Free Republic

SANTA MARIA, Calif. (AP) - They may not be as unpredictable as Michael Jackson, but witnesses in the singer's child molestation case have surprised lawyers on both sides with unexpected testimony. Flight attendant Cynthia Bell had been expected to testify this past week that Jackson shared wine with his young accuser on an airplane trip - but she said no such thing. Bell testified she served Jackson wine in a Diet Coke can but did not see the boy drink from it. Prosecutors also thought Jesus Salas, the pop star's former house manager, would say he served wine to Jackson...

Giles teacher caught on video, police say Posted: 3:36 p.m. The New River Valley Current A Giles County teacher was caught on video inappropriately touching a student during a class this week, Narrows Police Chief Tommy Gautier confirmed Friday. Homer Lee White, 54, a county teacher for three decades, was charged Wednesday with six counts of aggravated sexual assault against an 11-year-old male student. White is the music instructor at Narrows Elementary/Middle School and band director at Narrows High School. Gautier said that after parents complained that their son had been molested multiple times during school hours, police worked out...

UN-created Pederast Undergroundby William Norman GriggFebruary 20, 2005   Didier Bourguet is on trial in his native France for charges of sexual abuse and rape in Congo while working as a UN transport worker. His defense attorney, Claude de Boosere-Lepidi, told the court "that there was a network of UN Personnel who had sex with underage girls and that Bourguet had engaged in similar activity in a previous UN posting in the Central African Republic," reported the February 12 Los Angeles Times. “Bourguet’s case is the only one that has been prosecuted among 150 allegations against about 50 soldiers and...

Parents and teens alike are exploring sexual identity issues. Are they heteroflexible -- or fauxmosexual? Girls barely in their teens are exploring their sexuality. And more and more often, that exploration includes same-sex behavior. The trend has, inevitably, spawned new words. Some say they're "heteroflexible." Others sneer that they're merely "fauxmosexual." Is it really new? More importantly -- to parents and to the teens themselves -- what does it mean? Lisa M. Diamond, PhD, assistant professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, studies young women's sexual orientations, sexual attractions, and sexual behavior. "Women's...

No Name Calling Week?     1/12/2005By Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D.Yes, name-calling is wrong. But this event’s sponsors reveal the agenda behind banning it. “There is a special place in hell for people like you!” These words were directed at me by a teacher during this past summer’s National Education Association (NEA) convention in Washington, D.C. This delegate to the NEA convention made his prediction in response to my presence at the NEA’s Ex-Gay Educators’ Caucus booth in the convention exhibit hall. His cheery salutation caught me off-guard given the message of tolerance and acceptance I had been hearing around the exhibit hall....

A Crime Ready for Its Close-Up Cinema Tackles Pedophilia, in Equal Amounts of Shadow and Light By Desson Thomson Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 16, 2005; Page N01 In "Bad Education," which opened here Friday, a preteen boy named Ignacio is singing "Moon River" in Spanish while a priest strums a guitar in an idyllic riverside setting. The boy looks beatific. He sings like a dream. But the priest watches Ignacio with something darker than innocent appreciation. We don't like what we see, yet we don't completely check him off as a "bad guy." That -- preserving the priest's...

The unending 50-year war over Alfred Kinsey and his sex research is about to flare up once again, thanks to the new movie Kinsey. The film manages to be fairly faithful to the biographies of Kinsey while sliding by or simply omitting a lot of negative material that might interfere with a heroic view of the man. Kinsey was a highly intelligent, fearless man and an unusually skilled interviewer whose question-and-answer techniques heavily influenced the way polls and surveys are done today. Conservatives seem quaint when they argue that Kinsey’s two reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and...

<p>Michael Jackson addresses the audience during the Radio Music Awards in October.</p> <p>SANTA BARBARA, California (CNN) -- Former Santa Barbara Sheriff Jim Thomas said there is a second child who claimed in 1993 that Michael Jackson molested him. Those accusations were audiotaped but not videotaped, the sheriff said.</p>

LOS ANGELES - When he surrendered to the Santa Barbara, Calif., sheriff last week, Michael Jackson resembled an aging Joan Crawford, pale, frail and weighing 120 pounds. His financial well-being appears equally fragile. With each successive record costing more and earning less than the last, he is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain his lavish lifestyle. By any measure, Jackson, 45, must be considered wealthy. But according to his close advisers, industry friends and court records, he is also an extravagant spender whose wealth is being consumed by an appetite for monkeys, Ferris wheels and surgery. A lawsuit against Jackson...

Accused ... Jackson Jacko 'bid to fly boy out'DESPERATE Michael Jackson tried to send the cancer victim he is accused of molesting abroad to stave off scandal, it emerged yesterday. He acted after he was seen on TV holding 12- year-old *******’s hand and telling interviewer Martin Bashir he slept with young boys. But *******’s mother J##### refused to go, so it is claimed that Jackson tricked her into signing a legal document saying he had not abused the boy. A family source said: “Michael got them passports and was trying to send them out of the country, but...

  Jackson is like Gandhi, claims brother!Asian News InternationalWASHINGTON, November 27 Enlarge Jermaine Jackson has lent support to tainted brother Michael Jackson and said that he has been victimized."This is a modern-day lynching. My brother has become a threat like Christ became a threat, like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi became a threat. My brother's consciousness has become a threat because he is a person who cares about people," Jermaine was quoted as saying in an interview to 'The Mirror'.His is one of the voices that used to croon with Michael's in the heyday of The Jackson 5, when the...

OK...so Jacko, the King of Strange is on the hot seat again. There are lots of "I heard that..." comments flying around concerning what happened in the 1993 Jordan Chandler case, this old GQ article covers some ground that most never were aware of.

<p>LOS ANGELES — Molestation accusations levied against pop superstar Michael Jackson (search) are being fueled by money, according to the entertainer's lawyer.</p> <p>At the same time, doubts about the credibility of the family of the boy claiming the charges are beginning to emerge. The family already has been involved in two previous cases that involved abuse allegations: a lawsuit in which the family said they were battered by mall security guards and a divorce fight in which the father pleaded no contest to spousal abuse and child cruelty.</p>

<p>Geragos: "This is not the lottery. This is this man's life."</p> <p>LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Mark Geragos, singer Michael Jackson's lawyer, said Tuesday that a charter airline company secretly videotaped conversations between him and Jackson on board a plane and attempted to shop the tapes to media outlets.</p>

During the Clinton impeachment year, one got used to viewing television with a trigger finger on the remote, lest the children overhear with too much precision what all the fuss was about. My children are older now, but I still find myself in great sympathy with those home-schooling religious types who simply abjure television and radio altogether; walling off their homes and their lives from the putrescence that swirls outside. As it is, we man the cultural battlements with an ever-increasing sense of futility. When the reporter following every hiccough of the Scott Peterson trial appears on screen, we may...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Michael Jackson, addressing his fans directly via a new Web site, says the child molestation allegations made against him are "predicated on a big lie" and he will be exonerated in court.The entertainer's spokesman, Stuart Backerman, had said last week that Jackson was putting the site together so he could communicate with the news media and fans. Jackson said in his statement that it would serve as a source for "official communications on my case.""As you know, the charges recently directed at me are terribly serious," Jackson said in the six-paragraph statement. "They are, however, predicated...

The latest Michael Jackson controversy perfectly mirrors the shallowness and exploitation at the center of the entertainment business. Jackson now seems to have become the three-dimensional picture of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, the man who looked forever young but kept a picture hidden that recorded his layers of crime and sickness. Jackson's reputation carries the foulings so emblematic of our time, revealing themselves in spiritual pustules. It is a strange tale. Jackson evolves from cute little exploited boy and lead singer in a bubble gum group of brothers all the way to a progressively eccentric and repulsive tabloid favorite. In...

<p>EXPLICIT letters and poems said to have been written by Michael Jackson to his alleged victim will form the centrepiece of the sex-abuse case against him.</p> <p>Police seized at least a dozen letters during the raid on Jackson's Neverland ranch last week.</p> <p>"The district attorney is convinced these letters will be crucial to the case against Jackson," a source close to the investigation said yesterday.</p> <p>"The boy told investigators about letters and poems and their precise location inside Michael's home. These letters were among the evidence seized, along with videotapes.</p>

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Elizabeth Taylor said on Sunday that she believes pop star and good friend Michael Jackson is "absolutely innocent" of child molestation charges and will be "vindicated." In a statement, Taylor also criticized the press for behaving "abominably" toward the self-styled King of Pop, who was arrested this week on suspicion of sexually abusing a young boy. "Their whole reaction is that he is guilty. I thought the law was 'innocent until proven guilty.' I know he is innocent and I hope they all eat crow," Taylor said of the press. The veteran actress, who...