Michael Jackson is a scheming serial paedophile with a drinking problem who should finally be held responsible for sexually abusing young boys, a prosecutor claimed last night during closing arguments in Jackson's trial.
But Jackson's chief attorney called the charges a mean-spirited bid to "dehumanise" one of the world's best-loved entertainers and labeled the accusers "con artists, actors and liars".
The fierce closing remarks capped a bitter, four-month court fight over accusations that Jackson molested a 13-year-old boy at his Neverland Valley Ranch in 2003.
The defence claims the singer (46) was framed by a family with a penchant for "shaking down" celebrities.
Jackson has pleaded innocent to molesting the boy, plying him with alcohol, and conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. The pop star faces more than two decades in prison if convicted on all charges.
But Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen told a packed courtroom: "Michael Jackson, not for the first time, took sexual liberties with a 13-year-old boy." He asked jurors to recall the young cancer survivor's account of being masturbated repeatedly by Jackson.
"That testimony should be believed, and Michael Jackson should be held responsible for what he did," Mr Zonen said.
The veteran prosecutor argued Jackson was a manipulative paedophile who used his fame, wealth and the lure of the kid-friendly Neverland to groom vulnerable adolescent boys for sexual abuse.
"At night they entered into the world of the forbidden, they went into Michael Jackson's bedroom, which was a veritable fortress," Mr Zonen said in reference to the room's keypad locks and alarm systems. "They learned about human sexuality from someone who was all too willing to be their teacher."
He said the boys came from homes with absent fathers and that Jackson targeted their weakness: "The lion on the Serengeti doesn't go after the strongest antelope."
Mr Zonen showed the jury a sampling of Jackson's pornography, some of it homoerotic, asking jurors: "Are you comfortable with a middle-aged man getting in bed with a teenage boy as he possesses material like this that excites him?"