Jacko 'paid off second accuser'

Michael Jackson paid more than a million pounds to a second boy who accused the embattled pop star of molesting him over a decade ago, it was reported today.

The 12-year-old boy made the claims in 1993, at the same time another youngster, aged 13, received £10 million after alleging sex abuse at the hands of the Thriller star.

Father-of-three Jackson, 45, is currently battling criminal allegations that he molested a teenage cancer survivor last year.

According to NBC's Dateline programme, California authorities investigating 1993 child abuse charges against Jackson also spoke to the son of one of the pop star's employees at Neverland.

The boy accused Jackson of fondling him through his clothes, according to the report which is to be screened tomorrow (Friday).

Jackson paid the 12-year-old's family £1.1 million on condition that the settlement was never discussed publicly, according to the report.

Jim Thomas, the Santa Barbara County sheriff who investigated Jackson in 1993, said: "You had two boys we don't believe had ever met, giving us the same kinds of statements, saying the same things had happened."

In an account of the NBC interview, carried in the New York Daily News, Mr Thomas said investigators also spoke to eight to 10 other boys who spent time with Jackson, sometimes in his bedroom.

Those boys either refused to speak or said nothing untoward happened during their encounters with the star.

Dateline also spoke to Norma Salinas, who said she was the nanny of the original 13-year-old accuser. She said Jackson shared a room with the boy during a weekend sleepover.

"The boy's stepmother told me to pull out the trundle bed that goes next to the boy's bed because that's where 'Mr Michael' was going to sleep," she said.

"I entered the room the next day to do the housekeeping as I always do. I noticed that no one slept on the [trundle] bed because there were no signs of anybody having slept there," she said.

Yesterday, the judge in Jackson's current case again refused to lower Jackson's £1.7 million bail.

Jackson denies plying the young cancer survivor with wine before molesting him.

He has pleaded not guilty to committing a lewd act upon a child, administering an intoxicating agent - alcohol - and conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion.

The self-styled King of Pop has called the claims a "big lie".