R. Kelly

NEW YORK Disgraced R&B superstar R. Kelly was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison for using his fame to sexually abuse young fans, including some who ...

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. Witnesses said they were married in matching jogging suits using a license falsely listing her age as 18; he was 27 at the time. Victims “have sought to be heard and acknowledged,” another one of his accusers said at his sentencing. The women who spoke at Kelly’s sentencing were identified only by first names or pseudonyms. He beat child pornography charges in Chicago in 2008, when a jury acquitted him. Because he disagrees with the characterizations that have been made about him,” she said. As an adult with “literacy deficiencies,” the star was “repeatedly defrauded and financially abused, often by the people he paid to protect him,” his lawyers said. Kelly, 55, didn’t give a statement and showed no reaction on hearing his penalty, which also included a $100,000 fine. “You made me do things that broke my spirit. The sentence caps a slow-motion fall for Kelly, who is known for work including the 1996 hit “I Believe I Can Fly” and the cult classic “Trapped in the Closet,” a multipart tale of sexual betrayal and intrigue. Kelly’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, said he was “devastated” by the sentence and saddened by what he had heard. “I was afraid, naive and didn’t know to handle the situation,” she said, so she didn’t speak up at the time.

The prison term marks the culmination of Mr. Kelly's stunning downfall. In court, the women he victimized gave wrenching accounts.

Hours after the singer pleaded not guilty to the charges that led to his 2008 trial, he sang alongside children at a church in Chicago. “I don’t know why all these people turned a blind eye,” said the judge, who also ordered Mr. Kelly to pay a $100,000 fine. (He was acquitted on all counts after the girl declined to testify at trial.) Six years later, The Chicago Sun-Times published an investigation into accusations that the singer was having sex with underage girls. “You taught them that love is enslavement and violence,” the judge said, recalling the scenarios he created to wreak primal humiliation on them. She had first encountered Mr. Kelly with hopes of helping a friend land an audition, she said, but the singer coerced her into sex. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be whole,” the woman continued. Mr. Kelly was prepared for prison, she said, but “has regrets and is sad.” “You had a system in place that lured young people into your orbit — and then you took over their lives.” On Wednesday, Mr. Kelly, 55, could no longer escape the fallout: He was sentenced to 30 years in prison for racketeering and sex trafficking. The sentencing that followed a September conviction culminated Mr. Kelly’s staggering downfall, from a chart-topping hitmaker known as the king of R&B to a pariah whose musical legacy has become inextricable from his abuses. Around the same time, he began having sex with a 15-year-old girl, according to her subsequent lawsuit.

NEW YORK: R Kelly was sentenced on Wednesday (Jun 29) to 30 years in prison, following the multiplatinum R&B singer's conviction for exploiting his stardom ...

He also faces various state charges in Illinois and Minnesota. "This case is not about sex. Advertisement

A CHICAGO native who soared to global celebrity on a burst of megahits in the 1990s, for years R. Kelly endured as one of R&B's top stars, even as he faced ...

Nine months after his convictions on sex trafficking and racketeering charges, disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly will be sentenced to up to life in prison on ...

He pleaded not guilty to the charges in 2020. Kelly also owes money to the IRS and is behind on child-support payments. More than $1 million of the royalties were seized in 2020 by his former landlord, Midwest Commercial Funding, after he stopped paying rent on his Chicago studio. However, the money has been promised to a line of collectors, according to an Illinois appeals court document. For example, witnesses testified that the ’90s hitmaker fraudulently married R&B singer Aaliyah, who was 15 and believed to be pregnant at the time, by bribing a government official to give her a fake ID that claimed she was an adult. Kelley faces between 10 years, which is the mandatory minimum sentencing, to life in prison for racketeering and sex trafficking.

Recording artist was convicted last year of nine charges related to sex trafficking and racketeering.

Kelly, 55, was convicted last September, following a trial lasting over five weeks. Read more at straitstimes.com.

He also faces various state charges in Illinois and Minnesota. “I never thought that I would be here to see him be held accountable for the atrocious things that he did to children,” Lizzette Martinez, one of the accusers who spoke in court, told reporters after the hearing. “This is a significant outcome for all victims of R. Kelly and especially for the survivors who so bravely testified about the horrific and sadistic abuse they endured,” Breon Peace, the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, told reporters after the hearing. “This case is not about sex. These included needing his permission to go to the bathroom, calling him “Daddy” and writing “apology letters” that purported to absolve Kelly of wrongdoing, among others. After the sentence was read, his lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, told reporters Kelly was “devastated” by the sentence but that he would appeal.

A Chicago native who soared to global celebrity on a burst of megahits in the 1990s, for years R. Kelly endured as one of R&B's top stars, even as he faced ...

In January 2019, a Lifetime docu-series again said the quiet part loud, interviewing women who cast Kelly as manipulative, violent and hyper-focused on young girls, who he allegedly demanded call him "daddy." From 2005 to 2012, he wrote, produced, directed and performed in the notorious "hip hopera" entitled "Trapped in the Closet," an absurdist tale of sex and lies that bewildered and impressed critics. He said an older woman raped him, also when he was eight, and that an older man in the neighborhood sexually abused him when he was a pre-teen. After years of trial delays, during which he continued to tour and record, Kelly was acquitted on all counts in that controversial trial. But the jury of five women and seven men found him guilty on all charges in September 2021, convicting him of using his fame to systematically recruit victims for sex, buttressed by his entourage. But now, three decades after he was first documented to have abused a minor, the 55-year-old artist will spend 30 years in prison after a New York jury convicted him of running a criminal ring that trapped teenagers and women in a web of sexual, emotional and physical abuse.

NEW YORK: R Kelly was sentenced on Wednesday (Jun 29) to 30 years in prison, following the multiplatinum R&B singer's conviction for exploiting his stardom ...

He also faces various state charges in Illinois and Minnesota. "This case is not about sex. Advertisement

Jovante Cunningham, an R. Kelly survivor, pauses to take a reporter's question Wednesday outside federal court in Brooklyn, New York. (John Minchillo / ...

She flew there and was immediately locked in a hotel room for a few days, she said, then was finally fed something she had asked for off the hotel menu. “I’ve been followed, I’ve been approached at networking events,” she said, also on the Zoom call. Physical, emotional and sexual abuse followed into 1999, according to her book, “ Jane Doe #9.” “I’m grateful for today. “This happened to me a long time ago. “I never got my interview.” And I’m grateful that Robert Sylvester Kelly is away and will stay away and will not be able to harm anyone else.” Fears of retaliation and intimidation by fans, supporters of R. Kelly, vendors of R. Kelly.” “He did all of this in secret, so now he gets rewarded openly.” None of that is true,” she said. “So I’m excited to hear what’s going to happen and how our judicial system will continue to handle the justice process for us as victims. None of that is true.

Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, is among the most prominent people convicted of sexual misbehaviour during the #MeToo movement against such ...

He also faces various state charges in Illinois and Minnesota. REUTERS Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement "This case is not about sex. Advertisement

Kitti Jones in 2019 in Santa Monica, California. Amy Sussman/Getty Images. “Many have been waiting for this day to come.” Kitti Jones entered a Brooklyn ...

Your honor, my hope is that the amount of time being asked by the prosecutors is given, considering the long list of survivors and our families and the many lives that have been affected and forever changed. I’ve had therapy and counseling to cope with my time living with him and learned how not to blame myself. I vowed to never speak on my time with him or tell his darkest secrets; I planned to take the things he had done to me to my grave. I got wind that he was doing to others what he had done to me and I panicked at the thought of someone much younger than me having to experience those things, and the emotional and mental impact it would have years later. After I left his home at the end of 2013, I still had the mindset to never tell. I no longer wanted to give Robert Kelly the luxury of my silence, so I decided not to be anonymous.

As R. Kelly faces decades in prison for sex trafficking charges, newly unsealed court documents reveal graphic details about the R&B singer's own childhood ...

"I'm a grown woman, and can speak for myself which is why I wanted to provide this letter to the court." CNN has reached out to an attorney for Kelly for comment. "Typically after a trial, it's tougher for a defendant to get his recommended sentencing range," Honig said. Prosecutors believe a voice narrating the video is Gunn's, and he says, "That's where they at. His earliest memories were watching his mom perform as a singer in a band called "Six Pack," and he would often accompany her to McDonald's where she would drink coffee and they would share a pastry. He had never met his father and described his mother's death as the most tragic event of his life, saying he would go to McDonald's frequently to smell the coffee and remember her, according to a letter filed by Renee Sorrentino, a clinical assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

R&B singer and songwriter R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison after being convicted of nine counts of federal racketeering and sex ...

In 2018, DeRogatis reported that Kelly was being accused of running a cult by the parents of a young woman living at his home. If it weren’t for their fortitude and their insistence that justice be done, Kelly would still be seeking new girls to harm. Black women sharing, in their own words, what Kelly had done to them did something that nothing else could: It made people more empathetic to their plight. Three years before his acquittal in that sex-tape case, a 2005 episode of Cartoon Network’s “ The Boondocks” predicted he wouldn’t be convicted with an episode about R. Kelly standing trial for urinating on an underage girl. That’s when Oronike Odeleye and Kenyette Barnes created the #MuteRKelly movement to encourage a boycott of Kelly’s music. But the girl who prosecutors say was in the video refused to testify, and Kelly was found not guilty in 2008. When I wrote about it, tweeted about it and even spoke with my family about it, I was met with escalating hostility that eventually resulted in my being doxxed. He broke the news of the sex tape that prosecutors said showed the singer performing sex acts on a teenage girl and led to Kelly being charged in 2003 with 14 counts of child pornography. Some of those survivors held hands and prayed during his sentencing, showing Kelly that while he harmed those girls, they’re now women whom he couldn’t break. “There wasn’t a day in my life up until this moment that I actually believed that the judicial system would come through for Black and brown girls. It's because Black women — including Kelly’s former background singer Sparkle, journalist Jamilah Lemieux, writer Mikki Kendall, filmmaker dream hampton and activist Tarana Burke, to name a few — continued to sound the alarm, even when it was costly and dangerous to do so. Kelly used his fame and wealth to lure underage girls into his orbit, isolate them from their families and control and abuse them.

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.