CHICAGO — In 2008, a Chicago jury ruled that singer R. Kelly was accused of child sexual abuse after prosecutors saw a videotape showing the R&B singer having sex with an underage girl. declared innocent of the crime of creating The defense team argued that the identities of the people on the tape were at issue, and several jurors said the lack of testimony from the victims was a significant barrier to Kelly’s conviction. said.
But on Thursday, the woman who was at the center of the 2008 trial took the witness stand and revealed that she and Mr. Kelly were the characters in the infamous video, saying that when she was underage, she said, “What? Decades ago when he said he had sex “a hundred times” and explained how he had sex twice, he persuaded her to deny having an affair with a law enforcement officer.
“I was so scared that my parents would find out.”
Kelly has been accused of molesting young women and underage girls for more than 20 years, but had a long string of charges before being convicted in federal court in Brooklyn last year and sentenced to 30 years in prison. escaped criminal penalties. racketeering and sex trafficking crimes;
A previous trial in 2008 was the closest Kelly came to being held accountable.
The now 37-year-old woman at the center of that trial appeared in Everett M. Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in downtown Chicago and said she was repeatedly sexually abused by Mr. Kelly as a teenager. of her appears on a videotape, which at one point shows Mr. Kelly urinating on her.
A woman who testified for more than four hours under a pseudonym on Thursday told the court that after law enforcement officers obtained the tape in 2002, Kelly sent her and her parents out of the country to prevent investigators from accessing it. He then urged her to deny that she was on tape at a grand jury, and had a lawyer accompany her. She testified to a grand jury that she lied that she was not the one on the videotape and that she was not having a sexual relationship with Mr. Kelly. She said she gave Mr. Kelly’s lawyer a necklace of hers that can be seen on the videotape.
Kelly, who faces charges of coercing a minor to have sex while a woman spoke, receiving child sexual abuse videos and attempting to obstruct justice, remained calm.
The woman told jurors that she was 13 when she was first introduced to Mr. Kelly by her aunt, a protégé of Mr. Kelly’s stage name Sparkle. She testified that Kelly sexually assaulted her in various locations, including her home, recording studio, and tour bus.
The tape surfaced after Jim DeRogatis, the Chicago Sun-Times journalist who reported the accusations against Kelly, received it in the mail from an anonymous sender and turned it over to law enforcement. Kelly was found guilty of creating child pornography in 2002 and tried in 2008, but was acquitted.
The woman testified that they lived together at Mr. Kelly’s mansion around the time of his trial, and that after he was acquitted, Mr. Kelly began physically abusing her and controlling her ability to leave. He later helped her move into his own home and get a car, she said.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjeen, who is scheduled to cross-examine the woman on Friday, tried to undermine her testimony in opening arguments, saying she had an immunity agreement with prosecutors. informed the jury. The woman asserted that in exchange for her testimony, prosecutors granted her immunity from perjury charges related to a 2002 grand jury false testimony.
Prosecutors say they now have more evidence of abuse of women than state prosecutors had 14 years ago. The trial focuses on four videos that prosecutors allege Kelly sexually abuses women. It is also associated with receiving child pornography.
According to the federal indictment, Mr. Kelly and his associates discovered in 2001 that a videotape of Mr. Kelly sexually abusing a woman was missing, resulting in multiple attempts to retrieve the tape. We launched a year-long effort, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for one person. Attempt to regain ownership of them.
The charges against two of Kelly’s associates, Derrel McDavid and Milton Brown, who are on trial at the same time as Mr. Kelly, relate to charges that they tried to find the missing tapes. Both have pleaded not guilty, and lawyers say they were doing their job without realizing that Kelly was abusing a child.
Later in the trial, four other women will also testify that Kelly was sexually abused as a girl.