Accuser denies inventing abuse

The teenager who accuses Michael Jackson of sex abuse weathered a punishing cross-examination by the singer's lawyer on Monday, denying suggestions he invented the molestation because he felt rejected by Mr Jackson as a father figure.

The 15-year-old boy, who told jurors last week that Mr Jackson, 46, masturbated him at least twice in early 2003, stood firm as lead defence attorney Tom Mesereau accused him of drinking, stealing, and lying to police about the abuse.

"It wasn't until you realised that you, your mother, brother and sister weren't going to be a part of Michael Jackson's family that you ever came up with the allegations of molestation, was it?" Dr Mesereau asked the boy.

"No, I didn't want to be part of Michael Jackson's family, I never wanted that," the boy said. "I looked at him as a father figure and he looked at me as a son."

Raising his voice, Dr Mesereau shot back: "And when you left (Jackson's) Neverland Valley Ranch for the last time, you felt that your father had rejected you."

"No," the boy responded. "I didn't need him. I didn't want him."

Mr Jackson, who caused a stir last week by arriving an hour late for court, wearing pajamas and looking shaky, turned up on time, dressed in a bright red jacket, necktie, vest, silver waist chain and black pants.

But the pop icon said as he left court that he was still suffering from what his lawyers have said is a serious back problem. "My back is really stiff," he said. "I'm in pain."

Mr Jackson is charged with committing lewd acts on his young accuser, then 13, plying the boy with alcohol in order to abuse him and conspiring to commit extortion, false imprisonment and child abduction.

The entertainer, who faces more than two decades in prison if he is convicted, has pleaded innocent.

At the centre of the case are a British documentary, Living With Michael Jackson, that shows Mr Jackson and the boy holding hands and a so-called "rebuttal tape" in which the boy and his family praise Mr Jackson warmly.

Dr Mesereau spent his daylong cross-examination of the boy, a recovering cancer patient, trying to chip away at his credibility by suggesting specific inconsistencies in his version of events and attacking his character in general.

Perhaps most significantly, Dr Mesereau tried to establish through police reports that the boy initially claimed Mr Jackson had molested him before the filming of the rebuttal tape - then changed his mind to say the abuse took place afterward.

The boy responded that as a 13-year-old boy he was unclear on the dates of the abuse and "even to this day I don't remember exactly when this happened".

The boy did admit having told a school administrator two years ago that Mr Jackson had done nothing to him and telling lies on the rebuttal tape, though he insisted that he was told to do so by an intimidating associate of the performer.

Dr Mesereau also accused the boy and his brother of breaking into Mr Jackson's room and refrigerator at Neverland to steal alcohol - allegations the boy denied - and with exaggerating tales of heavy drinking with the pop icon.

"Every time you were interviewed, your stories about drinking got worse and worse. Your stories got bigger and bigger and bigger," Dr Mesereau said.

"No," the boy replied. "The fact is we drank every night that Michael was there."

The boy also denied defence claims that he had been seen at Neverland reading pornographic magazines and while Jackson was away. And he said he never asked television talk show host Jay Leno for money for medical bills.