US singer R. Kelly was on Monday convicted in a sex trafficking trial, after decades of avoiding criminal responsibility for sexual misconduct allegations levelled against him by numerous women and children. The 54-year-old R&B superstar was found guilty of charges including sexual exploitation of a child, bribery, racketeering and sex trafficking.
The jury found Kelly was the ringleader of a violent and coercive scheme that lured women and children for him to sexually abuse. He was also found to have trafficked women between different US states and produced child pornography. Kelly was also convicted on eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits sex trafficking across state lines.
The verdict comes 13 years after Kelly was acquitted of child pornography charges after a trial in the state of Illinois.
The jury found that the government had proved 12 of those acts, which involved five victims: the singer Aaliyah as well as women named Stephanie, Jerhonda Pace, Jane and Faith. At the trial, several of these accusers testified without using their real names to protect their privacy. Jurors were shown homemade videos of Kelly engaging in sex acts that prosecutors said were not consensual.
Kelly, who has long been accused of sexual assault, climbed Billboard charts and won Grammys for his music. However, the accusations against him got the limelight in the wake of the #MeToo movement and he was scrutinised for a 2019 explosive documentary ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ that featured interviews with many accusers.
A history of accusations:
In 1994, Kelly, then 27, married young singer Aaliyah Haughton at a secret ceremony. It was later revealed that she was in fact just 15 yrs old at the time of the wedding and that a fake certificate was produced to cover up her age. The marriage was annulled in February 1995. Prosecutors say Kelly met Aaliyah, as she was known, when she was 12, and shortly thereafter began a sexual relationship. Aaliyah died in a plane crash in 2001.
The star launched his album ‘R. Kelly’ in 1995 which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200.
In 1996, he as sued by Tiffany Hawkings for ‘personal injuries and emotional distress’, which allegedly happened when she was minor. The case was settled out of court in 1998.
In 2001, Kelly’s intern Tracy Sampson accused him of sexually abusing her when she was 16-years-old. Sampson said she met Kelly in the summer of 1999 when she was a 16-year-old intern at Epic Records. In an interview to NBC, SHE claimed Kelly allegedly tried to kiss her when she was underage and began a sexual relationship with her. "I just didn't know what to do. Like, I didn't know if this was normal. I didn't know if this is how adults acted,” she said.
In 2002, the singer faced sexual assault allegations from Patrice Jones and Montina Woods. Patrice claimed he impregnated her when she was underage, and that she was forced to have an abortion. Montina alleged that he videotaped them having sex without her knowledge. The recording was allegedly circulated on an R Kelly "sex tape" sold by bootleggers under the title R. Kelly Triple-X.
Child pornography
Kelly faced child pornography charges in 2002. The legal battle started in January 2001, when someone anonymously sent the Chicago Sun-Times one such tape. The paper sent it to the police; however, neither the paper nor the police could identify the girl in the video. A second tape surfaced in 2002, anonymously left in Sun-Times reporter Jim DeRogatis's mailbox. It was also sent to Chicago police. In the video, Kelly has sex with what appears to be a young girl, directs her to take different sex positions, and urinates in her mouth. The girl's aunt identified and said she was 14 years old at the time.
On June 5, 2002, Chicago police indicted on 21 counts of making child pornography. In 2008, the jury found him not guilty on all counts. Jury members told the Sun-Times that they were certain Kelly was in the videos, but could not be certain about the identities and ages of the girls in them.
In August 2017, Jerhonda Pace, the first prosecution witness in the Brooklyn trial, broke the ‘non-disclosure’ treaty went public with accusations against Kelly.
In 2019, after the release of the harrowing documentary, Kelly faces more charges. He is charged in Chicago with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. He is also slapped with two separate federal indictments in Illinois and Brooklyn. In August 2019, the star pleads not guilty, but is denied bail.
The trial was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and Kelly's last-minute shakeup of his legal team. When it finally started on August 18, prosecutors painted the singer as a pampered man-child and control freak. His accusers said they were under orders to call him “Daddy,” expected to jump and kiss him anytime he walked into a room, and to cheer only for him when he played pickup basketball games in which they said he was a ball hog.
The accusers alleged that they also were ordered to sign nondisclosure forms and were subjected to threats and punishments such as violent spankings if they broke what one referred to as “Rob's rules.”
-with agency inputs