R. Kelly

Former R&B star R Kelly is sentenced to 30 years in prison for using his fame to subject young fans — some just children — to systematic sexual abuse.

It's a case about violence, cruelty and control," US District Judge Ann Donnelly told Kelly in court. Kelly was sued in 1997 by a woman who alleged sexual battery and sexual harassment while she was a minor, and he later faced criminal child pornography charges related to a different girl in Chicago. A jury there acquitted him in 2008, and he settled the lawsuit. "You made me do things that broke my spirit. Kelly used his "fame, money and popularity" to systematically "prey upon children and young women for his own sexual gratification," prosecutors wrote in a court filing earlier this month. The Brooklyn federal court jury convicted him after hearing that he used his entourage of managers and aides to meet girls and keep them obedient, an operation that prosecutors said amounted to a criminal enterprise. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, 55, was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking last year at a trial that gave voice to accusers who had once wondered if their stories were being ignored because they were Black women.

The singer-songwriter used his entourage to meet girls and keep them obedient in a systematic scheme of abuse that went on for decades.

She was promised mentorship but quickly ended up “a sex slave,” she said outside court after the sentencing. Witnesses said they were married in matching jogging suits using a license falsely listing her age as 18; he was 27 at the time. Aaliyah worked with Kelly, who wrote and produced her 1994 debut album, Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number. Their marriage was later annulled. “But that doesn’t mean that he can accept responsibility in the way that the government would like him to and other people would like him to. Several accusers testified that Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage. Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct didn’t come until the #MeToo reckoning, reaching a crescendo after the release of the docuseries Surviving R. Kelly.

The sentence was imposed nine months after Kelly, 55, was convicted of racketeering and sex crimes, in a trial that amplified accusations that had dogged the ...

"This case is not about sex. Defence lawyers said Kelly deserved no more than 10 years, the mandatory minimum, arguing that his history as an abused child may have led to his adult "hypersexuality" and that he no longer posed a threat. "This court must distinguish between what is boorish and bad behaviour, and what is criminal conduct," Kelly's lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said prior to the sentencing. Prosecutors had urged a prison sentence of more than 25 years, saying Kelly had demonstrated a "callous disregard" for his victims and shown no remorse. These included needing his permission go to the bathroom, calling him "Daddy" and writing "apology letters" that purported to absolve Kelly of wrongdoing, among others. US District Judge Ann Donnelly in Brooklyn federal court said the evidence reflected Kelly's "indifference to human suffering" and "sheer brutality" toward his victims.

R. Kelly was sentenced on Wednesday to 30 years in jail, nearly a year after the 55-year-old multiplatinum R&B singer was convicted by a New York jury for ...

His former manager admitted in court to bribing a worker to obtain fake identification allowing the union, which was later annulled. The sentence comes just over a month before jury selection is due to start in Kelly's separate, long-delayed federal trial in Chicago on 15 August. The musician who once dominated R&B also faces prosecution in two other state jurisdictions. Several said they were told he could bolster their music industry aspirations. In that case, Kelly and two of his former associates are alleged to have rigged the singer's 2008 pornography trial and hid years of sexual abuse of minors. "The verdict is in: R. Kelly has been sentenced to 30 years," the US attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York said in a tweet.

The R&B singer, 55, had been found guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering involving women, girls and boys.

In federal court in Chicago, he is charged with enticement of a minor, possession of child abuse images and obstruction of justice. Kelly’s case attracted attention in light of the #MeToo movement, in which powerful men have been held to account for sexual misconduct and sexual assault. While prosecutors sought a minimum 25-year term, Kelly’s defence pushed for a sentence of 10 years or less. At the trial, victims had described how Kelly, real name Robert Sylvester Kelly, subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage. “We are no longer the preyed-upon individuals we once were.” You taught them that love is enslavement and violence.”

The disgraced rapper R. Kelly may spend the rest of his life in prison, after being sentenced to 30 years for sex trafficking women and children, ...

Fifty five year old Robert Sylvester Kelly was convicted on eight charges of sex trafficking as well as another of racketeering in September 2021. “You took advantage of their hopes and dreams, holding teenagers in your house trapped. Aaliyah died in a plane crash in 2001.

Accusations against the disgraced R&B star first surfaced in the 1990s. But despite multiple women coming forward, R Kelly's career felt little impact.

Kelly was 27 at the time. Even with the 30 years he got today, he'll be 85 before he gets out. "This happened to me a long time ago. I was 17, I'm 45 today. The repercussions of not believing our sisters, our wives, our daughters have never been starker in America than they are today. "I was an up-and-coming singer. I was a girl full of life. "You made me do things that broke my spirit. "Someone very close to the family told me it was also a message for R Kelly, so today's sentence is in part vindication for the damage he did to Aaliyah," DeRogatis says. Kitti Jones, who featured in the doco-series Surviving R Kelly after dating the singer from 2011 to 2013, also testified, and told reporters the outcome was "a long time coming." "But you have to realise women in general are not believed. "Chicago has a lot to answer for and the United States has a lot to answer for.

In 2000, Chicago journalist Jim DeRogatis broke further accusations of Kelly having had sex with underage girls. He kept on the story for years, uncovering even ...

And I think it’s going to be the same in August when the second federal trial starts, because those videotapes, as I’ve heard from my sources, are just beyond horrifying. I think after my reporting for Buzzfeed in 2017 about the cult, and the #MuteRKelly movement being inspired to launch because of that story, that leads to Surviving R. Kelly and having these women in your living room, one after another, tell their stories as they did to me for 22 years in conference rooms and in meetings where it was just us. To be clear, all of those women, they never said, “I hate that evil monster.” What I heard again and again was, “The brother needs help. In all of the years I’ve covered this, I thought I’d heard everything, but there were still victims who testified, including the two young men—I had never heard those stories. I don’t say “allegedly,” because it has now been proved in a court of law in front of a jury of his peers, and he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison. We’ve seen something similar with the misinformation around the Depp-Heard trial, and how a lot of the same people fueling that are now trying to downplay the Marilyn Manson allegations as well. The problems of race and the problems of treating women equitably and without abuse are deep. But there is a deep strain of racism and misogyny in this country, and that’s what we’re seeing come out in these people. Nobody [in the industry] has ever been accused of that many crimes that were proved in a court of law, and it truly is singular. Nobody in the history of popular music has ever been convicted in all of pop music history of charges of the breadth and depth of Robert Sylvester Kelly’s. He had a song, “The World’s Greatest,” to which I would only append “The World’s Greatest Predator,” at least in pop music. I think that the breadth and depth of the evidence that the team of several dozen federal investigators compiled for these two federal cases far outshines the technicality on which Cosby and his verdict was overturned. I haven’t gotten to talk in enough detail about this, but every system in Chicago failed these young Black girls, for 30 years, in the full glare of the brightest spotlight imaginable for a superstar who was selling 100 million records, generating $1 billion in income for Jive Records, and then RCA, and then Sony, with half a billion dollars going into his own pocket.