The jury considering the accusations against Michael Jackson has found him not guilty. Many words are flowing from many pens about this verdict, this situation, and about Jackson personally. I have little to add, but I will add that little.

While interviewing the prostitutes for my book about prostitution, I discovered that almost all the prostitutes I met had been massively abused when they were children, usually by their fathers, and usually in the form of rape. My notes and tapes contain many detailed, ugly first-hand narratives of this abuse, and how and why that experience motivates girls to choose prostitution when they become women is most of what my book is about. Click on the Prostitution section of http://DavidFarer.com to read some of them. "If you can take it", I always warn when recommending these interviews; somebody threw up on the floor of my home after reading one of the more graphic narratives.

Several women preferred criminal charges against their tormentors when they became adults, but most did not. Those for whom not filing charges had been a conscious decision said that they did not do so because proving sexual abuse is almost impossible. If Reuben accuses Simon of stealing his car, a common way for Reuben to prove his accusation would be to show that his car is missing, and he can then point to it sitting in Simon's driveway. If Reuben accuses Simon of breaking his nose, Reuben can point to his nose and say, "Look! It's broken."

These two kinds of crime begin with the fact that a crime has indeed occurred, and from that premise they proceed to seek the criminal. With a case of sexual abuse, however, the investigation proceeds in the opposite direction: we have a suspect before we are certain that a crime has occurred.

Rape is a crime for which modern science has provided DNA analysis, but semen stains can be collected only soon after the abuse has occurred, and not always even then. Groping and related forms of attack leave no semen stains. Apart from this DNA analysis, there will rarely be many clues or much evidence.

What there will be is Reuben accusing Simon, and Simon's calling Reuben a liar. The detectives and the jury will have to use their judgment and insight to determine whom they believe. The characters of the accuser and the accused come under a harsh and brutal light.

Many of those I interviewed told me flat out that they did not choose to subject themselves to cross-examination in public by skilled defense attorneys. The experience of those in the Jackson court-room shows why this attitude is not unreasonable.

When I wrote the earlier entry in my blog some time ago, I wrote in a mood of shock that a child could be cross-examined and called a liar in public, and that his mother would have to watch this sorry spectacle. I reacted in accordance with what I heard from the women I interviewed. I have no reason to suspect that even one of them lied to me; they certainly had no financial motive for doing so.

Now that I have read more about this particular case, I must conclude I was too hasty to condemn the defence. While I still think it better to have a trained social-worker interview the child in private than to subject him to a public cross-examination, as Israeli courts do in similar cases, the defence did succeed in establishing a reasonable doubt about the accusation, and they did so by attacking the character of the accuser's mother. I must sadly report that she looks bad, for all the obvious reasons everybody knows by now.

I must also report that the jury looks good. I think they employed common sense and expended genuine effort to come to a reasonable verdict. Whatever media circus was in progress outside the jury room, reason prevailed inside. "The evidence just wasn't there", as one juror put it. Guilt is something that must be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt". Believing the accuser and his mother "beyond a reasonable doubt" is not something most reasonable people would be willing to do. In the absense of other evidence, Not Guilty seems the most commonsensical response for a jury to give.

HOWEVER, I must emphatically add, Not Guilty is not the same as Innocent. A juror named Rodriguez, a 63-year-old retired high school counselo, said the jury had been instructed by the judge to base their verdicts on the facts of the case, not "our beliefs or our own personal thoughts."

"We would hope ... that he doesn't sleep with children anymore," Rodriguez said on CNN. "He just has to be careful how he conducts himself around children."

" Later, in an interview on "Larry King Live," another juror, Hultman, said he believes Jackson "probably has molested boys.....I can't believe that this man could sleep in the same bedroom for 365 straight days and not do something more than just watch television and eat popcorn," he said. "I mean that doesn't make sense to me, but that doesn't make him guilty of the charges that were presented in this case and that's where we had to make our decision."

Exactly.

Scottish law allows juries to return Guilty and Not Guilty verdicts, but Scotland provides a third verdict as well: Not Proved. Had the jury been given this verdict as an option, I would not be surprised had they chosen it. I would have.