US: The best advice that Michael Jackson could have taken after the 1994 settlement of his child abuse case would have been to avoid all compromising contact with children.
But the megastar singer did everything to create the impression of impropriety. Apart from his fixation with plastic surgery and putting masks on his three children - and apart from weird behaviour like dangling his baby over a balcony - he continued to have boys sleep in his bed at Neverland.
"It's a beautiful thing," he told ITV's Martin Bashir in February. "It's very right. It's very loving. Because what's wrong with sharing a love?
"When you say bed you're thinking sexual. It's not sexual. We're going to sleep."
From what district attorney Mr Tom Sneddon said in Santa Barbara yesterday, when he announced multiple charges against Michael Jackson of sexual molestation of a child, it seems the California authorities were only waiting to pounce.
Mr Sneddon was frustrated by the 1994 settlement when the alleged victim withdrew his accusation against the singer for a multi-million sum before the police could finish their investigation.
Yesterday, in ebullient wise-cracking mood, Mr Sneddon told a chaotic press conference that this time it was different. "No civil case has been filed and we have a co-operative victim."
Californian law has also been changed since, specifically because of the failed 1994 criminal investigation, so that an alleged victim can now be required to testify.
Mr Sneddon kept referring to the "vicitim", believed to be a 12-year-old, as if the case had already been proven.
He said an arrest warrant has been issued for Mr Jackson, who is in Las Vegas, and the singer had an unspecified time to "get over here and get checked in".
And so California and the world has been launched into another Californian celebrity crime-watch and the celebrity in question, one of the world's pop cultural icons, was politely asked with the greatest possibly publicity to turn himself in within an undisclosed period of time.
The singer has appointed a celebrity attorney, Mr Mark Geragos. He was also asked to surrender his passport, raising the prospect of international flight.
When he is arrested Mr Jackson will be charged under Section 288 (a) of an unspecified number of counts of "lewd and lascivious conduct with a child", carrying a maximum of eight years in each case.
Mr Sneddon also made the extraordinary admission that the arrest warrant had been ready for some weeks, but Neverland had been full of children at Hallowe'en so it was delayed.
He also claimed the arrest was not timed to spoil the release of Michael Jackson's new single.
"Like, the sheriff and I are into that kind of music?" said Mr Sneddon indignantly.