Social Worker Irene Peters and the Arviso’s

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4557271.stm

He said, ‘Everybody thinks Michael Jackson sexually abused me. He never touched me’

Irene Peters

SANTA MARIA, California (CNN) — Michael Jackson’s teenage accuser told child welfare workers that he was not molested by the pop star and had not shared his bed, a social worker testified Tuesday.

“I asked him point blank if he had ever slept in bed with Michael Jackson,” Irene Peters told jurors in Jackson’s child molestation trial. “He said no.”

The boy and his mother, brother and sister — who were also interviewed by the California state Division of Children and Family Services — had nothing but praise for Jackson, Peters said.

She said the accuser’s mother told her that “Michael has been like a father figure to her children” and that he was responsible for helping her son’s cancer go into remission.

Based on denials by the boy and his family, Peters said she concluded “the allegations of sexual abuse by Michael Jackson were unfounded at that time.”

Two months later, Peters said, she also had an impromptu meeting with the family at a hamburger stand, and they all appeared to be doing fine.

Peters said, however, she made no effort to independently verify what the family told her, and she admitted that the mother was afraid she would lose her children if child welfare workers suspected abuse.

Peters and two other DCFS social workers from Los Angeles interviewed the family on February 20, 2003, about two weeks after the broadcast of “Living With Michael Jackson,” a television documentary by British journalist Martin Bashir that showed the accuser, then 13, holding hands with the entertainer.

In the program, Jackson also defended as “loving” his practice of sharing his bed with children. The broadcast ignited a media firestorm and prompted a counselor at the boy’s middle school to alert the DCFS.

Peters, who was assigned the task of investigating the neglect complaint, said she made contact with the boy’s mother through his school.

During one of a series of phone calls to set up an interview, the mother insisted that the questioning take place at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County.

The interview was conducted in Los Angeles, at the home of the woman’s then-boyfriend, whom she later married.

Peters said the mother began the interview by playing a tape of Jackson interacting with his sons, shot by his videographer.

The mother expressed her displeasure with Bashir for filming her children for his documentary without her consent, Peters said.

Peters said the mother told her that during the family’s visits to Neverland she was aware of what her children were doing, and the woman denied that her sons had ever slept in Jackson’s bed.

During the interview with the family, the children “all seemed to be in agreement with their mom,” Peters said, adding that the family seemed happy and well-adjusted and “they all seemed spontaneous in their comments.”

In a separate interview with the accuser, Peters said she “asked him if he had been touched inappropriately by Michael Jackson.”

“He said no,” Peters said. The boy appeared to be upset by the question and told her that his schoolmates had been teasing him because he held hands with Jackson in the video, she said.

Both the accuser and his younger brother, who also was interviewed separately, also described Jackson as a father figure.

Peters also said no one in the family complained during their interviews that they were being held against their will by Jackson’s associates, as the prosecution alleges.

A Jackson bodyguard and several other people were present at the apartment where the interviews took place, but Peters said they were all asked to leave the room before the questioning

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/LAW/05/17/jackson.trial/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Jackson Case Social Worker Says She Found No Molesting

SANTA MARIA, Calif., May 17

A longtime social worker testified on Tuesday that she investigated accusations that Michael Jackson’s accuser had been sexually abused but found no basis for believing that was the case.

Irene Peters, a social worker with 30 years of experience in the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services, told the jury that she investigated after a complaint had been lodged with her office after a documentary was broadcast in February 2003.

In that documentary, Mr. Jackson told the interviewer, Martin Bashir, that he slept with young boys.

The accuser appeared in the documentary with his head resting lovingly on Mr. Jackson’s shoulder.

He only later accused Mr. Jackson of molesting him.

Testifying for the defense, Ms. Peters said she and two colleagues interviewed the accuser, his two siblings and his mother in the Los Angeles apartment of the mother’s boyfriend and were told that the children had not been mistreated or sexually abused.

”I asked point blank, ‘Did you sleep in bed with Mr. Jackson?”’ Ms. Peters said she asked the accuser, who was 13.

He responded that he did not, she said.

She then asked whether Mr. Jackson had touched him sexually.

”He became upset,” Ms. Peters testified. ”Said: ‘Everyone thinks Michael Jackson abused me. He never touched me.’ He was very upset about it.”

She said that the teenager’s demeanor was ”playful, articulate” and that ”he appeared to enjoy the attention.”

She added that he was not withdrawn or mistrustful, behavior that is common with sexual abuse victims.

The prosecution has accused Mr. Jackson of molesting the boy after the date of Ms. Peters’s interview, and before May 12, 2003, when the family was escorted off the Neverland Ranch, five miles from Los Olivos.

The testimony on Tuesday underscored how difficult it may be to prove that Mr. Jackson chose to molest the boy at the very moment when the news media, the police and social workers were scrutinizing him for such crimes.

Ms. Peters and her supervisor, Karen Walker, testified that the accuser’s mother never complained that she was being held against her will at the ranch, as the prosecution contends, despite many opportunities to do so.

Instead, the two social workers said, the mother repeatedly expressed her displeasure that Mr. Bashir’s documentary showed her son’s face without her permission and asked for help in persuading Mr. Jackson to send her children to private school, because of the unwanted news media attention.

”Her main complaint was she felt the kids were being taped without her consent, and what could she do about it,” Ms. Peters said.

She and Ms. Walker met the mother and spoke to her repeatedly on the telephone in February and March, when the family says it was held captive.

On April 1, 2003, the social workers coincidentally crossed paths with the mother and her children at a restaurant in Los Angeles, and no mention was made of being abused or held captive, they said.

”I asked how the children were doing, and she said they were doing O.K., except they had missed a lot of school,” Ms. Peters testified.

On cross-examination, District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon Jr. tried to show that the social workers should have been more skeptical.

Under questioning by the prosecutor, Ms. Peters agreed that teenage boys are often slow to admit being molested when asked about it in front of their mothers.

”I would have called,” Ms. Peters said, referring to the police, ”if there was any doubt in my mind that abuse was going on. We’d have been in children’s court.”