R KELLY. Already sentenced to 30 years in prison for a series of sex crimes, singer R. Kelly was sentenced to an additional 20 years for child pornography.
[Updated Feb 24, 2023 9:53 a.m.] R. Kelly sentenced again. The American singer was sentenced this Thursday, February 23 to a twenty-year prison sentence for child pornography, by a federal court in Chicago. The fallen R’n’B star was found guilty of producing child pornography and embezzlement of a minor. In particular, videos of sexual violence committed against a 14-year-old girl were broadcast.
However, this twenty-year sentence will not be added to the thirty-year sentence to which R. Kelly was already sentenced in June 2022 in New York for a series of sex crimes. The federal court judge ordered that an additional year would be added to those 30 years in prison.
Brooklyn Federal Court sentenced singer R. Kelly on Wednesday, June 29, 2022. A sentence that paid a large number of charges, including extortion, sexual exploitation of minors, kidnapping, trafficking, corruption and forced labor, over a period from 1994 to 2018. R. Kelly, who appealed, has always denied these facts of which he had been found guilty last September.
At the time, federal prosecutors had requested 25 years of criminal imprisonment, describing the interpreter of I Believe I Can Fly, as a “criminal, predatory” and a “danger” for his victims. He had also been found guilty, among other things, of having directed for almost 25 years a “system” of sexual exploitation of young women, including minors.
Sentenced to 30 years in prison, R.Kelly has been making headlines for nearly thirty years. From the beginning of his career, he was accused of pedophilia. The first scandal dates back to 1994, when he frequently married a young woman, Aaliyah, who faked her age from 15 to 18. At the time, R.Kelly was 27 years old. The marriage will be annulled two months later and the young woman will die in 2001.
In 1998, R. Kelly would have bought the silence of Tiffany Hawkins, who claims to have had sex with the singer when she was 15, for 250,000 dollars. Same process in 2001 with Tracy Sampson, a former trainee with whom he would have had sex when she was 17 years old. At the time, all these accusations ended in an acquittal or a dismissal.
In 2019, the documentary titled Surviving R. Kelly triggers an earthquake and rape accusations rain down. For R.Kelly, it’s the beginning of the fall. The singer is indicted in several US states on various counts, including in Chicago and in the states of Illinois and New York
After more than a month of trial, the verdict is in: R. Kelly was found guilty of “sex trafficking” on Monday, September 27, 2021 by federal court in Brooklyn, New York. For more than a month, the former R’n’B star, known for his hit single I Believe I Can Fly, was on trial for a series of sex crimes, including extortion, sexual exploitation of a minor, kidnapping, bribery and forced labor, over a period from 1994 to 2018.
This case and this conviction already marked a strong turning point in the movement
In total, eleven people testified against the artist, nine women and two men. On the stand, an accuser named Angela claimed to have witnessed the singer sexually assaulting singer Aaliyah (who died in a plane crash in 2001), whom the artist had married illegally when she was 15 years old. In front of the judges, Angela explained to the bar to have surprised a sexual relationship between the singer and the girl, aged 13 or 14 at the time, reports the New York Times. She would be the youngest known victim of R. Kelly.
Among the other accusers of the artist, Jane Doe No 5 (according to the name cited in the court report), who accuses R. Kelly of having repeatedly abused him during five years, when he was 17 years old . This witness explains that he contracted herpes after his relations with the singer, who would be under treatment for this sexually transmitted disease since 2007. Another of the nine accusers of R. Kelly also claims to have been contaminated.
In addition to the charges of sexual assault, the witnesses testified to the violence they allegedly suffered from R. Kelly, including “punishments” if they did not accede to his wishes, or claim to have been filmed against their will during sexual acts, as detailed by the BBC.
Robert Sylvester Kelly, aka R. Kelly, was born on January 8, 1967 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was in the early 1990s that he made his debut in music, participating in the Big Break television competition, which he won. The young artist released a first album, Born into the 90’s, in 1992, then 12 Play in 1993. R. Kelly quickly made a name for himself in R’n’B in the United States: in 1995, he was named twice at the Grammy Awards, for writing and composing the song by Michael Jackson, You Are Not Alone.
In 1995, his career took a completely different turn with the release of the album R. Kelly, which contained the hit of his life: I Believe I Can Fly, originally written for the movie Space Jam. Nominated three times for the Grammy Awards, the song made the artist an international star. A basketball enthusiast, R. Kelly signed in 1997 with the Atlantic City Seagulls of the United States Basketball League (USBL). He then released a dozen albums, including R. in 1998, TP-2.com in 2000, Chocolate Factory in 2003, Double Up in 2007, Untitled in 2009, Love Letter in 2010, Write Me Back in 2012 and Black Panties in 2013. R. Kelly has worked with the greatest artists in the world, from Michael Jackson to Lady Gaga via Lil Wayne or T.I. and T-Pain.
A prolific career marred by scandals, from the 2000s. In January 2019, the documentary Surviving R. Kelly, broadcast on the American television channel Lifetime, presents him as a sexual predator, pedophile, at the head of a network of sexual exploitation of young women and ends his musical career, in full swing
Parallel to the explosion of his notoriety in the 1990s, R. Kelly married in 1994 the singer and actress Aaliyah, aged 15 (he was 27). A scandalous marriage that ends with the annulment by the parents of the bride, who they send to Europe. In 1996, R. Kelly remarried choreographer and dancer Andrea Lee, with whom he has three children. The latter is one of the accusers of the singer.
