^It wasn't. It was on Faux News, which is a dumbass American channel which fancies itself to be real, balanced news, but is really just a soundboard for closed-minded (often racist) bigots to spread their Republican ideas to a like-minded (and probably at times illiterate) audience.
The woman who is speaking obviously doesn't know very much about the nature of prosecution of child sex crimes. You can't just "pay off" a victim. Moreover, she never looked into why he was able to do that in the first place--the Chandler case was a civil case, an obvious extortion attempt, and thus what would enable one to settle out of court, which is what happens in most civil cases. Moreover, what she "forgot" to mention was that, despite this "payoff" (I prefer to call it successful extortion) Tom Sneddon kept the investigation open for TEN years, going all over the world in hopes of finding somebody who could testify against Michael in Chandler's place, and guess what--they found nothing. The third boy in question, who doesn't even deserve a mention, is assumingly Blanca Francia's son. Apparently, Faux News' reporting is so fair and balanced that they forgot to mention the circumstances under which these "allegations" surfaced--those being, Francia was fired from her position being Jackson's maid, and she reacted by attempting to sell stories to the tabloids about all the supposed "abuse" she witnessed while under his employment. What one ought to be asking is--why didn't this woman call the police, if this is what she witnessed? Wouldn't that make her an accomplice--just as bad, if not worse, than the alleged pedophile? Moreover, these "stories" of Francia's kept changing a la Arvizo, getting more ridiculous by the re-telling, so that one is left wondering about her mental stability rather than any wrongdoing on Jackson's part. She also attempted to pursue a civil case (if I recall rightly) but did not go forward with it in the end. What we ought to be asking is--why were all these parents of supposedly molested children all going after this "dangerous pedophile weirdo whatever" in the same exact manner--civil, and not criminal, cases? Was it because they knew they had no case because nothing ever happened, and all they wanted was an out-of-court settlement to basically extort Jackson without ever bearing the burden of having to prove any wrongdoing, which they knew they couldn't prove because nothing ever happened? The standard procedure for a felony such as child molestation is a criminal case, where the defendant would face jail time if found guilty, but the prosecution would obviously receive no monetary compensation. Ah. That's why.
They also seem to have forgotten to mention that the Arvizos had also wanted to proceed with a civil case, but got talked out of this by District Attorney Thomas Sneddon, who learned from the error in the 1993 case. This hasty switch from a civil to a criminal case is probably the reason why their concoction of lies was so choppy and had holes so big one could drive a truck through them. They were, in all probability, merely wanting to mimic the Chandlers in getting a quick sum once they saw Michael was distancing himself from them, but Sneddon's intervention set the boat on a different direction they were obviously not prepared to lie their way through. That's how we got such gems as the whole "we were kidnapped and there were no clocks to tell time, etc" with transaction receipts showing them to be elsewhere (spending Michael's money, no less), and the entire premises were surrounded by clocks. Then, of course, who could forget the rich "we were hoping to escape via hot air balloon" load of crap. Messereau really did a good job tearing the prosecution a new one, but they kind of made it easy for him, considering their history of attempted scams/extortions/petty crimes such as shoplifting, and the pathetic way they attempted to fabricate the supposed "molestation/kidnappings."
Another thing they conveniently left out of this most enlightening report is the fact that, while Sneddon was wasting time and taxpayer money going after a guy who did nothing wrong, children were suffering at the hands of real abuse by pedophile priests in Sneddon's area of jurisdiction. He didn't go after them because the "timeframe in which prosecution could be pursued" had expired. Why not attempt to change the law, or at least warn the community that there are pedo priests running around? Why were those children less deserving of his "protection" than Jordy Chandler and Gavin Arvizo?
Then again, do I really expect Faux News to actually report on anything? No. They think they can convince us because they've got the token black female telling us Michael Jackson was a "self-loathing" black man who "clearly molested children" (provides no proof to back up this statement) and that "young boys don't like about being molested by men, this is a statistical fact" (provides no statistics to back up this "fact" and seems to forget that we weren't dealing with young boys, but rather teenagers who were old enough to lie, but young enough to be under the control/influence of greedy extortionist parents.)
errin 