R. Kelly in una foto del 2019 (AP Photo/ Matt Marton, File)
For child pornography and solicitation of minors: he will serve almost the entire sentence together with the 30 years to which he was already sentenced for sexual abuse
US singer and producer R. Kelly was condemned to 20 years in prison for child pornography and soliciting minors, crimes of which he was found guilty last September. R. Kelly had already been sentenced to 30 years in prison in another trial in which he was found guilty of sexual exploitation and conspiracy: the Chicago federal court judge who issued the sentence ruled that he will serve 19 of the 20 years sentence foreseen together with the 30 he was already serving, partially accepting the requests of the defense in case of conviction. In fact, therefore, he will have to spend 31 years in prison, one more than the sentence he was already serving.
R. Kelly, pseudonym of Robert Sylvester Kelly, is 56 years old and was especially famous in the nineties and early 2000s thanks to singles such as “I believe I can fly” and “Ignition”. In June 2022 he was sentenced to 30 years: according to the judges, he had exploited his fame to attract young women and underage girls interested in a career in music and then subjected them to serious physical, psychological and sexual abuse, with the complicity of some managers and assistants. The following September, however, he was found guilty of six of the thirteen counts on which he had been indicted in the trial for which the sentence arrived on Thursday.
The trial concerned events that happened more than 20 years ago and had already ended up at the center of a further trial, which took place in 2008 following the circulation of a video in which the singer was seen having sex with a 14-year-old girl. On that occasion R. Kelly was acquitted because the girl who had accused him did not testify. Last summer, however, the same girl – now 37, identified with the pseudonym “Jane” – had decided to testify, claiming that she was the person captured in the video and accusing R. Kelly of having abused her hundreds of times when she was a minor. In addition to her, four other women had made the same accusations against the singer.
R. Kelly was also accused of crimes related to sexual abuse and exploitation of prostitution in Minnesota, where no trial has been held so far.
