SANTA MARIA, Calif. – Jurors were given opposing images of Michael Jackson as the pop star’s trial opened yesterday – the prosecution portraying him as a perverted child molester and the defense saying he was the victim of a con artist who used her cancer-stricken son to prey on celebrities for money.

District Attorney Thomas Sneddon outlined a complicated and sometimes bizarre story involving Mr. Jackson showing the boy sexually explicit material and groping him as his associates threatened to kill the boy’s mother if he told anyone.

Mr. Sneddon said the boy, now 15, will describe to the jury his sexual experiences with Mr. Jackson and show that the musician’s Neverland Ranch was a devilish lair.

“The private world of Michael Jackson will show that instead of reading them Peter Pan, he’s showing them sexually explicit magazines. … Instead of cookies and milk, you can substitute wine, vodka, and bourbon,” he said.

Mr. Jackson sat still as a statue with one hand pressed against his cheek as Mr. Sneddon outlined the accusations. In the front row of the courtroom, Mr. Jackson’s mother, Katherine, sat beside her son Jermaine. They were the only Jackson family members present.

The 46-year-old pop star is charged with molesting the then-13-year-old cancer patient 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 attorney 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 boy’s father was a member of a union that covered his medical bills.

Mr. Mesereau said the mother went to talk show host Jay Leno for money and Mr. 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 television weatherman who staged a fund-raiser for the child at a comedy club, the defense attorney said.

“At the fund-raiser, there was (the boy) in the lobby of the Laugh Factory with his hand out, prodded by (his mother),” Mr. Mesereau said.

He added that celebrities including Mike Tyson and Jim Carrey turned the family away, but Mr. Jackson was too sympathetic.

“The most vulnerable celebrity became the mark, Michael Jackson,” Mr. Mesereau said.

But the prosecutor said Mr. Jackson had intended to use the boy 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, Mr. Jackson privately told the boy what to say when he was in front of the camera, Mr. Sneddon said. When the February 2003 television documentary “Living With Michael Jackson,” aired, showing the pop star holding hands with the boy and saying he allows children to sleep in his bed, “Jackson’s world was rocked,” Mr. Sneddon said.

He said one of co-conspirators described the film’s airing as “a train wreck” and Mr. Jackson’s associates began a bid to get the family’s help in a public relations campaign to rebut it.

The molestation began a short time later, Mr. Sneddon said.

Mr. Sneddon said Mr. Jackson told the boy that masturbation was normal, then reached into the boy’s underpants and masturbated the boy and himself. The second event occurred the same way, Mr. Sneddon said, but Mr. Jackson tried to move the boy’s arm toward his own genitals and the boy resisted.

The prosecutor alleged that when the boy and his family first visited Neverland, Mr. Jackson told the boy to ask his mother if he could sleep in Mr. Jackson’s bedroom.

He said Mr. Jackson then showed sexually explicit Web sites to the boy and his own son, Prince Michael, on that visit.

When an image of a woman with bare breasts came on the screen, Mr. Sneddon said, Mr. Jackson turned to the group and asked: “Got milk?”

Searches of Neverland turned up sexually explicit DVDs and magazines, including 1960s-era periodicals with pictures of naked children, and correspondence from the accuser addressed to “Michael” or “Michael Daddy,” Mr. Sneddon said.

Some magazines had the fingerprints of Mr. Jackson, others had the prints of the boy and his brother, and one had prints from both Mr. Jackson and the accuser, he said.