Katherine Jackson, the mother of deceased King of Pop Michael Jackson and now the co- guardian of his three children, had her communication cut off from the outside world during her mysterious stay at an Arizona resort last month, court papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday indicate.
The papers, filed in relation to the co-guardianship agreement struck by Katherine and her grandson, T.J. Jackson, shed light on her trip to Arizona, which kicked off a family drama that is still reverberating.
According to a memorandum of points and authorities, Katherine agreed to the trip because she was ordered to rest "based upon what she believed to be the direct orders of the office of her longtime personal physician."
During her sojourn, according to Katherine, her phone was taken away, and when one of her travel companions asked to use her iPad, it was also taken away.
On top of that, according to the court papers, the telephone in her room wouldn't allow her to dial out, and there was no picture on the television in her room.
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The memorandum adds that Jackson didn't even know she was thought to be missing until she heard a news report on the television.
Jackson was also never told that her grandchildren — Prince, Paris and Blanket — and T.J. Jackson (who was granted temporary guardianship of the children last week) were trying to contact her, the court papers say.
"Had she known that fact, and if she had been provided the means to contact T.J. and the minor children, she would never have gone for such a long period of time without communicating with them at that time," the memorandum reads.
So why didn't the matriarch of the Jackson family become suspicious that she hadn't heard from her grandkids, whose care was entrusted solely to her at the time?
Jackson "trusted the people she was with to be honest with her," the papers state.
Jackson also wasn't told that her attorney, Perry Sanders, Jr., had flown to Tucson to meet with her and "find out what was going on."
According to Katherine, she was "finally permitted to use the phone to speak with the minor children and T.J." the day before she returned home from Tucson — amounting to a nearly two-week stretch of no communication with her charges.
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Jackson's disappearance to Arizona occurred amid a scramble by Katherine's children to wrest control of Michael's trust from its current executors, John Branca and John McClain. Michael's siblings Randy, Janet, Jermaine, Tito and Rebbie signed a letter alleging that the "Beat It" singer's will was "fake, flawed and fraudulent." (A number of the siblings, including Jermaine and Tito, have subsequently disavowed the letter.)
Following Katherine's return to California, Michael's oldest child, 15-year-old Prince took to his Twitter account to complain that he and his siblings were prohibited from contacting their grandmother during her absence.
"For this whole time, they denied us contact to our grandmother," Jackson wrote.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.