R. Kelly is a sexual predator who parlayed his fame to abuse minors, a prosecutor reported Monday all through closing arguments at the R&B star’s youngster pornography and demo-correcting demo.
Addressing jurors in a courtroom in Chicago, Kelly’s hometown, Elizabeth Pozolo cited just one of Kelly’s accusers who was the government’s star witness at the monthlong demo.
Referring to the accuser by a pseudonym, “Jane,” Pozolo stated Kelly “took edge of Jane’s youth. He frequently abused her. He done degrading acts upon her for his personal ill enjoyment.”
She explained Kelly and his two co-defendants aided to get better little one pornography movies and hid evidence in advance of Kelly’s 2008 trial, at which he was acquitted.
She mentioned they acted to go over up the point that “R. Kelly … the R&B celebrity … is truly a sexual predator.”
Pozolo explained in graphic detail the movie excerpts jurors noticed that she claimed present Kelly abusing Jane although she phone calls him “daddy” and refers to herself as becoming 14 decades outdated. She reported Kelly can be seen walking up to the digicam to change it. Jane testified at demo that she was the teenager in the online video.
“That abuse is eternally memorialized…,” Pozolo advised jurors, her voice mounting. “Who does that? Who employs a 14-yr-previous kid to movie a video like this? This man. Robert Kelly.”
Right before Kelly’s 2008 trial, Pozolo claimed Kelly and his associates scrambled to recover intercourse films that had absent lacking from a collection he generally carried around in a big gym bag.
Much more tapes revealing Kelly as a sexual abuser could sink his career and land him in however extra lawful problems, so he was prepared to make six- and seven-figure payments to get them again, Pozolo reported.
“The magic formula that would wreck Kelly without end if it came out,” she said. “So certainly, that secret was worthy of $1 million.”
Before the defense rested late Friday, Kelly co-defendant and ex-organization supervisor Derrell McDavid testified that he had believed Kelly when he denied abusing minors — then claimed he commenced possessing uncertainties about Kelly’s believability during the demo that started previous month.
Kelly and McDavid are charged with repairing Kelly’s 2008 point out kid pornography trial by threatening witnesses and concealing video evidence.
Jane did not testify in 2008, and jurors cited that as a motive they couldn’t convict Kelly then. The present proceedings are in some strategies a do-over of that trial.
This time, Jane testified that she was the girl in that online video and that Kelly had sexually abused her hundreds of instances starting when she was 14.
Kelly and McDavid also encounter boy or girl pornography costs. An additional co-defendant, Kelly affiliate Milton Brown, is accused of receiving kid pornography. McDavid was the only one particular who testified on his individual behalf.
Kelly, 55, is presently facing 30 decades in prison after a individual federal trial in New York in June.
Regarded for his smash hit “I Consider I Can Fly” and for sexual intercourse-infused songs this sort of as “Bump n’ Grind,” Kelly offered thousands and thousands of albums even right after allegations of sexual misconduct started circulating in the 1990s. Common outrage emerged following the #MeToo reckoning and the 2019 docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly.”
