R Kelly found guilty of sex crimes with minors

R Kelly, the fallen R&B star who was once revered as a product of Chicago’s South Side, was found guilty on Wednesday of sex crimes, including producing child sexual abuse imagery and coercing minors into sex acts.

Kelly, 55, had already been sentenced to 30 years in prison after a jury in New York convicted him of racketeering and sex trafficking charges last year — the first time Kelly had been held criminally responsible for allegations related to sexual abuse despite accusations dating back more than three decades. The conviction in Chicago could add years to that prison sentence.

On Wednesday, the 12-person jury in the trial convicted Kelly of six out of the 13 charges brought against him. He was found guilty of coercing three minors into criminal sexual activity and producing three child sexual abuse videos. Kelly was acquitted of attempting to obstruct an earlier investigation into his abuse.

The federal trial in Chicago carried echoes of a state trial in 2008, in which a jury acquitted Kelly on charges of producing child sexual abuse imagery. That trial focused on one videotape, which prosecutors said showed Kelly sexually abusing and urinating on a girl when she was 14. After finding him not guilty, some jurors told reporters after that trial that the lack of testimony from the young woman — who had denied to a grand jury that she appeared in the video — had been a significant barrier to convicting Kelly.

During this trial, which started in August, prosecutors removed that barrier. The woman at the center of the 2008 trial testified, identifying herself as the girl who was sexually abused by Kelly in the video. Prosecutors showed jurors clips from that video and from two others that they described as footage of Kelly sexually abusing the woman when she was underage.

Much of the testimony in the trial, which was held at Everett M. Dirksen US Courthouse in downtown Chicago, revolved around the events surrounding that first trial.

Prosecutors accused Kelly of working to obstruct an investigation into his treatment of underage girls in the early 2000s by hiring people to help him recover missing videos of his sexual abuse of children and persuading the woman at the centre of the earlier trial to lie on his behalf.

A key development for prosecutors came when that woman decided in 2019 — months after the Lifetime documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly” aired sexual abuse allegations against Kelly — to cooperate with investigators.

“I no longer wanted to carry his lies,” the woman testified.

The woman testified that Kelly had persuaded her to falsely deny to a grand jury in 2002 that it was her on the tape, and that she had ever had a sexual relationship with him. Another key witness, Charles Freeman, testified that Kelly called him in 2001, asking for help recovering some “stolen tapes”. Freeman said that over a period of several years, he had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Kelly and his associates as part of an effort to retrieve missing tapes.

Three other women, all of whom were identified by pseudonyms, testified in the trial, saying that Kelly sexually abused them when they were underage. A fifth accuser who had been expected to testify did not appear.

Kelly declined to testify. He did not testify in the 2008 trial in Chicago or the one in New York, either.

A lawyer representing him, Jennifer Bonjean, argued in court that the prosecution of Kelly was the outcome of a rush to judgment during the #MeToo movement, describing him as a “victim of extortion and financial exploitation”. She sought to cast doubt on the women’s stories and to portray them as testifying for money and self-protection, highlighting the fact that the woman at the centre of the 2008 trial had an immunity deal with prosecutors that protects her from perjury charges for lying to the grand jury at the time.

The woman acknowledged that she had an immunity deal, and that she had lied years ago, but insisted that she was telling the truth now. The jury apparently believed her. - New York Times

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