R Kelly is found GUILTY of all nine counts of racketeering and sex trafficking

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R. Kelly was found guilty of all nine counts of racketeering and sex trafficking by a federal jury on Monday during his sex trafficking trial where prosecutors accused the R&B singer of exploiting his stardom over a quarter-century to lure women and underage girls into his orbit for sex. 

A jury of seven men and five women reached the verdict after nine hours of deliberation and a six-week long trial featuring lurid testimony. 

He faces up to 100 years in prison – 20 years for racketeering, 10 for each of the sex trafficking convictions. Sentencing is expected to take place on May 4, 2022. Kelly has remained in custody after being denied bail in his New York City case in October 2019.

The jury began deliberating federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges against the superstar on Friday in Brooklyn, after prosecutors and defense attorneys finished their closing arguments.

Prosecutors say Robert Sylvester Kelly, 54, ran a Chicago-based criminal enterprise for nearly three decades and that he used to ‘target, groom and exploit girls, boys and women’ for unwanted sex and mental torment.

The witnesses said Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The acts presented during disturbing testimony included bribery, kidnapping, forced labor rape, druggings, imprisonment and child pornography. Some key allegations from the trial include:

Assaulting underage victims and knowingly giving them herpesCoercing victims into getting abortions after impregnating themSlapping, choking, spitting at and urinating on his victimsRecording sexual encounters with his underage accusers, creating child pornSubjecting his victims to cruel punishments – such as beatings or locking them in rooms without access to food, water or a bathroom – when they disobeyed his rules Forcing his victims to write letters denying allegations of abuse against himThreatening his accusers and their families if they attempted to leave him or press chargesHis illegal marriage to singer Aaliyah, which involved obtaining a fake ID for the then-15-year-old so the nuptials could be performed

‘Today’s guilty verdict forever brands R. Kelly as a predator who used his fame and fortune to prey on the young, the vulnerable and the voiceless for his own sexual gratification,’ Jacquelyn Kasulis, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York who prosecuted the case, said.

Adding that Kelly is ‘a predator who used his inner circle to ensnare underage girls, and young men and women, for decades in a sordid web of sex abuse, exploitation and humiliation.’

Gloria Allred, who represented three of Kelly’s accusers, echoed Kasulis’ comments.

‘I have been practicing law for 47 years. During this time I have pursued many sexual predators who have committed crimes against women and children. Of all the predators I have pursued, Mr. Kelly is the worst,’ she said outside the courthouse.

‘He used the power of his celebrity to recruit vulnerable underage girls for the purpose of sexually abusing them.’ 

Kelly’s lawyer Deveraux Cannick said he was disappointed by the verdict. 

‘I think I’m even more disappointed the government brought the case in the first place given all the inconsistencies,’ Cannick said.   

‘I don’t think anybody is ever prepared for an outcome like this.’ 

Jurors began the day on Monday by sending the judge a note asking for transcripts of testimony by two former Kelly employees and for a legal clarification. 

The court also permitted the media – for the first time – to hear audio played for the jury.

In one clip, according to reporter Jason Meisner, Kelly is heard hitting a victim because she was suspected of stealing.

‘Keep your eyes closed. Eyes open? Guess what — we start over,’ Kelly was heard saying, followed by sounds of slapping and crying.

After the assault, the victim was heard crying as she repeats: ‘I’m a stupid b***h daddy, I want you to fix me.’

Kelly allegedly told her that he loved her, supported her and encouraged her to keep repeating the aforementioned words.

‘Without a frown, without an attitude you do what the f*** I say,’ he adds.

Another clip, reportedly from the same encounter, also provided insight to how he treated his victims in the bedroom.

Among splashing and moaning sounds, the victim was heard saying: ‘Ooh there is p*** everywhere’.

‘That wasn’t role play and that wasn’t consensual. You saw it with your own eyes,’ prosecutor Nadia Shihata told the courtroom on Monday. 

‘And by the way, Anna testified about that. And the other video with the bodily fluids, she testified about that too…And she said it was humiliating.’

The guilty verdict follows 21 days of evidence including 50 witnesses and hours of searing testimony.

The charges were based on an argument that the entourage of managers and aides who helped the singer meet girls – and keep them obedient and quiet – amounted to a criminal enterprise. 

To convict Kelly on racketeering, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years, jurors had to find him guilty of at least two of 14 ‘predicate acts’ — the crimes elemental to the wider pattern of illegal wrongdoing.   

He was also charged with multiple violations of the Mann Act, which makes it illegal to transport anyone across state lines ‘for any immoral purpose.’ 

Throughout the trial, prosecutors argued that Kelly’s accusers were ‘indoctrinated’ into his world, groomed for sex and kept in line by ‘coercive means of control’ including isolation and cruel disciplinarily measures. 

They argued that Kelly, with the help of members of his entourage, used tactics from ‘the predator playbook’ to sexually exploit his victims.

‘The defendant set rules, lots of them, and he demanded complete obedience,’ Assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Geddes said during closing statements Wednesday. That meant ‘for many years what happened in the defendant’s world stayed in the defendant´s world. But no longer.’ 

Many of his accusers shared stories echoing that tone, saying they met the singer at concerts or mall performances, and were handed slips of paper with Kelly’s contact by his entourage. 

Several said they were told he could help them achieve careers in the music industry. 

The singer did not testify in his own defense during the trial, likely to avoid a damaging cross-examination. 

The defense, however, argued that his accusers lied in their testimonies and that Kelly was a ‘sex symbol’ and ‘playboy’ who was being attacked by scorned exes and money-hungry fans. 

Defense attorney Deveraux Cannick told the jury there was no evidence Kelly’s accusers were ever forced to do anything against their will. 

He also noted that the accusers — also known as Kelly’s girlfriends — maintained a relationship with him because he spoiled them with travel, shopping sprees and five-star dining and other luxuries. 

‘He gave them a lavish lifestyle,’ he said. ‘That’s not what a predator is supposed to do.’ 

Kelly’s trial centered around six women.

 

 

 

Prosecutors called 45 witnesses to the stand since the trial began in federal court in Brooklyn on August 18, though their testimony is not part of the charges.

They included several female and two male accusers to back up allegations that Kelly used a cadre of managers, bodyguards and assistants to systematically recruit potential victims at his shows, malls and fast-food restaurants where he hung out.

The accusers testified that once they were in Kelly’s orbit, he groomed them for unwanted sex and psychological torment – mostly when they were teenagers – in episodes dating to the 1990s. 

The accusers’ searing accounts were supported at least in part by other former Kelly employees whose own testimony suggested they were essentially paid off to look the other way or enable the recording artist.

Audio and other recordings were also shared in the courtroom. The prosecution says the footage showed his violent threats to his victims where he can be heard telling one woman that he will ‘f*** her up’ if she ‘lie[s]’ to him’ and another that he will come to her home state to make ‘something happen to [her]’ if she ever ‘takes from [him] again’.

The prosecutors said the tapes demonstrate his pattern of violently threatening his victims.  

The former star singer is captured on another recording berating a woman – Jane Doe – from Florida he accused of stealing a Rolex watch from him, the court filing said.

‘You better not ever… take from me again or I will be in Florida and something will happen to you,’ he said. ‘You understand what I’m telling you?’

Prosecutors had planned to call the Florida woman as a witness but decided against it after she ‘started to have panic attacks and appeared to have an emotional breakdown’ while listening to the tape in preparation for her testimony, according to the filing.

The defendant bragged about having ‘cameras everywhere’ in his Chicago studio and other locations he used to keep an eye on his victims, it added.

The singer’s accusers were finally able to testify against him last month after their hush-money NDAs, which paid up to $1.5million each in exchange for their silence, were overturned by a Brooklyn judge. 

Prosecutors say Kelly suppressed allegations against him for years by pressuring accusers into signing non-disclosure agreements in exchange for cash settlements. The NDA settlements were overseen by Susan E. Loggans, a personal-injury attorney. 

Prosecutors in Kelly’s trial argued that NDAs should not keep victims from speaking out and referred to four other federal cases, including a ruling against Bill Cosby in 2016 when he sued one of his victims Andrea Constand for speaking with prosecutors.

A Brooklyn judge agreed and overturned the NDAs for Kelly’s accusers allowing two of his alleged victims to testify against him, reported The New Yorker.

One victim, called Jane Doe No 4, was the first witness to take the stand on August 18 and said Kelly allegedly began making sexual contact with her in 2009 when she was 16 and he was in his early 40s.  

Loggans helped Jane Doe 4 reach a $1.5million settlement agreement with Kelly’s attorneys, in exchange for an NDA. 

The other alleged victim, Jane Doe No. 11, told the court she had a consensual sexual relationship with Kelly in 2001, as an adult, and that he knowingly gave her herpes. 

She reached a cash settlement with Kelly in 2004 in exchange for the NDA.

The defendant, Kelly, pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges. 

He’s also charged with that multiple violations of the Mann Act, an interstate anti-sex trafficking law which makes it illegal to transport anyone across state lines ‘for any immoral purpose.’

Kelly had also been accused of knowingly spreading herpes to several of his victims, which is a crime in some states. 

Despite decades of sexual misconduct accusations, the New York case is only the second to result in a criminal trial. He was previously acquitted of a child pornography charge.

Kelly also faces separate criminal charges in federal court in Chicago, and state charges in Illinois and Minnesota.

He maintains his innocence, vehemently denying the allegations, claiming that the accusers were groupies who wanted to take advantage of his fame and fortune until the #MeToo movement turned them against him.   

The case, delayed over a year by the pandemic, is seen as landmark for the #MeToo movement as it is the first major sex abuse trial where the majority of accusers are Black women. 

Although most of his accusers were female, at least one male — testifying under the pseudonym Louis — took the stand during Kelly’s racketeering trial.

Louis, speaking on August 30, alleged that Kelly  had a woman hidden under a boxing ring at his house ready to perform sexual acts on him.

He told the Brooklyn federal courtroom he was 17 when Kelly slipped him his phone number while the teenager was working the night shift at a McDonald’s drive-thru in suburban Chicago, near the R&B artist’s home.

After he and his parents attended a party at Kelly’s home, the singer told him ‘maybe it would be best sometime if I came to the party by myself,’ Louis told the court.

At one point, Louis said, he met Kelly at the star’s home and they proceeded to the detached garage, which had a boxing ring and a gym.

‘He asked me what I was willing to do for music,’ the witness said, describing the singer asking if he had ‘fantasies’ before performing oral sex on him.

He also described an episode of nonconsensual sex involving Louis and another person, saying Kelly ‘snapped his fingers’ before ‘a young lady came out from under the (boxing) ring.’

‘She crawled over to him’ before performing oral sex on both Kelly and Louis, the court heard.

‘It was uncomfortable,’ Louis said, describing another instance when he passed out from drinking at a party and woke up alone with the defendant, unsure whether they’d had a sexual encounter.

Louis, who met Kelly in 2006, said the singer told him to ‘keep it between me and him’ saying ‘we family now, we brothers.’

He said Kelly requested Louis call him ‘Daddy’ – as multiple women have said the singer demanded – and would routinely film their sexual encounters.

Louis is not among the alleged victims identified in the indictment against Kelly, which charges him with racketeering, sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping, bribery and forced labor between 1994 and 2018.

His testimony came during the third week of the six-week long trial as part of a slate of witnesses providing additional evidence beyond that from the girls and women listed in the indictment.

Prosecutors presented searing testimony from accusers to paint a picture of more than two decades of physical, sexual and emotional abuse by Kelly.

The 54-year-old denied all charges and faces between 10 years and life in prison if convicted on all counts.

A woman who went only by ‘Stephanie’ testified that she was 17 during her six-month relationship in 1999 with the then 32-year-old Kelly.

She testified about remembering a conversation with the R&B artist and two others when he said he preferred ‘young girls’ and questioned why ‘people make such a big deal of it.’ 

‘Look at Jerry Lee Lewis,’ she said, quoting Kelly, now 54, as saying, referring to the influential rock and roll pioneer who controversially married his 13-year-old second cousin in the 1950s. 

She described sex with Kelly as ‘humiliating,’ describing in lurid detail his demands, and claiming he routinely filmed their sexual encounters.

‘He was one of two ways: nice and charming, jovial. Or he was controlling, intimidating, he could put the fear of God in me,’ Stephanie said. ‘He humiliated me, he degraded me, he scared me.’

He once forced her to perform oral sex on him in a vehicle with others in the car, she said, and sometimes left her naked and alone in rooms for hours.

‘He could put the fear of God in me very quickly,’ she said, saying she performed sex acts because ‘I didn’t feel like I had a choice,’ saying she’d suffered past abuse both at home and by a former boss. She also said she feared what the singer would do with their sex tapes.

Around the time she turned 18, Stephanie said she decided to stop seeing Kelly: ‘I felt used and humiliated and degraded.’

‘I just didn’t want to be abused anymore.’

Many accusations of sex-related misconduct were discussed in the 2019 Lifetime documentary ‘Surviving R. Kelly.’

Several witnesses have testified that Kelly demanded strict obedience from those around him, with Stephanie and other accusers saying he required that they call him ‘Daddy.’

His alleged exploitation of male and female employees has also come into question. Earlier, Tom Arnold, who worked at one of Kelly’s Chicago studios, said he eventually quit his job as studio manager because of the singer’s system for docking employee pay over such slights. 

Kelly is accused of being the leader of a sex ring involving women and underage girls and boys.

The studio manager testified that Kelly had a strict system of fining employees for rule-breaking, with several workers losing out on money because someone ate the singer’s donuts.

Arnold, a Kelly employee since 1988, worked at the notorious Chocolate Factory since 2004 but the last straw came during what was a ‘very last-minute’ trip to Disney World in 2011.

He was told to book a tour guide for Kelly and some female guests. There was no one available and they had to book a male tour guide.

This went against Kelly’s rules, Arnold said, that prevented his girlfriends from being around other men – to the point where they couldn’t look at them in the eye if they were in the same area.

‘It needed to be a woman,’ Arnold said on the stand in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Stephanie reiterated these rules during her testimony, mentioning that at the dinner where Kelly compared himself to Jerry Lee Lewis, they were supposed to be joined by the rap duo Boo & Gotti.

She said that she was not allowed to speak to either of them.

‘I wasn’t meant to speak to any men except for Mr. Kelly,’ the 39-year-old said.

When Kelly and his girlfriends arrived at Disney World, the singer got off the tour bus, saw the tour guide and immediately canceled the trip. He then fined Arnold $1,500, his entire paycheck for the week.

Arnold quit soon after.

Kelly, known for the Grammy-winning song ‘I Believe I Can Fly,’ has pleaded not guilty to charges that he ran a decades-long racketeering scheme in which he abused six women and girls, including Jane and the late singer Aaliyah.

He’s vehemently denied the charges, claiming that the women were groupies who wanted to take advantage of his fame and fortune.

Additionally, Kelly is charged in a bribery scheme after he paid a $500 bribe in 1994 in order to get breakout singer Aaliyah, who was 15, a fake ID so he could marry her. Kelly allegedly feared that he had gotten the teen pregnant. 

Why R. Kelly’s illegal marriage to singer Aaliyah was at the center of his racketeering case nearly three decades later

R. Kelly illegal marriage to R&B singer Aaliyah was presented by the prosecution as a criminal act underlying the racketeering charge against the singer.

The marriage — which took place in a 10-minute ceremony held inside a Chicago hotel when Aaliyah was just 15 — was figured prominently in the prosecution’s closing arguments last week, the New York Times reported.

Prosecutor Elizabeth Geddes argued that Kelly’s ‘sexual abuse’ of Aaliyah was ‘part of the defendant’s pattern of racketeering.’

Earlier this month, Pastor Nathan Edmond, who conducted the 1994 nuptials, testified via video link at Kelly’s sex abuse trial.

Edmond alleged that he was recruited to marry Kelly, who was aged 27 at the time, after he was shown a falsified document that stated Aaliyah was 18. 

‘I didn’t know it was anyone special,’ Edmond stated on September 1. ‘You couldn’t see her whole face because her hair was over half of her face.’ 

Aaliyah, whose full name was Aaliyah Dana Haughton, worked with Kelly, who wrote and produced her 1994 debut album, ‘Age Ain´t Nothing But A Number.’

Late last month, Kelly’s former tour manager, Demetrius Smith, testified to the same court that he bribed a government worker with $500 to obtain Aaliyah’s fake ID so that Kelly could marry her. 

He reportedly feared that he had gotten Aaliyah pregnant, which would out him as having had sex with an underage girl.  

Prosecutors say Kelly wanted to use the marriage to shield himself from criminal charges related to having sex with a minor and to prevent her from testifying against him.  

The marriage was annulled in 1995 by Aaliyah’s parents, who did not know about the wedding before it occurred. She tragically died in a plane crash six years later at the age of 22.  

Pastor Edmond told the court on September 1 that he performed the ceremony at Sheraton Gateway Suites near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. 

He claimed Kelly and Aaliyah wore matching sweatsuits, and that they both had one leg of their sweatpants rolled up to the knee. 

Edmond’s testimony was the first time he publicly spoke about the ceremony. 

He stated that Kelly had asked him to sign a non-disclosure agreement before he conducted the nuptials, but he declined.

‘I kind of chuckled…  I said it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. It should have been more airtight,’ Edmond stated. 

Despite refusing to sign the NDA, Edmond says he never spoke to the media because he gave Kelly his ‘word’ that he would not. 

After their secret, low-key wedding, Kelly and Aaliyah denied rumors that they had tied the knot. 

There were also whispers that Aaliyah was expecting Kelly’s baby, with one writer telling VIBE magazine in 1994: ‘I’ve been hearing about Robert [Kelly] and Aaliyah for a while — that she was pregnant. Or that she was coming and going in and out of his house.’

Meanwhile, a former live-in girlfriend of Kelly’s last month testified that the singer told her that he only married Aaliyah so that she could get an abortion.  

Aaliyah never confirmed the pregnancy. She went on to have a glittering career as an actress and singer before her untimely death in 2001. 

Maria Cruz Melendez, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the court during opening statements at Kelly’s trial last month: ‘Aaliyah met the defendant in approximately 1992, when she was about twelve years old. Aaliyah had a gift. She was a talented singer, and people thought that she could make it far in the industry, so the defendant [Kelly] began to produce and write music for Aaliyah when she was still a child. 

‘Shortly after he began working with her, the defendant began to engage in sexual activity with her. And for years while Aaliyah was a minor, too young to even consent to sex, he continued to engage in sexual activity with her that lasted several years.’

Back in 2019, Kelly’s lawyer, Steven Greenberg, claimed his client had ‘no idea’ Aaliyah was underage at the time of their marriage.  

During the trial, the court also heard testimony from another alleged victim of Kelly’s who claimed that the singer kept a gun by his side while he berated her before  forcing her to give him oral sex. 

‘He had a weapon, so I wasn´t going to step out of line,’ the woman said while recounting the 2018 episode. 

She said that at the time she spotted Kelly with a gun, he demanded to know, ‘How many men have you seen naked?’ He also instructed her to act ‘excited like a puppy’ and added: ‘I still have a lot to teach you.’ 

She testified that she saw Kelly on multiple occasions. 

Their last encounter came inside a New York City hotel suite, where she resisted having sex with him. She said he responded by warning her not to defy him, saying, ‘I’m a f–ing legend.’

Kelly has repeatedly denied accusations that he preyed on victims during a 30-year career. His lawyers have portrayed his accusers as groupies who are lying about their relationships with him.

The trial has so far featured a steady stream of accusers claiming Kelly began sexually degrading them when they were still in their teens. They said he used his stardom to lure them into an insular world where he watched their every move and doled out perverse punishments, spanking them and isolating them in hotel rooms if they broke a vow to never speak about him to anyone else.

Kelly’s personal physician has also testified, saying he treated him for herpes for several years.

Many of the sex-related misconduct allegations were discussed in the 2019 Lifetime documentary ‘Surviving R. Kelly.’