R. Kelly Investigation
R. Kelly is photographed during booking Friday at a police station in Chicago.
— Chicago Police Department via AP
R&B star R. Kelly may finally be held accountable for allegedly sexually abusing underage girls and women.
The singer was charged Friday with 10 counts of sexual abuse involving four victims, including at least three between the ages of 13 and 17.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said the alleged sexual abuse crimes by the 52-year-old Grammy winner date back as far as 1998.
The singer has consistently denied any sexual misconduct. In June 2008 a jury found him not guilty on all counts in a child pornography trial.
Under the bedrock principle of America’s criminal law system, Kelly is owed a presumption of innocence.
But there is strong evidence against him.
Although Kelly was acquitted in 2008 of child pornography charges, a graphic video appears to show him having sex with girls as young as 13. He and a young woman allegedly depicted with him denied they were in the 27-minute video, although witnesses testified that they were. The woman allegedly shown in the video did not take the stand. Although she wouldn’t testify that it was her, several other witnesses did. And one of them, Lisa Van Allen, said she knew it was the same girl because she had a sexual threesome with her and Kelly. Van Allen was only 17 when she met him years earlier. Attorney Michael Avenatti accused Kelly of evidence tampering, witness intimidation, physical threats and more to land a not guilty verdict in the 2008 trial.
The new charges against Kelly are for actions that occurred within the same time period as the old allegations from 2008, suggesting that the accusers are cooperating this time and are willing to testify.
Kelly has faced allegations for decades that he sexually abused underage girls and women and held some as virtual slaves.
He began to face new scrutiny after the release of a BBC documentary about him last year and the multipart Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” which aired last month.
The documentaries provided evidence for the allegations that Kelly was holding women against their will and running a “sex cult.”
Unfortunately, Kelly continued to enjoy strong support from his fans while his alleged victims faced skepticism and blame.
Undoubtedly Kelly had been allowed to enjoy fan support for so long and go largely accountable because he is famous, society glorifies celebrities, and his alleged victims were young, Black, poor and working-class women.
https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/holding-r-kelly-accountable/article_cc50e144-2ff5-504b-9564-9101ee653e86.html