Santa Maria, Calif. ? A feeble-looking Michael Jackson arrived late again Monday to his child molestation trial after another hospital visit, but the judge took no apparent action. The pop star then sat through testimony from a psychologist who asserted few child sex abuse allegations turn out to be false.

Jackson, who is said to have back problems, trembled and wept at the defense table as lawyers and a doctor who came to court in hospital scrubs conferred in chambers with Judge Rodney S. Melville.

The judge, who previously threatened to arrest Jackson and revoke his bail when he was late March 10, gave no explanation of what was discussed.

Jackson spokeswoman Raymone Bain said in a statement that Jackson was en route to court when he suffered intolerable back spasms and was taken to a hospital in Santa Ynez.

Jackson is accused of molesting a boy at his Neverland ranch in 2003, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold the boy’s family captive.

Prosecution witness Anthony J. Urquiza, a psychologist who has not interviewed Jackson’s accuser, described “child sexual assault accommodation syndrome,” in which youngsters become secretive, feel helpless and trapped, delay reporting acts of abuse, and finally learn to cope with the situation.

He said children often experience changes in behavior because of the abuse. Under questioning by the prosecution, the witness said that can include talking back to teachers and getting into fights — the kind of misbehavior seen in Jackson’s accuser.

During cross-examination, defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. asked the psychologist whether Jackson’s accuser may be lying.

“Let me ask a hypothetical question,” Mesereau said. “You’ve got a mother and three children. There is not a father figure present. There has been a traumatic divorce of recent vintage. For whatever reason, the mother and her children pick someone and adopt that person as their father figure … and suddenly there is a split. The mother, the children see that the person they’ve adopted as a father figure is bailing out. You can imagine … a situation like that where the mother induces the children to make false claims of sexual abuse.”

Urquiza replied that only 2 percent to 6 percent of molestation allegations turn out to be false according to research he has seen, and he said the scenario Mesereau described would be “fairly incredible.”