R. Kelly, the singer, was found guilty on Wednesday, September 14, by the US federal court in Chicago for making films with child pornography and sexually abusing young people.
He has already served a previous sentence of 30 years for other sexual crimes, and the latest sentence will extend that prison time; the exact duration is still unknown.
The main evidence in the new ruling was a video showing the musician urinating on a 14-year-old girl. One of the witnesses was also the injured party. One of the witnesses was the victim.
There were two additional videos showing R. Kelly abusing minors. Several other women who were sexually assaulted when they were young testified against the artist in court.
Although the musician was absent from court on Wednesday, his lawyer Jennifer Bonjean claimed that he was “a victim of extortion and financial exploitation.”
The R. Kelly accusations
In June 2022, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for running a network that sexually exploited girls and women for years.
The sentence was handed down by Judge Ann Donnelly in a federal court in New York, in the United States, approximately a year after Kelly, 55, was found guilty by a state jury. In addition to other misdeeds, she also responded to extortion charges.
Testimony from several prosecutors was heard at Wednesday’s session, who described the ways in which the singer abused them.
If Kelly is convicted in a second federal trial in Chicago on child pornography and nuisance charges, scheduled for August 15, it could add decades to his sentence. Kelly was once one of the most famous R&B artists in the world.
He still faces state charges in Minnesota and Illinois.
In 2008, when he was found not guilty on 14 counts of child pornography, he had already escaped conviction.
The singer, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, is charged with one count of racketeering and eight counts of violation of the Mann Act, which prohibits the transportation of persons for sexual purposes across state lines. He denied all the accusations.
Federal authorities accused the singer that in addition to producing pornography, including child pornography, he ran a group of businessmen, security guards and others who recruited women and girls for him for sexual and abusive purposes.
Kelly was convicted, among other things, of bribing a government official who approved his marriage to singer Aaliyah (1979-2001) in 1994, when she was just 15 years old.
Categories: Biography
Source: newstars.edu.vn