Sneddon said the youth, now 15, ''will describe to you his sexual experiences with Michael Jackson. He will do it here in open court, and he will do it with the whole world watching."
Jackson, 46, is charged with molesting the then-13-year-old youth at his Neverland ranch in 2003, plying him with alcohol, and conspiring to hold him and his family captive.
After the nearly three-hour opening by the prosecutor, defense lawyer Thomas Mesereau. Jr. went on the attack, saying the mother of the accuser fraudulently claimed to many people that she was destitute and that her son needed money for chemotherapy. In truth, he said, the youth's father was a member of a union that covered his medical bills.
Mesereau said the mother went to comedian Jay Leno for money, and Leno was so suspicious that he called Santa Barbara police to tell them he had been contacted and ''something was wrong. They were looking for a mark."
The mother also approached comedian George Lopez and a Los Angeles TV weatherman, who staged a fund-raiser for the child at a comedy club, the defense lawyer said.
''At the fund-raiser, there was [the youth] in the lobby of the Laugh Factory with his hand out, prodded" by his mother, Mesereau said.
He said celebrities, including Mike Tyson and Jim Carrey, turned the family away, but Jackson was too sympathetic.
''The most vulnerable celebrity became the mark, Michael Jackson," Mesereau said.
The prosecutor said Jackson had intended to use the youth as part of a comeback attempt by discussing in a television documentary how the singer helped him through his cancer.
Before the interview with documentary maker Martin Bashir in 2002, Jackson privately told the youth what to say when he was in front of the camera, Sneddon said. When ''Living With Michael Jackson" aired in February 2003, showing the pop star holding hands with the youth and saying he allows children to sleep in his bed, ''Jackson's world was rocked," Sneddon said.
He said one of the coconspirators described the airing as ''a train wreck," and Jackson's associates began an effort to get the family's help in a public relations campaign to rebut it.
The molestation began a short time later, Sneddon said.
