A federal judge in Chicago on Thursday sentenced singer R. Kelly to 20 years in prison for child pornography and seducing minors for sexual purposes. However, Kelly will serve most of that sentence concurrently with a 30-year sentence handed down last year for racketeering and sex trafficking. In a major victory for the defense, US District Judge Harry Leinenweber has ruled that the 56-year-old singer has just one year left to serve after completing his three-decade sentence in New York.
A week ago, prosecutors requested that Kelly – whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly – be given a new 25-year sentence, which he would have to serve once he completed his 30-year sentence in New York. In their proposed verdict in the US District Court in Chicago, prosecutors called Kelly’s behavior “sadistic,” calling him “a ruthless serial sex offender” and “a grave danger to society.” “The only way to guarantee that Kelly will not reoffend is to impose a sentence that keeps him in prison for the rest of his life,” they argued.
For his part, the singer’s defense called for a much shorter sentence of about 10 years, which could be served concurrently with New York’s. His attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said Thursday Kelly would be lucky if he survived his 30-year sentence in New York alone. Imposing a consecutive 25-year sentence, as prosecutors are asking, would be something “exaggerated,” “symbolic,” he said. “Because? Because it’s R. Kelly.”
In the defense sentencing recommendation, Bonjean accused prosecutors and “society in general” of targeting Kelly, who is black, for conduct that “white colleagues” got away with. “None have been prosecuted and none will die in prison,” the attorney wrote. Kelly’s legal team has appealed his convictions in New York and Chicago.
At the trial, which took place in Chicago last September, a jury convicted the R&B singer on six of the thirteen counts against him. He was found guilty of three counts of child pornography and three counts of seducing a minor for sexual purposes, and was acquitted of seven other counts, including obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obtain child pornography. In Kelly’s home state of Chicago, a conviction on a single child pornography charge carries a minimum sentence of 10 years. His conviction was considered an important milestone for the #MeToo movement in the United States.
The allegations against Kelly date back to the early 2000s: In 2002, Chicago Sun-Times music journalist Jim DeRogatis published a story in which he revealed that he had received an anonymous videotape of Kelly allegedly having sex with showed a 14-year-old girl. The journalist also revealed that Chicago police have been investigating the allegations against Kelly and the same girl for three years. At the time, the girl and her parents denied that the girl had a sexual relationship with Kelly and that she was the girl on the recording. A year later, Kelly was charged with child pornography in Chicago in connection with the video. However, when the case went to court in 2008, the singer was acquitted.
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But the victim – known by the pseudonym Jane – had been in a relationship with the artist for years. He decided to tell his story after watching the 2019 documentary Surviving R. Kelly, which included testimonies from several women who have accused the singer of sexual abuse since the 1990s. At the Chicago trial last year, Jane publicly said for the first time that she was the girl in the sex tape. He said he was 14 on the recording and the man was Kelly, who would then be in his 30s. She admitted to lying when the tape’s existence became known because she was “ashamed”: “I didn’t want that person to be me either.”
Kelly was one of the biggest R&B stars of the 1990s, best known for the song “I Believe I Can Fly.” But despite his fame, he was then common at a McDonald’s in Chicago, where he lured students from a nearby institute. Jane was one of those girls. Jane was part of a music team and met Kelly when she was in high school. He frequented his recording studio with an aunt who was a professional singer. Shortly after this meeting, Jane told her parents that Kelly would be her godfather. When her parents found out about the sex tape, Kelly knelt down in front of them and, according to Jane, apologized. But at the time, Jane begged her parents not to take action against the musician because she “loved” him.
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