If R. Kelly could turn back the hands of time, he might do things differently.
Robert Sylvester Kelly, 54, who has been showered with gold records for decades, was found guilty on one count of racketeering and eight counts of a federal anti-sex trafficking law in a Brooklyn courtroom on Monday. He will be sentenced on May 4, 2022. Kelly is looking at possibly spending the rest of his life in a federal prison.
R. Kelly found guilty on ALL COUNTS
— US Attorney EDNY (@EDNYnews) September 27, 2021
Kelly was also charged in Chicago with ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, for which he has yet to stand trial.
Kelly was acquitted of child phonography charges in 2008.
Racketeering
The racketeering charge is usually reserved for mobsters and gang-bangers. The feds hit Kelly with a racketeering charge due to his sexual exploitation of children, and his web of friends, hangers-on and managers who recruited girls for Kelly, sometimes moved them across state lines, and often pressed them to stay with Kelly if they tried to leave.
Victims and Others Applaud
“We got justice today,” stated Kitti Jones, a woman who left her DJ job in Texas for a romantic, and abusive, relationship with Kelly. “I wouldn’t say I now have closure, because in the end none of us will get our time back. But this is a small victory.”
R Kelly 'married' Aaliyah when she was 15, I was a little over 2 months old when that happened. He's finally been found guilty of sexual exploitation of a child, I am now 27. How many more women and children could have escaped his abuse if the US justice system had done it's job?
— Laura (@Laura_L_June) September 27, 2021
Testimony
Witnesses testified to various rules Kelly had for his concubines, including calling him “Daddy.” He had humiliating punishments for those who broke the rules. One accuser testified that Kelly forced her to rub feces on her face. He even filmed the grotesque scenario.
Witnesses testified that they saw Kelly sexually assaulting R&B singer Aaliyah when she was 14 to 15 years old.
Evidence was presented showing Kelly forged documents to make it appear that Aaliyah was 18 (she was actually 15) when he pressured her into a scam marriage after fearing he had gotten her pregnant.
Kelly produced Aaliyah’s first album, Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, when she was 15 years old. Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash when she was just 22.
Surviving R. Kelly
Lifetime network aired a three-episode documentary called “Surviving R. Kelly” highlighting numerous women who gave detailed and lurid accounts of mental and sexual abuse suffered at the hands of R. Kelly.
“We wanted irrefutable evidence,” Dream Hampton, one of the four executive producers, told Entertainment Weekly. “Without leading any of these women, they all had the exact same stories, even if their interactions with R. Kelly were 15 years apart. All of them have stories about being physically abused, being videotaped without consent, being denied food or bathroom privileges as a punishment. All of them have stories about rules that were established early on.”
Source: PJ Media
