SANTA MARIA, Calif. – A stand-up comedian who befriended the family of Michael Jackson’s accuser backed up the prosecution charge that the King of Pop kept the family “against their will” on his Neverland ranch so they would not talk to the media.
Comic Louise Palanker testified yesterday that she received a “very disturbing” phone call in 2003 from the accuser’s mother, shortly after the broadcast of a documentary which showed Jackson holding hands with the then-13-year-old cancer survivor who would eventually accuse him of molestation.
“She was extremely agitated,” Palanker testified. “She was almost whispering. She may have been crying. She was very frightened. This was fear-based agitation.
“It was an extremely disturbing phone call,” added Palanker, who met the boy when he took part in a summer comedy camp in 1999 and once gave his family $20,000 to help with his cancer recovery.
She said the accuser’s mother urged her not to call back, saying, “This is not a safe line, they are listening. These people are evil, they are keeping us.”
Palanker said she was so concerned she called a lawyer.
“I felt they were being held against their will,” she said.
Palanker is the first witness to testify that the family was virtually imprisoned by Jackson or his posse.
Palanker also shot a small hole in a defense argument that Jackson’s accuser is being manipulated by his mother. The comic suggested that the accuser’s father was actually the puppet-master.
She recounted an incident in which the father accused comedian George Lopez of stealing $300 from his son’s wallet. But the scam failed when the boy refused to play along.
“He’s been honest in the face of others not wanting him to be,” Palanker said of Jackson’s accuser.
On cross-examination, Palanker admitted she told police that “This family can be as wacky as they want to be.”
Throughout the morning testimony, Jackson seemed more engaged than on Monday, when the King of Pain walked with a shaky, shuffling gait, complained about severe back pain and grimaced throughout the proceedings.