Duelling visions of the ‘Bad’ star

The dueling visions of Michael Jackson could not have been more different. In his opening statement at the pop icon’s child molestation...

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The dueling visions of Michael Jackson could not have been more different. In his opening statement at the pop icon’s child molestation trial Monday, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon described Jackson as a man who surfed Internet porn sites with a 13-year-old cancer patient, treated him to wine and vodka, then seduced him.

Later, Sneddon said, Jackson or his employees made death threats against the boy and his family, held them at the singer’s Neverland ranch against their will, locked them out of their apartment and schemed to fly the entire family to Brazil. ‘‘Why would any adult give alcohol to a cancer survivor with just one kidney,’’ Sneddon asked. ‘‘The answer is rather apparent.’’

But Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., Jackson’s lead attorney, described the entertainer as more prey than predator. In his opening statement, he denied any sexual contact had occurred. Mesereau painted Jackson as generous to a fault, while casting the boy and his mother as con artists cruising Hollywood for celebrities to bilk, even keeping a ratty east Los Angeles studio apartment just to display their professed poverty. ‘‘These charges are fictitious, bogus, and they never happened,’’ Mesereau told the jury.

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In 2000, Jay Leno fielded a phone call from the boy in which the comedian could hear the boy’s mother clearly in the background, Mesereau said. Leno said something was so fishy that he later told Santa Barbara police about the call. Boy and mother were ‘‘looking for a mark’’, the attorney said.

At the beginning of Monday’s hearing, Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville read the sealed indictment against Jackson. Previously made public only in heavily edited form, the indictment lists 28 ‘‘overt acts’’ in February and March 2003 that, according to prosecutors, constitute a conspiracy to silence Jackson’s alleged victim and his family.

Addressing the jury from a podium for two hours and 42 minutes, Sneddon completed his opening statement. Mesereau spoke for 90 minutes and will probably finish Tuesday morning, before the prosecution calls its first witness, expected to be British TV journalist Martin Bashir.

Sneddon cast Jackson as a man wishing to be an adolescent, who entertained the boy and his brother at his Neverland Ranch with such antics as a ‘‘cussing contest’’ and simulating sex with a mannequin. —LAT-WP