A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three-time Grammy Award-winning American singer R. Kelly to 30 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of all counts in a sex crime case last year.
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The former R&B star spent two decades using his fame to systematically abuse young women and minors, both sexually and psychologically, according to prosecutors.
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Due to the length of the sentence, the 55-year-old convict will probably spend most of the rest of his life behind bars, the paper reminds The New York Times.
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With her announcement, Judge Ann Donnelly granted the prosecution’s request for a sentence of at least 25 years. Lawyers for the “I Believe I Can Fly” singer said their client deserved a maximum of ten years. They also argued about his “traumatic childhood”.
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In sentencing, Donnelly responded by explaining that the crimes of Robert Sylvester Kelly, as the singer’s full name is, were “carefully planned and regularly carried out over a period of almost 25 years”.
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Several victims spoke publicly in court. “It scarred me for life,” said one of them, who previously described being trapped and raped in the singer’s home.
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“I hope you go to jail for the rest of your life,” said another who was allegedly forced by R. Kelly to perform oral sex.
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He asked me to tell everyone I was 19 and act like I was 21.
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Many of the allegations against Kelly appeared on Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly, which offered “the most comprehensive look yet at the allegations against Kelly” over the course of six episodes.
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For example, Jerhonda Pace appeared on the show. She met him as a fan of his when she was sixteen, that’s when their “relationship” started. “He asked me to tell everyone I was 19 and act like I was 21,” she said.
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She wrote a diary at the time, from which she also read in the courtroom. “I went to Rob’s house and Rob called me a stupid whore. Rob slapped me three times. He said if I lied to him one more time, it wouldn’t just be a slap in the face, he’d clench his fists. He spat in my face. He spat in my mouth. He choked me during the argument. I had sex with him, I had oral sex with him. Then I ran away,” she tearfully read her note from January 23, 2010.
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In court, not only Kelly’s victims, but also former employees and colleagues testified.
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Sound engineer Anthony Navarro, who worked for singer Kelly for more than two years, told the court that “some of the girls stayed at Kelly’s place in Chicago for a long time, but they couldn’t even go out to eat without his permission.”
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A long-term pattern of behavior
The abuse, according to investigators, was part of a long-standing pattern in which the successful artist sought out young women with the help of a network of assistants and lured them to him with promises of helping them in their music careers. He subsequently abused them.
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Kelly used lies, manipulation, threats and physical violence to gain the upper hand over his victims, according to prosecutors. At the same time, he allegedly often filmed his sexual antics. In addition, he allegedly demanded absolute obedience from his victims, did not allow them to go to the toilet without permission, forbade them to look at other men and asked them to call him “daddy”.
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Last September, a jury found him guilty of all nine counts, including charges of extortion and violating the Sex Trafficking Act. Kelly was also found guilty of several other counts, including sex with minors, sexual exploitation of minors, bribery, coercion and forced labor, the New York State Attorney’s Office said in a Sept. 27 statement.
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The statement goes on to say that for nearly 30 years, Kelly was the leader of a criminal enterprise that included himself and a group of other individuals who served as his managers, bodyguards, accountants, drivers or personal assistants.
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Kelly has already spent over two years in custody.
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In the states of Illinois and Minnesota, R. Kelly faces other similar charges, which he also denies. According to his autobiography, Kelly himself was a victim of sexual abuse, claiming he was raped by a family member when he was just eight years old.
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The accusations have followed Kelly’s entire career
The process is viewed by some of the American media as proof of how much sense the MeToo social movement publicly fights against sexual harassment and abuse has.
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Kelly did not go to court until three years ago (then the trial was postponed several times due to the coronavirus pandemic), although women and girls have been making accusations against him since the 1990s.
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The first of the allegations against Kelly, who was then 27 years old, came in 1994. That’s when he married 15-year-old singer Aaliyah in a secret ceremony in Chicago. Magazine Vibe he later discovered that Aaliyah had lied about her age on the marriage certificate, stating that she was 18 years old. The marriage was annulled in February 1995.
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R. Kelly then got together with Tiffany Hawkins. She later sued him for “personal injury and emotional distress” during the three-year relationship. She said in court documents that she began having sex with Kelly in 1991. She was 15 at the time and he was 24. According to her, the relationship ended when she turned 18.
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According to the Chicago Sun Times newspaper, Hawkins demanded compensation in the amount of 10 million dollars (about 237 million crowns), as part of an out-of-court settlement in 1998, but agreed to accept only a fraction of this amount, 250 thousand dollars (almost 6 million crowns).
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In 2001 R. Kelly was sued by Tracy Sampson. She accused him of “making her have a sexual relationship” when she was 17 years old. A former intern at Epic Records said Kelly “treated her like his personal sex object and then dumped her.”
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“He often tried to control every aspect of my life, including who I would associate with and where I would go,” she said. According to the New York Post, this case was also settled out of court.
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Kelly often filmed his antics
Chicago police later charged Kelly with sexually abusing minors and videotaping it. Those charges against him were filed in June 2002 and involved a girl born in September 1984. The reason for the arrest was a video that was anonymously sent to the Chicago Sun Times earlier in the year. The American media turned it over to the police, who verified its authenticity with the help of FBI forensic experts.
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It took six years for the case to go to trial. Web BBC recalled that during this time Kelly released the extremely successful album Trapped In The Closet. The jury ultimately concluded that it could not be proven that the girl in the video was a minor, so Kelly was found not guilty on all counts.
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But other allegations soon surfaced, including 12 more cases of child sexual abuse in Florida, where police arrested Kelly at a vacation home. According to the BBC, during the arrest, the police confiscated a camera that was supposed to contain explicit footage of Kelly and the underage girl. But the charges were dropped. The judge ruled in favor of Kelly’s defense attorneys, who argued that the police did not have enough evidence to justify a search of the home.
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More than a decade later, Kelly found himself in trouble again. First, in 2017, journalist Jim DeRogatis told BuzzFeed News that he spoke with the parents of three girls who accused Kelly of keeping their daughters in an “abuse cult.” Both Kelly and the alleged victims have denied the allegations.
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Kelly also addressed the allegations in song at this time. He released the nineteen-minute track “I Admit” on July 23, 2018 on SoundCloud. Despite its title and chorus, which repeats the lyrics “I admit it, I did it”, the song contains no confession. In the song “I Admit”, Kelly, on the other hand, denies allegations of domestic violence and pedophilia, saying it is “a matter of opinion”.
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In 2019, the Lifetime channel presented the aforementioned documentary Surviving R. Kelly. Two weeks after the show aired, Kelly was terminated by his record label, and planned concerts in the US and New Zealand were cancelled.
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In July 2019, charges were brought against him, of which he was finally found guilty last year.
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