There were three escapes in all, right?”Gavin’s mother, Janet Arvizo, was an even more problematic witness. In a full week of testimony, she rambled, contradicted herself, refused to be drawn at all on whether she had defrauded the state welfare system, and at times sounded downright paranoid as she talked about her fears that Mr Jackson would abduct her family in a hot-air balloon or have her parents assassinated.”Don’t judge me,” she begged the jurors as she insisted she had lied and acted her way through the so-called “rebuttal video” – the paean of praise to Mr Jackson put out in the wake of the Bashir documentary. It seems highly unlikely the jury was doing anything but judging her. Clearly, the prosecution took no pleasure in the fact that someone this unreliable was one of its chief witnesses.But the prosecution was also responsible for some very specific, identifiable mistakes and omissions. The centrepiece of their case was the testimony of Gavin and his younger brother Star, describing the alleged acts of molestation themselves. And if the abuse did not occur, their willingness to lie on such an explosive topic raises all sorts of other troubling psychological questions.The Michael Jackson factor, though, adds a whole extra layer of complication – because of his wealth, his celebrity and his deliberate, almost studied pursuit of public weirdness.

How many accused child abusers have personal French chefs to serve a plate of chips to them and their young guests in the dead of night?Mr Jackson’s money can, of course, be interpreted one of two ways – either as another means to corrupt the families of his alleged molestation victims, or as a liability, making him a target for unscrupulous people determined to take advantage of him.One of the more bizarre exchanges of the trial so far took place between Gavin Arvizo and Mr Mesereau after the boy suggested Mr Jackson had not done all that much to help him recover from a rare form of childhood cancer. More or less by definition, these involve damaged people – often, as in this case, from broken families. If the abuse really occurred, then they have plentiful reason to feel shamed or embarrassed or scared and make all sorts of contradictory public statements. If Mr Jackson is convicted, the world will remember this lavishly elaborate property in the rolling wine country of the Santa Ynez valley as a giant honey-trap luring young boys to the end of their sexual innocence. Almost nobody who has taken the witness stand on behalf of the prosecution has come across as entirely reliable – not Mr Jackson’s 15-year-old accuser, Gavin Arvizo, not his family, not the lawyers and child abuse specialists they consulted after they first came forward with their allegations, and certainly not the Neverland entourage.Part of the challenge Mr Sneddon and his team face is in the nature of child abuse cases.

The very dysfunctions that no doubt raised his suspicions about Mr Jackson in the first place are also the principal reason why this case is proving so hard to try. Either way, there are ample grounds for regarding them as repellent human beings.One thing is sure: never again will a newspaper or glossy magazine be able to describe Neverland as a childhood-fantasy paradise, with its zoo, its funfair rides and its extensive video arcade. Such talk is regarded as treason in Moscow where officials accuse modern-day Baltic politicians of harbouring Nazi sympathies and of glorifying their countrymen who fought in the German SS.In a letter to Latvia’s President, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Mr Bush firmly aligned himself with the Balts.”In western Europe, the end of World War II meant liberation. We have met characters like Marc Schaffel, a former gay porn producer whom Mr Jackson hired, among other things, to conduct damage-control operations following the airing of Martin Bashir’s devastating documentary, Living With Michael Jackson, two years ago. And, of course, there has been the febrile, almost spectral presence of Mr Jackson himself, in flamboyant suits and armbands, giving his trademark V salute to the fans – when, that is, he isn’t begging off sick, running late or arriving in his pyjamas.It has been a spectacle and a media circus, attracting a queasily obsessive degree of public attention. But it has also provided a window on the spectacularly dysfunctional environment at Mr Jackson’s Neverland ranch and the cast of colourful characters who have either inhabited it or passed through.Whoever you believe on the substance of the criminal charges, there is no doubting Mr Jackson’s singular knack for drawing in low-lifes, charlatans, liars and money-grubbers, many of them susceptible to the temptation of selling their stories to downmarket newspapers, finding some excuse to take the Gloved One to court, or otherwise turning on him.In the past 66 days, we have heard stories of Mr Jackson’s pre-pubescent guests running wild – whether at his behest or not – drinking alcohol and leafing through pornography. Everything about Michael Jackson exudes an almost unfathomable weirdness, and his trial on child molestation, kidnapping and conspiracy charges has been no exception.

“And when some now argue over whether we did or did not occupy other countries, I feel like asking them: ‘And what would have become of you if we hadn’t broken the back of fascism – would you still exist as a people?’”Mr Bush’s decision to visit Latvia, where Moscow believes the large Russian minority is being discriminated against, and Georgia, whose President is openly pushing for velvet revolutions across the former Soviet Union, is almost as hard for Moscow to swallow.”This fact as such could be viewed as a kind of slap in Russia’s face,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, a prominent Russian political analyst, told the Interfax news agency.”It’s about the same as if Putin would go to Washington with a stopover in Havana, and after that he would fly to Pyongyang.”. The American President said he understood and respected the decision of the presidents of Estonia and Lithuania to boycott the 9 May victory celebrations in Moscow, a d?rche that Russia regards as a snub.Mr Bush’s intervention is likely to enrage Russian politicians who are ironically anxious to patch up what is becoming an increasingly acrimonious relationship with the United States.In an interview yesterday with Rossiskaya Gazeta, the government-friendly daily, Sergey Ivanov, Russia’s Defence Minister, made it clear that the Kremlin cannot stomach the Baltic states’ interpretation of history.”That war was won at the cost of countless deaths and the impact on demographics and our living standards is still perceptible,” he said. In central and eastern Europe, the war also marked the Soviet occupation and annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the imposition of Communism,” he wrote. His attendance had been considered a coup for President Vladimir Putin, whom Washington has criticised of late for apparent backsliding on democracy and general authoritarianism.But Mr Bush has shown he will not shrink from his “spreading democracy” message and has sided with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania against Russia in a dispute which Moscow finds repugnant.

It considers that the end of what it calls the Great Patriotic War signified the victory of the glorious Red Army and the liberation of swaths of central and eastern Europe from Nazi tyranny.However, the Baltic states and indeed other east European countries such as Poland regard the end of the Second World War as the beginning of almost half a century of Soviet occupation forced upon them by the Red Army. Extradition could take six months.While Mr Adamov was a minister, he angrily rebuffed US objections to Russia building a nuclear reactor in Iran.. President George Bush has waded into a bitter historical row between Russia and its former imperial vassals the Baltic states, putting the Kremlin’s nose out of joint just days before he visits Moscow. Moscow said the charges were unconnected to his tenure in its government.Mr Adamov had run the Dollezhal Institute, a government organisation in Moscow that developed nuclear weapons and reactors. If he refuses, Washington will have to file a formal request.