Wednesday 5 June 2013

Paul Gongaware - Day 3 Testimony




Paul Gongaware testified on Friday that he never saw indications that Michael used drugs or travelled with a doctor when he managed that tour in 1996 and 1997.

What Gongaware knew -- or didn't know -- about Michael's drug use is a key issue in this case,


Gongaware, under questioning by his own lawyer Friday, testified that he only became aware that Michael was addicted to painkillers when the singer made a public announcement after his "Dangerous" tour abruptly ended, so he could enter rehab in 1993.

He was a manager for the "Dangerous" tour, but only handled logistics and didn't travel with Michael then, he said.

His job on the second half of the "HIStory" tour, however, carried more responsibilities and he worked closely with Michael, he said.

Gongaware testified that he saw "no indication at all" that Michael was using drugs during that tour. "I would be certain to notice it if that was the case."

Did Michael have a doctor treating him during the "HIStory" tour, his lawyer asked.

"Not that I know of," he answered.

In fact, Michael was "sensational" on stage, performing 10 to 12 shows a month, he said. Unlike in the "Dangerous" tour, he never cancelled a show because of his health.

"He only missed one," he said. "That was when Princess Diana died. He heard about the accident, went to bed, woke up, found she passed away and it affected him deeply."

But an interview that Michael gave to Barbara Walters weeks after Diana's death could help Jackson lawyers refute Gongaware's claim that no doctor traveled with the singer during the tour.

Walters asked Michael about how he learned the news that his friend, the Princess, had died.

"I woke up and my doctor gave me the news, and I fell back down in grief and I started to cry," Jackson said. "That's why the inner pain, the pain in my stomach and in my chest, so I said 'I cannot handle this. It's too much.'"

Michael's statement that a doctor was at his bedside when he woke up the day of a scheduled "HIStory" show in Belgium is not the only evidence he did have a physician on the tour.

Dr. Neil Ratner, an anesthesiologist from New York, has acknowledged that he traveled with Michael during part of the tour. He was at Munich, Germany, in July 1997 when a stage collapsed and Michael suffered a back injury. It was two months before Diana's death.

Dr. Ratner declined to talk about his treatment of Michael when CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta confronted him outside his Woodstock, New York, home in July 2009, although he did confirm that Michael had trouble sleeping.

"It's really something I don't want to talk about right now," he told Dr. Gupta.

A source who was close to Michael Jackson told Gupta in 2009 that when Michael had trouble sleeping that Dr. Ratner helped "take him down" and "bring him back up."

Ratner, who was convicted of insurance fraud and stripped of his license to practice medicine for three years in 2002, is on the witness list for the trial and has been questioned in a deposition by each side.

Debbie Rowe will testify that she assisted in administering Propofol to Michael in the 1990s when she was a nurse, AEG Live's Putnam said on the opening day of the trial.


"She saw several doctors put Mr. Jackson to sleep in hotel rooms while on tour," Putnam said, including in Munich, London, Paris.

But Gongaware and others did not know, he said.

"The truth is Mr. Jackson fooled everyone," Putnam said about Michael's Propofol use. "He kept those who might have helped him at a distance and no one knew his deepest, darkest secret."

Michael's ability to keep his private side private meant AEG executives could not see any red flags warning of Michael's destruction, Putnam said.

"They didn't see this coming," he said. "They had no idea."

Putnam said Jackson family members, including Janet and her famous siblings, will testify about their failed attempts at intervention and their lack of knowledge about what was happening.

"If they didn't know what was going on, how could someone else think there was even a problem," he said.


But Jackson lawyers will argue that Gongaware, who closely watched expenses on the "HIStory" tour because it was losing money at one point, would have noticed spending on hotel rooms and fees for a doctor traveling with the tour.

Trouble is Putnam, someone else DID think that there was a problem In fact SIX people by my count - see my post here. They knew, they brought it to AEG's attention, they even suggested a psychiatrist for Michael, but AEG decided that it was all an over exaggeration and ignored the advice. Now AEG are using the excuse of poor memory, and denial to defend themselves. This, my friends, is how corporations defend their actions these days, and I am not just talking about big cases like this one.
The family also knew something was wrong. They may not have known what exactly, but they would have had a pretty good idea it wasn't good for Michael.

FOOTNOTE:
As I write this, Michael's beautiful daughter Paris is recovering in hospital after an attempted suicide.
We don't know today what triggered this episode, all we know is that she was unhappy for a while and has a lot going on in her life. She is Michael's daughter, so I am really worried about her.
I don't know if this trial played any part in her unhappiness, but I can say that even for myself, someone who never met Michael, the information coming out is particularly difficult to cope with.
I have had to give myself some time off from blogging about it, because it has been very painful to follow. And very depressing.
I can't imagine what it must be like for his children.

No comments:

Post a Comment