By TOM HAYS and BOBBY CAINA CALVAN
NEW YORK (AP) — Disgraced R&B celebrity R. Kelly was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in jail for utilizing his fame to sexually abuse younger followers, together with some who have been simply youngsters, in a scientific scheme that went on for many years.
Through tears and anger, a number of of Kelly’s accusers informed a court docket, and the singer himself, that he had misled and preyed upon them.
“You made me do things that broke my spirit. I literally wished I would die because of how low you made me feel,” mentioned one unnamed survivor, instantly addressing Kelly, who stored his arms folded and his eyes downcast.
“Do you remember that?” she requested.
Kelly, 55, didn’t give an announcement and confirmed no response on listening to his penalty, which additionally included a $100,000 wonderful. He has denied wrongdoing, and he plans to enchantment his conviction.
The Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling songwriter was discovered responsible final yr of racketeering and intercourse trafficking at a trial that gave voice to accusers who had beforehand questioned if their tales have been being ignored as a result of they have been Black ladies.
Victims “have sought to be heard and acknowledged,” one other certainly one of his accusers mentioned at his sentencing. “We are no longer the preyed-on individuals we once were.”
A 3rd lady, sobbing and sniffling as she spoke, mentioned Kelly’s conviction renewed her confidence within the authorized system.
“I once lost hope,” she mentioned, addressing the court docket and prosecutors, “but you restored my faith.”
The lady mentioned Kelly victimized her after she went to a live performance when she was 17.
“I was afraid, naive and didn’t know to handle the situation,” she mentioned, so she didn’t converse up on the time.
“Silence,” she mentioned, “is a very lonely place.”
Kelly’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, mentioned he was “devastated” by the sentence and saddened by what he had heard.
“He’s a human being. He feels what other people are feeling. 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. Because he disagrees with the characterizations that have been made about him,” she mentioned.
The sentence caps a slow-motion fall for Kelly, who is thought for work together with the 1996 hit “I Believe I Can Fly” and the cult traditional “Trapped in the Closet,” a multipart story of sexual betrayal and intrigue.
He was adored by legions of followers and bought thousands and thousands of albums even after allegations about his abuse of younger ladies started circulating publicly within the Nineties. He beat youngster pornography costs in Chicago in 2008, when a jury acquitted him.
Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct didn’t emerge till the #MeToo reckoning, reaching a crescendo after the discharge of the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly.”
“I hope this sentencing serves as its own testimony that it doesn’t matter how powerful, rich or famous your abuser may be or how small they make you feel — justice only hears the truth,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace mentioned Wednesday.
A Brooklyn federal court docket jury convicted the singer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, after listening to that he used his entourage of managers and aides to fulfill ladies and hold them obedient, an operation that prosecutors mentioned amounted to a prison enterprise.
Several accusers testified that Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims after they have been underage.
The accusers alleged they have been ordered to signal nondisclosure varieties and have been subjected to threats and punishments reminiscent of violent spankings in the event that they broke what one known as “Rob’s rules.”
Some mentioned they believed the videotapes he shot of them having intercourse can be used towards them in the event that they uncovered what was occurring.
According to testimony, Kelly gave a number of accusers herpes with out disclosing he had an STD, coerced a teenage boy to affix him for intercourse with a unadorned lady who emerged from beneath a boxing ring in his storage, and shot a shaming video that confirmed one sufferer smearing feces on her face as punishment for breaking his guidelines.
“The horrors your victims endured,” U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly mentioned as she sentenced him. “No price was too high to pay for your happiness.”
Evidence additionally was offered a couple of fraudulent marriage scheme hatched to guard Kelly after he feared he had impregnated R&B phenom Aaliyah in 1994 when she was simply 15. Witnesses mentioned they have been married in matching jogging fits utilizing a license falsely itemizing her age as 18; he was 27 on the time.
Aaliyah labored with Kelly, who wrote and produced her 1994 debut album, “Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number.” She died in a airplane crash in 2001 at age 22.
Kelly didn’t testify at his trial, however his then-lawyers portrayed his accusers as girlfriends and groupies who weren’t compelled to do something towards their will and stayed with him as a result of they loved the perks of his way of life.
His present attorneys had argued he ought to get not more than 10 years in jail as a result of he had a traumatic childhood “involving severe, prolonged childhood sexual abuse, poverty, and violence.”
As an grownup with “literacy deficiencies,” the star was “repeatedly defrauded and financially abused, often by the people he paid to protect him,” his attorneys mentioned.
The Associated Press doesn’t identify individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted or abused, except they arrive ahead publicly. The ladies who spoke at Kelly’s sentencing have been recognized solely by first names or pseudonyms.
Kelly has been jailed with out bail since in 2019. He nonetheless faces youngster pornography and obstruction-of-justice costs in Chicago, the place a trial is scheduled to start Aug. 15.
“No matter how many hit songs he may have released, his legacy will not be remembered by that of his voice, but by the voices of the brave women and men who came forward to reveal to the world the monster that R. Kelly truly is,” mentioned Steve Francis of federal Homeland Security Investigations, which helped construct the case.
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Associated Press journalists Jennifer Peltz and Ted Shaffrey contributed to this report.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”