Jackson guitarist denies Simmons claims

Michael Jackson's former tour guitarist Jennifer Batten has denied recent claims from Kiss frontman Gene Simmons that the singer abused children.

The musician told Sawf News that Simmons's suggestion that a friend had quit Jackson's tour after "seeing boys coming out of the hotel rooms" was untrue.

Batten said: "Number one, there's no truth to it. Number two, I would guess that it was somebody who got fired. Somebody who was embarrassed that they got fired and so they made up a story."

She added that no musicians had left a Jackson tour after it had started and that only two were fired "like a week before we took out on the road".

Of media reports on Jackson after his death last June, she added: "They were respectful for about two or three hours and then they turned it into a tabloid festival... It's all about money now, not about truth. People can be very cold."