“So much of this case involves what the nature of Neverland is,” defense attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. told Judge Rodney S. Melville on March 18. Is Michael Jackson’s Neverland Valley ranch an Edenic sanctuary for sick and underprivileged children, or a pedophile’s lair, a “criminal location from A to Z”?

In the defense’s permissive scenario, Neverland is an enchanted playground full of zoo animals, toys and Disney characters, where children can eat pizza or candy all the livelong day and snuggle up to a charitable and childlike Jackson in his toy-soldier uniforms or jammies all night.