Source: Chicago Tribune / Getty
R. Kelly’s legal losses continue to pile up in 2022 as the R&B pariah once again was found guilty of some of his many alleged crimes related to his sexual perversion.
NBC News reports the “Trapped In the Closet” singer was convicted on six counts of sexual exploitation and enticement of a minor on Wednesday (September 14). The case was brought on by women who claimed that the disgraced R&B singer lured them into performing sex acts while they were underaged and “accusations that he conspired to intimidate and bribe witnesses. ”
The decision by a federal jury came on the second day of deliberations and came one year after Kelly was convicted in New York on charges of federal racketeering and sex trafficking. He is serving a 30-year prison sentence in that case.
Kelly had faced 13 counts, including charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, receipt of child pornography, enticement of a minor to engage in unlawful sexual conduct, conspiring to obstruct justice and conspiring to receive child pornography. He was acquitted on seven counts, including all of the charges related to conspiracy.
Prosecutors stated that R. Kelly had engaged in sexual acts with five minors and actually recorded the encounters on “multiple” videos. During the trial many of Kelly’s victims testified in front of the jury which surely led them to vote guilty.
Kelly stood trial alongside his two co-defendants, former business manager Derrel McDavid and associate Milton “June” Brown but interestingly enough both McDavid and Brown were found not guilty on all charges.
Both men were accused of conspiring with Kelly to rig the outcome of the singer’s 2008 criminal trial in Cook County, which involved a video recording of Kelly allegedly sexually abusing a minor, according to the federal charges against them.
Prosecutors centered their case around a star witness, identified by the pseudonym Jane in court, who identified herself as the person in a 26-minute videotape sent anonymously to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002 that allegedly showed Kelly performing sex acts with an underage girl. NBC News has not viewed the videotape. Parts of it and several other recordings, purportedly depicting Kelly engaged in sex acts with minors, were played during the trial as the prosecution presented its case.
Though Jane didn’t testify in the Cook County trial that R. Kelly went through for child pornography and was ultimately acquitted, Jane did take the stand in this trial and seems to have made an impact on jurors.
In emotional testimony, Jane, now 37, said the singer began having sex with her when she was 15 and he was in his 30s and continued to do so “hundreds” of times before she turned 18. She also testified that he exerted an intense psychological grip on her that caused her to isolate herself from her parents and keep the relationship secret to remain “loyal” to him.
She testified that she decided to come forward a few years ago because she “became exhausted with living with his lies.”
R. Kelly has yet to be sentenced but best believe he won’t be seeing the light of day anytime soon, if ever.
