Witness: Accuser's Mom Wanted Out

"These people are evil. They're keeping us."

That's what the mother of Michael Jackson's accuser told a friend during a "frightened" phone call as the family was allegedly being held captive by the entertainer.

The friend, Louise Palanker, a comedy writer and producer, was the lone witness on the stand Tuesday at Jackson's molestation trial.

Palanker recounted for jurors a conversation she had with the accuser's mother shortly after Martin Bashir's Jackson documentary debuted on ABC in February 2003. The accuser, then 13, is featured in the special.

During the phone call, Palanker testified, the mother sounded "extremely agitated, and she was almost whispering."

"She started by saying, 'Wheezy, if you have caller ID, this is not a safe line. Don't call me back here. They're listening to everything I say,' " Palanker said.

Palanker's impression? "I felt that they were being held against their will," she said, adding that the mother indicated to her that Jackson's camp wanted to ship them off to Brazil.

The prosecution alleges Jackson, 46, conspired to keep the family under wraps in the wake of the Bashir documentary. It also accuses the singer of molesting the family's eldest boy, and serving him wine and alcohol. Jackson has pleaded innocent to all charges.

In addition to helping build the conspiracy charge, Palanker was used by prosecutors to vouch for the mother, a woman the defense implies put her son up to making false allegations against Jackson.

"I feel that she's a lovely, caring person," Palanker said of the mother.

Palanker met the accuser and his family in 1999 at a comedy camp for underprivileged children--she was a teacher; the accuser and his siblings were students. When the accuser fell ill with cancer in 2000, Palanker gave the family $20,000.

The writer-producer said the mother never asked for financial help herself--in contrast to defense contentions. Rather, Palanker said, it was the father who "continuously" sought handouts from her, telling her that his wife had blown their money on "statues and votive candles."

According to Palanker, George Lopez and his wife became "very aggravated" with the accuser's father over "the mystery of the wallet." (Lopez has been called to testify about an incident in which he reputedly was accused of stealing $300 out of the wallet of Jackson's future accuser.)

In his cross-examination, defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. came out firing, not at Palanker, but at the mother, going straight at her and her family's sexual-assault lawsuit against JCPenney. Palanker said she didn't know the specifics of that case.

Mesereau then asked Palanker about statements she made to investigators in which she described the mother as "wacky" and "totally bipolar." Palanker said she was exaggerating, a habit of comics.

Under Mesereau's questioning, Palanker acknowledged that the accuser and his siblings often seemed "coached" by their parents, and that the mother latched onto celebrities--not that Palanker thought that last one was a bad thing.

"It felt to me like [the mother] was reaching out to people who were more stable so that they could pull her out of her circumstances and help her stabilize herself," Palanker testified.

The defense sought to leave the impression that the mother could never stabilize herself because she felt as if she'd been taken hostage at age 16 when she first married. Palanker confirmed that the woman talked of herself in hostage terms.

One day after the star defendant's latest public meltdown, Jackson took his seat in the Santa Maria, California, courtroom without incident. He arrived on time, moved slowly--his camp says he continues to suffer from "excruciating back pain"--but looked a tad livelier than he did on Monday. (As he left court, Jackson told reporters, "I'm doing better.")

All in all, Jackson fared better than a courtroom observer who had to be carted away on a gurney after she fell to the ground and argued with sheriff's deputies over a notebook.