An alleged victim of R. Kelly – known to the jury by the name “Jane” – has claimed that the ‘Trapped in the Closet’ singer had sex with her “hundreds of times” before she turned 18, starting when I was 15 and him around 30.
Jane, now 38, also revealed to the jury that she asked the 55-year-old rapper to be her godfather when she was 13, in the ’90s, and detailed how R. Kelly allegedly called her on the phone and said things to her. sexually explicit.
The first time she touched his chest and other parts of her body was when she was 14 years old at a recording session in Chicago, the hometown of the ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ singer. It was during this period that she began to have sexual relations at her home.
Asked by the prosecution how she knew what she had to do in bed, Jane told the court: “He told me what he had to do. We did it countless times. Hundreds.”
Prosecutors cite that it was a video allegedly recorded by R. Kelly himself in which he is seen having sex with Jane that kicked off investigations into his child abuse allegations.
The alleged victim also told the court about his early life, in which she lived in a family of musicians in an area on the outskirts of Chicago, and his homeschooling experiences while performing in a touring musical group from the age of 12.
R. Kelly – who is serving a 30-year sentence after being found guilty in a New York court on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking – also faces 13 crimes related to child pornography, solicitation of relationships with minors and, the most serious, the obstruction of justice after he allegedly interfered in a 2008 trial in which he was accused of child abuse, which also concerned the video in which he and Jane allegedly had sexual encounters.
Prosecutors believe R. Kelly – real name Robert Sylvester Kelly – bribed and intimidated Jane not to testify against him and was eventually acquitted. In this case, the alleged victim has been cooperating with investigators.
The rapper – who has denied all the accusations – has faced a storm of allegations of sexual abuse, which worsened after the MeToo movement and the 2019 documentary series, ‘Surviving R Kelly’.
His lawyer Jennifer Bonjean has asked in court that her client not be considered a “monster”, while the assistant lawyer, Jason Julien, assured the court that R. Kelly had a “dark” and “hidden” side. .