courtroom Thursday. |
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 The mother of Michael Jackson's accuser testifies.
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SANTA MARIA, California (CNN) -- The mother of the teenager accusing Michael Jackson of child molestation testified Thursday that she and her children were held at Neverland Ranch as virtual prisoners by the pop star's associates and security guards.
It wasn't until she used the ruse of a phony illness that she was able to extract them from the ranch, she told jurors during her second day of testimony in Jackson's trial.
She said once she got her children away from Jackson and told her son, the accuser, that he would not be going back, he began "yelling at me."
"Michael loves me," she quoted him as saying. She said it took "weeks" before the boy calmed down, describing him as an "eruptive volcano."
It is CNN's policy not to reveal the names of the underage accuser or members of his family.
Jackson, 46, attended court Thursday accompanied by his mother, Katherine. He wore a black blazer and black pants with a white shirt, black tie and red-and-gold vest and armband.
He was indicted by a grand jury last April on charges of molesting the boy -- now 15 -- giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold him and his family captive in 2003. Jackson has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The day was marked by a contentious exchange between defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. and prosecutor Ron Zonen over the introduction of a surveillance video that apparently both sides had agreed in advance to show the jury.
The row, outside the jury's presence, began when Mesereau objected that the video wasn't what he approved. Zonen accused him of lying and further challenged him to take a polygraph.
Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville stepped in at that point, admonishing both: "Don't accuse each other of lying. That's not professional conduct."
Events after documentary
During her testimony, the mother told jurors of a bizarre string of events she said began in February 2003, after the broadcast of "Living With Michael Jackson," a television documentary by British journalist Martin Bashir.
In the program, Jackson and her son, then 13, are shown holding hands, and Jackson defends as "loving" his practice of letting young boys sleep in his bed.
Amid a public furor over the program, the mother said she was told she and her three children -- the accuser, his younger brother and older sister -- were going to be taken to Brazil, where tutors would be provided for the children.
They were told they would be given both a house and an apartment so they could elude "killers" out to harm the family, she said.
While preparations were being made for the trip, including getting the family visas and passports, they were kept at Neverland and then moved to a Los Angeles hotel, after being told the "killers" had arrived at the ranch, the mother said.
She said guards stood outside their rooms, a car followed them wherever they went, and she was told her phone calls were being monitored.
She said they were "monitored, listened, surveilled, watched, followed -- everything."
The mother said she called friends and relatives and tried "to drop clues" the family was in trouble and needed help, to no avail.
In early March, she said she and the children were taken back to Neverland, where she was ordered to stay in a guest cottage, away from her sons.
Through a window, she said, she could see Jackson "running around" with them "like crazy nuts," recklessly driving go-carts.
"I've lost my kids," she said she thought to herself.
She said she finally persuaded Vinnie Amen, a Jackson associate, to take her to a leg waxing appointment, where she had secretly arranged to meet her boyfriend, a major in the U.S. Army Reserve.
She said she left with the boyfriend, leaving her children at the ranch.
She said she got her parents to feign illness and "negotiated" with Frank Tyson, another Jackson associate, to let the kids come to see their grandparents.
The boy's mother said that after their departure from the ranch, Jackson associates continued to harass the family.
She said they knocked on their door, threw rocks, followed them, and even put a note under the door trying to get the accuser and his younger brother to call them.
The mother said Jackson wrote letters to her son, the accuser, saying he loved him. She said the letters disappeared after the family's belongings were removed from their apartment, allegedly by a Jackson associate, during the time they were held at Neverland.
She described her children as "angry and violent" after they were reunited with her.
"They were not my kids anymore," the mother said. She said she eventually took them to see a therapist, Dr. Stan Katz, because "my house was a cuckoo house now."
The investigation that led to Jackson's indictment began when Katz contacted authorities after talking with the boy.
Asked if she eventually came to believe her son had been molested, the mother said, "Yes," adding that she came to that conclusion after the police investigation had begun.
The mother has been accused by the defense of concocting the molestation allegations to get money, but she testified she never asked for nor received money from Jackson.
And she said she does not plan to file a civil suit against him seeking damages.
"That's not my nature," she said.
The mother also testified she had been "confused and sad" and "was acting" when she heaped praise on Jackson during the taping of a video designed to rebut the Bashir documentary.
She said the video was scripted by Jackson's associates. When she veered off script and said God had healed her son's cancer -- instead of saying Jackson had healed the boy -- and mentioned an investigation by the state Division of Children and Family Services, she said she got in "trouble."
She said she was told that "I had not done an adequate job" on the video and that plans had to proceed to take the family to Brazil.
The indictment against Jackson charges that another Jackson employee, Marc Schaffel, made airline reservations for the family to travel to Brazil on March 3, 2003. But they never took the trip, and the children left Neverland for good nine days later.
Compilation tapes not allowed
The video Zonen wanted to introduce was a compilation edited from four longer surveillance tapes. He said they were found in the office of Brad Miller, a private investigator who worked for Mark Geragos, who was once Jackson's attorney.
Zonen presumably wanted to show the video to reinforce the mother's testimony that she and her family were under surveillance by the Jackson camp.
But when it opened with a title sequence referring to the material as the "Brad Miller Surveillance Video Tapes," Mesereau objected, saying that the version about to be shown was not what he approved.
"He's lying," Zonen shot back.
"That's simply not true," Mesereau replied.
That was when Melville interceded. In the end, he decided not to allow the prosecution to show the edited compilation.
So Friday morning, the jury will view the four longer videotapes instead, before the defense's cross-examination of the mother.
CNN's Ted Rowlands and Dree De Clamecy contributed to this report.
