R&B singer R Kelly has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for using his celebrity to subject young fans, some of whom were children, to systematic sexual abuse.
The singer and songwriter, 55, was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking last year in a US trial that gave voice to accusers who had previously wondered if their stories were being ignored because they were black women.
US District Judge Ann Donnelly gave the sentence after hearing from several survivors who said how Kelly’s abuse had changed their lives.
“You forced me to do things that broke my spirit.” “I literally wished I died because of how low you made me feel,” said one unnamed survivor, addressing a Kelly who kept his hands folded and his eyes downcast. “Do you remember that?”
Kelly did not address the court.
Even after allegations of sexual abuse of young girls became public in the 1990s, Kelly had a lot of fans and sold millions of albums.
Kelly’s sexual misconduct didn’t get a lot of attention until the #MeToo movement, which reached its peak when “Surviving R. Kelly” came out.
Kelly’s lawyers said that he shouldn’t spend more than ten years in prison because he had a hard childhood that included “severe, long-term childhood sexual abuse, poverty, and violence.”
As an adult with “literacy deficiencies,” the star was “repeatedly defrauded and financially abused, often by the people he paid to protect him,” according to his lawyers.
The hitmaker is best known for his work on the 1996 hit I Believe I Can Fly and the cult classic Trapped in the Closet, a multi-part story of sexual betrayal and intrigue.
Instances that Kelly abused young girls became public in the 1990s. He was sued in 1997 by a woman who claimed sexual battery and harassment while she was a minor, and he later faced criminal child pornography charges in Chicago related to a different girl. In 2008, a jury in that city acquitted him, and he settled the lawsuit.
Kelly sold millions of albums during this time.
A 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.
Kelly, who was born Robert Sylvester Kelly, used his “fame, money, and popularity” to “systematically prey on children and young women for his own sexual pleasure,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing earlier this month.
Several of Kelly’s accusers said that when they were young, Kelly would do weird and sadistic things to them.
The accusers said they were forced to sign nondisclosure agreements and were threatened with violent spankings if they broke “Rob’s rules.”
Some said they feared the videotapes he made of them having sex would be used against them if they revealed what was going on.
According to testimony, Kelly, according to testimony, gave several accusers herpes without disclosing he had an STD, coerced a teenage boy to join him for sex with a naked girl who emerged from beneath a boxing ring in his garage, and shot a shaming video that showed one victim smearing faeces on her face as punishment for breaking his rules.
Kelly has denied any wrongdoing. He did not testify at his trial, but his then-lawyers portrayed his accusers as girlfriends and groupies who were not forced to do anything against their will and stayed with him because they enjoyed the perks of his lifestyle.
Evidence was also presented about a fraudulent marriage scheme devised to protect Kelly after he suspected he had impregnated R&B phenom Aaliyah in 1994 when she was only 15 years old. Witnesses said they were married in matching jogging suits with a licence that falsely listed her age as 18; he was 27 at the time.
Aaliyah collaborated with Kelly, who wrote and produced her debut album, Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number, in 1994. She was 22 when she died in a plane crash in 2001.
An earlier defence memo suggested that prosecutors’ arguments for a harsher sentence were overreached by falsely claiming Kelly paid a bribe to a government official to facilitate the illegal marriage.
The Associated Press does not identify people who claim to have been sexually assaulted or abused unless they come forward publicly. The women who spoke at Kelly’s sentencing were only identified by first names or pseudonyms.
Kelly has been imprisoned without bail since 2019. He is still facing child pornography and obstruction of justice charges in Chicago, where his trial is set to begin on August 15.
