Queen Nwabueze and John Adoyi, PBA Journalism Mentee
The storm is far from being over for embattled “Storm is over” singer, R. Kelly as a federal jury in Chicago has again found him guilty of producing child immoral videos and abusing minors in his second sex crimes trial in just two years.
Born Robert Sylvester Kelly but widely known as R. Kelly, the Chicago court found the ace musician guilty of a fresh six-count charge bordering on sexual misconducts with minors.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelAt trial, prosecutors sought to paint a picture of Kelly as a master manipulator who used his fame and wealth to reel in star-stuck fans, some of them minors, to sexually abuse then discard them.
Reportedly, Kelly was desperate to recover bad videos he made and lugged around in a gym bag, witnesses said. They said he offered up to $1 million to recover missing videos before his 2008 trial, knowing they would land him in legal peril. The conspiracy to hide his abuse ran from 2000 to 2020, prosecutors said.
Kelly faced 13 counts. A conviction of just one count of such conduct carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, while receipt of bad child videos carries a mandatory minimum of five years. Judges can order that defendants sentenced earlier in separate cases serve their new sentence simultaneously with or only after the first term is fully served. Federal inmates must serve at least 85% of their sentences.
During closing arguments Tuesday, Kelly attorney Jennifer Bonjean likened the government’s testimony and evidence to a cockroach and its case to a bowl of soup.
If a cockroach falls into soup, she said, “you don’t just pull out the cockroach and eat the rest of the soup. You throw out the whole soup,” said told jurors.
“There are just too many cockroaches,” she said of the prosecution’s case.
Recall that the convicted R&B star, is already serving a 30-year sentence out of New York after prosecutors proved that he ran a decades-long sex trafficking enterprise through his music business. In that trial, 11 sexual abuse victims testified against him.
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Nine women and two men who testified against him at that trial said that he lured them into sexual slavery after promising to help their careers in the music industry — promises he almost never kept.
The women, many of whom were teenagers when they met Kelly, testified that he directed them to have sex with him and each other and said the singer obsessively videotaped the sexual activities.
The Chicago trial, which began on August 13, primarily dealt with the sex tapes that were part of a 2008 Illinois child pornography trial in which Kelly was acquitted after the witness declined to take the stand.
Now 37, the survivor, who goes by the name, Jane, cooperated with prosecutors and was among four victims who took the stand.
Jurors were presented with three videos of Jane being abused by Kelly when she was a minor. In one, which had been sent anonymously to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002 and then turned over to police, a female voice could be heard referring to her “14-year-old body.”
On the stand, Jane confirmed that she was the teenager in all three videos.
Kelly’s former business manager, Derrel McDavid, and a former assistant, Milton “June” Brown, were also on trial for their alleged involvement in the scheme but were eventually acquitted.
